HI. I've changed my green coolant every 30K and I'm due another change soon. I also use the test strips monthly and add SCA as needed. My question: If the coolant is testing good on the test strips do I really need to change it, or just keep monitoring? All answers are appreciated, knowledgable answers are really appreciated.

 

How many months is 30k miles? Are all the readings on the test strips good, or are you just paying attention to the SCA levels?

 

Not sure on the months, probably around 2 years. I get 3 readings on the strip. They all read in OK and I use current strips. The coolant looks clean and fresh. I even used distilled water when I last changed it. Just hard to believe it needs to be changed, but if it does I'll sure change it.

 

If all your readings are good then theoretically you should be fine for a while longer. As for me, I'm a big fan of routine maintenance. I don't think changing the coolant every couple of years is too bad.

 

I've changed my coolant once at about 4 years and 100,000 miles. I've put on about 140,000 in 6 years since then. Haven't used a test strip in years... I pour a bottle of FW-16 in every few months. The truck runs great. If my truck is fine then yours is fine!

 

Green should be changed every two years or ~30k, IMHO. Yeah, you can push it, but if it were me, that's what I'd do. If you're stacking up a lot of miles, go ELC. No SCAs to worry about, and it's good for 300k+, depending on the type of ELC it is...

 

Where is the best place to get test strips?

 

Well, I sure as hell couldn't get them at ford, tried 3 different dealers. bough mine at NAPA but stay alert they first tried to sell me a batch that was 3 and 1/2 years timed out. There is also a place on line. It might be diesel Stop but I'm not sure. Check around the FTE site.

 

I get mine from NAPA too. They usually don't have them in stock and have to order them. Buy the cheap kit they sell. You don't need all the other junk in the expensive kit, just the strips and color chart that comes on the bottle.

 

This is the best solution, IMO. I switched all my vehicles over to Delo ELC (plus our class 8 fleet trucks) and now we have no testing, no test strips, no SCA additive, and the coolant (if you add the extender at 500k miles/4 years) is good to 1,000,000 miles or 8 years (I think it will be 8 years for me )...at the same time I added coolant filtration to the PSD. The concentrate was $20/gallon and the 50/50 was $14/gallon...I went with the concentrate and distilled water AFTER thoroughly flushing with distilled water...got it all done with filtration for about $100.

 

I thought there was some issue witrh the ELC in these trucks. Seems like i remember a lot of discussion on FTE back when the ELC was just catching on. Bottom line was not to replace green with gold, but I don't remember why.