By
Bull6791, May 14, 2014
When should the pink coolant be changed. I have turbo power 5 year/150,000 mile coolant in there now. I am going to completely flush this out and put in Toyota pink coolant. Then for the rest of the life of the car I can just do drains and refills.
When should the Toyota pink be changed.
I know the Toyota red is changed every 30k/2 years.
Any help would be great
Frank
Toyota red is a LLC (Long LIfe Coolant) generally good for 5 years / 60K miles. Toyota pink is a SLLC( Super Long LIfe Coolant) generally rated at 12 years/ 120K miles.
Drain and refill is based on your schedule. 30K / 24 months for Toyota Red is probably overkill, even in extreme conditions. For Toyota Pink - might be way too early. Won't hurt to do it at this short of an interval - but I also don't want people to waste money that could have be put to better use.
I like doing them at this interval (Toyota Red + distilled) on my 8th gen Corolla, as it is more convenient for me, time-wise, as I'll have a number of things that I'll be doing at the same time. If I wanted to do it right, I'd chemically test the coolant and see what its condition is.
For my 2009 Rav4 and 2009 Matrix - I'd probably do a drain and refill every 5-6 years, which is still pretty conservative. Did the Matrix some time ago - coolant was the factory fill at the time, had about 5 years / 60K miles on it - looked undistinguisahble from the new coolant, color and odor wise. Visual inspection of the radiator fins from the cap show no signs of deposits, coolant drained was free of any material. Probably could have run it longer - but already had the coolant out.
Fish
Am I correct in saying pink coolant change in 5years/60k. I know it my own preference I just wanted to know what you would do.
How do you chemically test coolant with strips.
Frank
5yr/60K interval seems to be pretty common on most 9th gen owners. So far, I've only changed the "pink" stuff once in my cars that have that as the factory fill, and that was roughly around the 5 year mark on the Matrix. The Rav4 is still running with the factory coolant fill in it.
Chemical testing with strips is pretty easy to do, but unfortunately, not a perfect way to check the coolant. Most only test pH - which can be misleading in some cases. Same goes to those specific gravity liquid testers - only shows you the freezing protection, nothing about the chemistry.
You can test them by sending them to a lab - usually those used oil analysis centers can also test coolant, but those tests can get pretty expensive. For me - it was cheaper/less work to stick to a very conservative change interval. Because of the amount of miles that I can quickly put onto a car (~20K-25K yearly), I choose intervals that works for me - this may not be the case for everyone.
That said - my 8th gen Corolla sees Toyota Red + distilled water changed every 2 years (very conservative - probably can push this out to 5 years and still be OK), Matrix got changed at 5 years as a test (again very conservative - plan to push this back a couple of years), Rav4 hasn't gotten changed yet - but my plan will be still change it at around the 6 year mark to baseline it and then monitor it over time, this will likely be the same way as the Matrix - the next time might be 7-8 years easily, if they both act the same after changing out the factory fill.
