Can I change to elc oat coolant?

[Idaho jarhead]

Hi again, thanks for all the great info I've found here so far. I recently purchased a 450 C and am going thru it before putting to work. I would like to drain flush and refill coolant with organic acid technology elc coolant and not have to monitor sca levels. I have read quite a bit on other forums and had no idea coolant could be so complicated, I think I have determined that as long as I use one that meets cat's EC-1 standards I should be ok.the one thing I can't verify is if I have lead solder in my radiator which apparently would not be compatible with oat elc coolant? Any advice would be appreciated. I was told my machine is a 79 , bit it has no serial # plate and the arch covers the spot someone here said it would be stamped in the rear of the machine so I guess it could be as early as 74.

[Lavoy]

I have to plead a little ignorance as to the value or point of the coolant you want to use, but I am almost positive that your radiator will have lead based solder in it.
Lavoy

[MarkW]

My opinion only, but IMHO someone has been reading too many semi-truck websites.

First, if you give validity to SCA (supplemental coolant additives) a person also has to be aware that abnormal situations can occur so that you need to at least visually inspect the coolant every once in a while.

On brand new or nearly-new semis that spent 8+ hours on the road every day, maintenance is attempted to be optimized. However with a 74-79 crawler I could pretty much guarantee that some sort of inspection is performed every time it is started in the morning. Depending on what sort of brand you get, the test strips are $10-$20 a bottle of 50. For a new machine I suppose it could be argued but honestly for a 40 year old crawler I like to check the coolant if not every day then every other day of operation and if you want to it might not be bad to use a test strip once a month or so. Anyway I could go on and on but I have traditional coolant in my vehicles and include it as part of routine inspections. There will probably other things that go wrong before an issue with worn out coolant comes up.

[LeonardL]

Deleted

[Idaho jarhead]

WOW! At the risk of sounding offensive or causing a ruckus I guess I might just as well stand up for myself. I grew up on a dairy farm turning wrenches, keeping things going, and not a fan of futuristic technology. I'm one man trying to do the PM on more equipment than I should probably own and thought I could have one less thing to keep an eye on. I had read on a tractor forum, not a semi forum, one of these is backwards compatible to all Deere equipment. They didn't have a TB, just someone pontificating, and someone else stating they're not all compatible with lead solder. I thought I'd throw it out here and see if I could get some definitive info since there seem to be some pretty sharp folks here. I take better care of my equipment than almost everyone I know, but it does take more time than just dumping whatever is handy in your machine. I think anyone who wouldn't want to cut down on maintenance time and have more operating time might be foolish, or maybe they only own one piece of equipment. Guess I should get off my soapbox now. If you feel like you need to call me foolish and insult my intelligence you could at least spell correctly, I think what you meant to say was "plain" foolish not "plane".

[Lavoy]

Okay, time out. You asked the opinion of the people on this board and you got it. If you don't like it, so be it, but no one here intended it to be insulting or anything else. And, if you don't like the advice, there is no need to be insulting back. And please point out to me where anyone here said you were stupid. Smart people do foolish things all the time.
So now I will weigh in on one of your comments. To say dumping whatever is "handy" is foolish. I have read all of the posts in this thread several times, and I am unable to find anyone telling you to dump Dr. Pepper or Drano in your radiator because it is "handy'. The only reference that I can see is to Ethylene Glycol antifreeze which is what unquestionably came in you crawler and all of the rest of the crawlers, tractors, trucks, etc built in that period.
I was born and raised on a farm, and we still have the farm. Dad's original 4020 is well past the 9000 hour mark and has never run anything but regular anti-freeze with no problems. 4430 at the same or more hours, same song. Neither of these tractors has ever had and SCA test done.
If you can't handle advice from experienced people that think you are wasting your money and have your best interests in mind, I think you are wasting your time here. I have on multiple occasions here told people they are wasting their time (do a search on oil on clutches some time).
This board is designed to be a place for people to learn, share knowledge, and hopefully save money by not making FOOLISH mistakes that wastes money, or has the potential to do other damage and cost more money. I think we do a pretty good job of that here with no bashing, porn, politics or whatever, and I would like to keep it that way.
Lavoy

[jtrichard]

HERE are a few things that might be useful to read http://www.imcool.com/articles/antifree ... _Water.php

https://www.cumminsfiltration.com/html/ ... p_add.html

I use like napa kool added to Ethylene Glycol coolant ...as i have seen what liner pitting is and what it can cost

[jtrichard]

HERE is another to look at http://community.fmca.com/topic/8110-cy ... f-coolant/
Make sure to click on the pic at the bottom of the post

[LeonardL]

I apologize if what I said offended you. I did spell "Plain" wrong and that was my mistake and stupid on my part. It's also hard for me to write in inflection when making a point. I was just trying to keep you from making a costly mistake. It is however only my opinion... maybe I am wrong on the entire subject.

