Prestone Command in Caterpillar Engine,

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George, I have an older Ford Diesel pickup and I also struggle with coolant specs, although on a smaller scale and with my own money. Part of the reason the CAT coolant costs 3 times as much may be due to the CAT name but part of the cost may also be for superior coolant - I don't know for sure. I believe Caterpillar was involved in the initial research involving Diesel cylinder liner cavitation erosion.

Speaking only for myself, if I was charged with maintaining a truck owned by my employer I would run the CAT coolant. Isn't the coolant service life something like 750,000 miles? The extra cost of the CAT coolant is completely negligible on a cost per mile basis. The extra money may be literally down the drain or it may be a very good investment in the service life of the engine. We don't 100% know and it's not your money you are to some extent gambling with.

I hate to even bring this topic up, but it's part of the reality we live in. If you use the cheap coolant and something like the water pump should fail for some completely unrelated cause, who is going to have fingers pointed his direction?

Since it is your employers truck and your employers money, barring any completely conclusive facts to the contrary I would use the CAT coolant.

Probably equally important is a proper drain and flush of the old coolant.

Edit: I would ask Caterpillar tech support why their coolant is so bloody expensive and ask them to explain why it is worth the extra money.
 
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The long service life certainly helps mitigate the initial high cost of the coolant if I could keep the coolant in that long. The rad drain is not user friendly at all, you can sort of stick a hose into a hole and try and direct the flow of coolant into clean jugs but the coolant spills all over the place and a lot of the coolant gets lost. It is a very high mileage engine and the coolant has to be drained every so often, for water pump replacement, stat replacement etc. The current issue is a coolant leak at the air compressor head and the system has to drained before I can address the leak.

One of the reasons for high cost is CAT pushing sale of the 50/50 instead of the concentrate. With the Prestone I can buy the concentrate and use distilled water to get it to 50/50.
 
We have used Texaco and Chevron and this Prestone coolant in the Cat C-15 engines at work and never had any issues. Big companies like that aren't going to state it meets spec when it doesn't.

That Fort Garry out in Missisauga is an awesome store to visit, so much cool stuff!
 
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