Coolant replacement no longer necessary?

hswift · Post by **hswift** » 15 Feb 2005, 01:16

It seems to be the opinion on this forum that not replacing coolant regularly is a contributor to head gasket failure. Why then do Citroen no longer include coolant replacement in their service schedules? The cynic in me says it's because their warranty obligations will be long gone before anyone experiences a failure, but I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt and say there's a technical reason. Any ideas?
More to the point,what's the view on whether I should change the coolant on my 2002 C5 2.2HDI?
H

tomsheppard · Post by **tomsheppard** » 15 Feb 2005, 01:41

Most of us drive older cars. They are known to need regular coolant changes. Your car probably has "sealed for life" coolant with a ten year life. I'd change it every two years, regardless
and I think that for £10 a year it is cheap insurance for an expensive engine. We haven't yet seen the fifteen year old HDI !

alan s · Post by **alan s** » 15 Feb 2005, 02:12

Think back; BX promos......"Loves driving - hates garages"
I might just be an old cynic, but why are so many BXs pensioned off in later years? Mainly due to not being serviced regularly enough when newer and that slogan planted a seed (intentionally or otherwise) that they were built to be driven & driven & driven and checking under the hood was optional.
Today we have all these BXs with weird hydraulic problems caused by unserviced systems, filthy engines due to long winded oil changes and cooling systems that are rotting out due to non regular coolant changes.
I agree with Tom, service it anyway; it's like these oil companies (and car makers) talking 20K klms oil changes. Sure the oil might take it, but what about the shovel full of metal filings getting pumped through the engine?[B)][:0]
Alan S

alexx · Post by **alexx** » 15 Feb 2005, 03:36

Well, on my Xantia, coolant change is scheduled to 5 years or 120.000 km, although it's not easy to find information about that in the manual, but Citroen green coolant must be used in that case

Post by **RichardW** » 15 Feb 2005, 12:53

They've almost certainly switched to an Organic Acid Technology (OAT) coolant, which is much much better than a glycol coolant at retaining its anti-corrosive properties (have a look in the links section, I think there is a link there to a web site that explains all about coolants), hence much longer change intervals (typically 10 years - I guess that the design life of modern cars is less than this so no change is specified).

P 2501 · Post by **P 2501** » 15 Feb 2005, 12:57

Just ignore citroen and get it changed (and flushed) at two yearly intervals with DI water and appropriate coolant. It is the oat stuff by the way now.
As mentioned above, cheap insurance.

skypilot · Post by **skypilot** » 15 Feb 2005, 19:21

On the subject of coolant, there is a product on the market which claims to reduce warm up time and also reduce the coolant temperature by 15C. I always believed that the optimum coolant temp is between 82C and 88C. Does anyone know how this stuff works and if it might save some head gasket problems?
http://www.frost.co.uk/item_Detail.asp?productID=9007

Kowalski · Post by **Kowalski** » 15 Feb 2005, 19:35

The most important part of that claim is the "up to 15deg C reduction".
Whenever I see "up to" I smell snake oil. That said, products like "Redline Water Wetter" do have a beneficial effect, if only by reducing the surface tension of your water, adding washing up liquid would have the same beneficial effect along with some undesired effects.

bxbodger · Post by **bxbodger** » 15 Feb 2005, 19:37

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">which claims to reduce warm up time and also reduce the coolant temperature by 15C<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Sounds like snake oil to me....reduce the temp by 15c? Thats a lot!!!
My BX stat is supposed to open at 93c, so do they mean 15c at the rad or 15c at the block? Two entirely different things!! I bet they don't say.......
As an aside,service intervals are getting vastly longer looking in the service book for our (i.e. the wifes ) brand new Kia Carens MPV diesel,its a 2 litre common rail D.I. 16v turbodiesel, in fact,so its probably going to be tough on oil, but the oil changes are scheduled to be at every 10k miles, and its not supposed to need a cambelt change until 96000....thats miles, not kilometers[:0]!!!!!

tomsheppard · Post by **tomsheppard** » 15 Feb 2005, 20:11

Just how does putting an additive in reduce the temperature? Same amount of energy going into the same amount of fluid. Car engine c.30% efficient and usually using, say 20 horsepower so it dissipates around 50 HP or 65KW in heat. To chill that by 15 degrees would mean that it is wasted on mere car engines. This could be the airconners' prayers answered! Sounds very much like male bovine dung to me.

oilyspanner · Post by **oilyspanner** » 15 Feb 2005, 21:02

More fantastic percentages and snake oil, many years ago I used to ride a certain shaft driven horizontally opposed twin motorcycle, mates who rode oriental chain driven machines slated my mount due to the shaft drives apparent ability to absorb copious amounts of horsepower??? where did this go? elementary physics tells us that it must have been changing state as energy cannot merely disappear only change its type, so as geiger counters registered only background radiation then it must have been dissipated in the form of heat, were the assembly really losing this much heat energ (allegedly around 2KW) why could I touch it with a bare hand?
Stewart

bxbodger · Post by **bxbodger** » 15 Feb 2005, 21:29

Amazing, those Cossack Urals!!!

oilyspanner · Post by **oilyspanner** » 15 Feb 2005, 21:38

Douglas dragonfly actually!

tomsheppard · Post by **tomsheppard** » 15 Feb 2005, 22:31

LE Velo didn't make 2 KW did it?

oilyspanner · Post by **oilyspanner** » 15 Feb 2005, 22:50

Wooler twin?