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Does Your Car Need Green- or Orange-colored Coolant?

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Antifreeze is an essential fluid that helps keep engines running smoothly when the weather spikes and lowers to freezing temps. But did you know that the color of antifreeze you choose can impact how well it does its job?


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If you’re behind the wheel of a car that was made before the year 2000, you’ll want to reach for a bottle of green antifreeze, according to The Family Handyman writer Harrison Kral. Since green antifreeze is created by an older formula, it has the components necessary to protect the special needs of older vehicles.

“Green antifreeze is made with special tweaks to the formula specifically to help prevent the corrosion of metals in a vehicle’s cooling system,” Kral writes; there is more copper and steel elements in older cars compared to vehicles manufactured after the year 2000, and green antifreeze helps to safeguard these components.

If your vehicle boasts a birthdate after the year 2000, you should reach for the orange antifreeze at the auto parts store, which according to Kral is based on a more up-to-date formulation to help safeguard the change in materials automakers implemented in vehicles.

“Towards the end of the 1990’s, vehicle manufacturers began to use more aluminum and nylon in cooling systems. That meant the anti-corrosion elements in the green antifreeze formula, specifically meant to prevent corroding in metals, were no longer effective against these new components,” Kral writes.

The color orange was chosen to signify the new formulation.


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Choose the color coolant that best applies to your vehicle, and Kral warns against mixing different colors of coolant together.

“Mixing the two formulas won’t cause any dangerous reactions or explosions, but it could turn your coolant into a sludgy chemical mixture that won’t be able to flow properly through your cooling system,” he writes.

News Source: MSN