Originally Posted By: 901Memphis
Originally Posted By: drtyler
While the G-05 may certainly be fine in vehicles that originally had the traditional green coolant, the chart produced by Ford for their vehicles says otherwise. It looks like most pre-1999 vehicles manufactured by Ford are still required to have traditional green.
Ford Coolant Chart
Originally Posted By: 901Memphis
Originally Posted By: wtd
I have a 98 Chevy K1500 with the 5.7L that I bought new. I have had the intake manifold gaskets replaced three times, once under warranty and all of these were done within the first 100,000 miles. Truck currently has about 127,000 miles on it and has the second gasket design installed. I know that there have been three gasket revisions since this engine was developed.
I don't know if the problems with this engine and the 5.0, and 4.3L are caused by the Dex-Cool or bad gasket design or both.
I put green antifreeze in it when I flushed it out the last time just because I don't trust the Dex-cool in this application.
More than likely, I will stick with Dex-cool in the Mustang unless it becomes a problem down the road.
Wayne
For any application calling for conventional green you can safely upgrade to Motorcraft gold or Zerex G05 and take advantage of longer service life than conventional green.
I was speaking more about other vehicle makes that spec conventional green, not just Fords.
I would be very interested to hear from a Ford engineer on why they didn't back spec everything to Gold that was pre Dex Cool.
My guess is because a full flush should be done before switching to a long life coolant. Changing the spec might have implied that topping off green with G-05 is fine, when it may not be. There is much more at risk here than topping off 5W30 with 5W20, and using 5W20 on later oil changes. This would have been especially true for the OEMs while vehicles using green were still under warranty, which would have been into the mid 2000s.
Ford changed many models over to G-05 around 2001/2002 without any material changes to the cooling system. The cooling system on my truck is the same as the one on a 2001 Ranger 3.0. 2001s got green, my 2002 got gold. The only things that changed on the engine were to delete EGR and change the upper (dry) intake manifold to composite. The areas where coolant flows are all the same.
GM did not back spec pre-1995 models to Dexcool, and they still offer an AC Delco green coolant.
It's really a case of CYA. Telling people that "you can switch to this if you do a complete flush" is too much for the average car owner to comprehend at all. OEMs are not going to go there.
IIRC, a member here has/does run G-05 in 1960s Chryslers.
