Read somthing about ELC's being bad for copper parts(On another forum I can't link here). Called a local diesel shop and they confirmed that it is indeed bad for copper. Or at least offers no or little protection for copper parts. He claims he flushs out a lot of ford trucks that the owner had made the switch to ELC a couple of years back. Anyone here heard of this? Or had any issues with it on copper parts?

 

Interesting? I also wonder what copper We have??

this mentions copper brass compatibility kind of http://www.rvcruzer.com/docs/CatELC.pdf

 

International builds the 6.0 for Ford. International uses only ELC in their vehicles! Well I guess Ford knows best.

 

Before switching to a ELC type coolant you need to make sure that no components in the cooling sytem including the heater core have copper.

This is why I've stayed with the Ford Gold coolant.

 

Not sure we have copper anywhere in the system.

And not sure where the document mentions copper compatibility, except for the requirement to have at least one copper radiator in fleet testing for compatibility. Other documents elsewhere note that there is protection from copper corrosion.

Modern vehicles don't use copper/brass-soldered radiators any more; it's cheaper/faster/easier to make the tanks out of plastic. Copper compatibility is an issue in older vehicles with welded/soldered radiators.

Originally this was going to be an issue because they were going to stop making "original green" coolant; the extended-life varieties were going to be the only ones sold, and so had to be able to be retrofitted to older vehicles without worrying about destroying the cooling systems.

In practice, however, normal green coolant is still widely available in the marketplace, and so older vehicles need not (yet) be retrofitted.

Extended life coolants were introduced largely to get rid of the maintenance intervals required by green-coolants, especially when the vehicle was owned by an individual who was less-than-diligent about maintenance. Coolant chemistry for corrosion protection and silicate dropout was largely optimized in the '70's; the only remaining problem was the fast depletion of nitrites (for liner pitting).

"Normal/Green" coolant can be used in an extended-life scenario IF the proper maintenance is observed (testing and supplementation if necessary).

-blaine