All, hoping some one that has seen a few coolant replacement can help. I have a 2012 f250 6.7 with 63k miles. though not high miles, wanted to change the coolant.

It came with orange of course, and lazy me paid dealer to do it.

They say they replaced both primary and secondary system with the new yellow concentrate and they also put an additive, though I can't confirm what additive

They say the drained and replaced, but they did not run a couple of cyles of distilled water through it.

Net result, in the primary degas bottle, it sort of looks the green/yellow of the new coolant, but in the secondary looks as orange as went i brought it in.

I complained to no avail.

Am I making too big of a deal here? is the proper ford process to run 1 or 2 cycles of distilled water through it before re-filling? If not, is it expected to have so much left over coolant, the color remains the same?

 

moved to the 6.7 forum for better responses.

 

My response is this
This is how you find out if you continue to use this dealer.
They have a machine that takes all the old coolant out and puts the new coolant back in. I think it's pretty efficient at getting the old stuff out. probably better than you can do it in your driveway.
keep the paperwork if something goes wrong you have a 2 year warranty on parts and labor from Ford for all services preformed I believe.
It's not lazy to have the dealer do coolant changes, transmission service or oil changes. They dispose of all the old fluids so you don't have to load them up and do ti yourself. I used to do all this myself but it's a pain in the butt to find the drain pan full if you want to do a oil change. Pain to drag it to the recycle it every time you change the oil.

 

thanks for the reply. I'm going to drain a bit from secondary petcock and see what it looks like.

I spent 3 hrs at dealership and was charged nearly $300. I have honestly no idea what they did, but this is not setting well with me.

I assume, having a mix of new yellow + old orange is not a problem, but I call this dealership and asked svc mgr two times their process. both times was told they flush with distilled water. they clearly did not do this but charged me full price anyway.

Does anyone have a link to ford std process for this by chance? TY!

 

Your dealer did a quick and dirty drain and refill. Someone will be along and give you the link to the Ford instructions, I used them and it took all day. If I were to do it again, I would simply drain, refill with distilled and repeat as often as necessary to get nearly clear coolant. There is no machine that will get all of the old coolant out anyway, so I think "wasting" distilled water is as good as any.

 

I've read that the new yellow coolant does not require/use additives. If they put additives in, I would question what they really did.

 

yep, that is what I thought...turns out what I was told was additive, was something they called flush. part dept told me it was 'Wynns' coolant flush pn 10061.

Anyone hear of this stuff?

 

I was thinking about this yesterday and decided I wanted to pay extra and have it flushed instead of drain and fill, called my local dealer and he said they stopped doing flushes years ago all they do is drain and fill, then he asked if I wanted both systems done as they typically only do the primary...
To drain and fill both they quoted $468 plus tax.
I did the math and even if I drain and do a distilled fill and drain 3 times before filling I will have a little over $100 in it plus my time.

 

That's a good amount of cash. If they assured me that they use a machine to get all the old stuff out, I could see going that route. It's been a while since I drained/filled a coolant system myself. I'm thinking I would like to keep it that way.

 

Just called another dealer, they will flush and fill for $331 plus tax and shop supplies, no clue what shop supplies consist of but I guess it cannot be to much, not sure if I want to sit a few hours and wait, take and uber 2 ways or just do it myself...

 

I had an 11 and at 106k I decided I would change out the coolant. I purchased one of those Vacuum Coolant refill kits and it worked great. Short story, I drained and then filled with distilled water 6 times. I actually used the vacuum adapter and reversed it and whend draining the system, I pressured it up to about 10 lbs to force more fluid out, and It would drain about 3 quarters of the total volume with that slight pressure. I did it again 6 times as it became real clear on the last drain. In between each drain and fill of distilled water, I drove it up and down the higway and got the engine and oil temps up to normal operating temp, so the thermostats would open and circulate. Would came back and drain. Took all day and early evening as I did both systems in one day. But well worth it IMO.
I used Orange when it went back in on the final fill using the vaccuum system, and used concentrate with half distilled water and half concentrate. The Engine temp ran about 4 degrees cooler after the Anti-freeze change out when pulling my 5er and running empty after that. I was well satisfied that I had done a decent job and saved about 300 bucks. I ran the truck about 100 miles and checked the coolant level in both systems and only added maybe a pint on the main and maybe, maybe a cup on the secondary. It was not a hard job, just time consuming.

 

ALL day. This is more work than it's worth. My time is worth more than $300 not to mention the fuel you wasted driving around with no where to go. What did you do with the old coolant and the water that still had antifreeze in it?
The amount of antifreeze the machine doesn't get is small. Not like the stuff that you have to remove every drop of water before you use it.
This it the main reason to just let the dealer do it. I don't have all day. My dealer is about 20 miles from me so I have to wait for it.
OP just drive the truck. If you develop problems keep your paperwork and make them fix it.

 

Oh I agree, on all day to save 300 bucks as that was not on my agenda. On the other hand, it is like changing your own oil, and fuel filters, I know it was done to MY satisfaction. To many times lately, I have questioned, and I see it here, on the work done by dealerships and really not doing it to satisfaction.

Actually on disposal of the used fluid, the City was able to dispose of all of the fluid with no issues. I took it down to their center for these type fluids.

 

At least with the normal car coolant, you can pour it down the toilet. Not sure about the orange coolant.

 

thanks everyone for the support.

I think after all the replies here and other source I have reviewed, IF the dealer did what they said, it's not a problem, just not probably the process I'd have followed to do myself.

If able to do over a gain, I'd follow the process below and drain/refill a few times with distilled before final refil. thanks all!