I also apologize to Lavoy for causing him to have to jump in when I'm sure he would have rathered not.

[Lavoy]

No problem.
Lavoy

[oldmetalmender]

This thread made me head out to the shop in my bathrobe and a pair of slippers in the snow early this morning to see what I put in my 450. Thankfully my only neighbor can't see me.

I see I put zerex ELC coolant in with well water. I saw some info on pitted liners and ELC coolant last summer when I did my head gasket work. Not digging further I thought I was avoiding a problem with pitted liners. Now see I have made some mistakes. I also put in some K-seal to plug a pin hole leak in the radiator core. I'll be taking this engine back apart in hopefully less than three months to evaluate the entire assembly. And fix my head sealing problem. I'll switch back to ethylene glycol and add the additive. The Zerex is acid based. Should I rinse it out now? The radiators for these machines are 1500 bucks. I usually research stuff up one side and down the other. I missed the mark with this one. These yellow machines are certainly a different animal than the green machines (Mil) I have messed with the last decade or so.

Thank you for the links. I have learned a lot in my short time here.
And I hate admitting to mistakes.

[Lavoy]

Deere used to (maybe still does) sell a pre-mix anti-freeze that had the selling point of using "non-ionized or ionized" water, can't remember which now. It's been 15 years or so since I worked for Deere, so they may have come up with something new now. From what I remember it had something to do with insuring the quality of the water that the glycol was mixed with. I know on one four wheel drive of our own with a 619c.i., there was an update where they added a water filter on the cooling system. You were supposed to run a charge filter for the first 500 hours, then change to a regular filter. Eventually they changed that and said run only charge filters and change them every 500 hours. We eventually had cavitation issues with that engine and perforated a liner. It was not a corrosion issue, there wasn't any, but the cavitation actually eroded a hole/kind of slot through the liner. We used to hear of some IH row crop tractors that were having this issue too.
Lavoy

[Idaho jarhead]

LeonardL, sorry for busting your chops about spelling it was a crummy thing to do in response to what I felt might have been a questioning of my intelligence. I apologize for that. I should have taken the advice the way you meant it, someone with more experience than me trying hard to keep me from doing something detrimental to my equipment. Thanks for taking the time to respond to my post.

[Stan Disbrow]

Hi,

Deere Cool Gard II comes either pre-mixed or straight. The pre mix comes 50/50 mixed with distilled water. Or, you can buy the straight and mix it with distilled water from the grocery store.

You don't need to go to the extra expense (and difficulty finding) of using deionized water. That is only needed when using water cooling of high powered electronics. The DI water won't conduct if it leaks. Hardly necessary for any kind of engine. But, quite necessary around electricity....

Me, I just buy the Deere coolant and mix it with distilled water and change it out every other year. In everything (new or old, gas or diesel, bored or sleeved). They already put in the additives, so nothing to else to do besides make sure the water is pure. Which, distilled does.

Stan

[Idaho jarhead]

Sorry to cause a ruckus on your site Lavoy. I'm sure you have better things to do with your time than referee. It seems in my haste to keep my post short I did a poor job of communicating. I certainly didn't mean to say someone from this site suggested I dump whatever is handy in my machine. What I meant was I have seen a lot of careless things done to equipment and it never turns out good, so especially now that I own equipment I try to take the time and effort to take the best care of it that I can. So a few weeks ago when I came across some comments by a frequent contributor here about Deere engines with seals and o rings under the sleeves being notorious for cavitation erosion in this area I started thinking. He seems knowledgeable, runs a lot of Deere equipment and was pretty adamant about poor coolant maintenance being the cause, so I decided I should try and educate myself on coolants. I read a lot of posts on a lot of different sites and seemed to find a lot of conflicting or incomplete information. I wound up back here kinda frustrated which was probably not the best frame of mind to receive advice in. Somehow during all that I got it in my brain that a modern coolant if compatible might save some time during biannual PM inspections on 4 wet sleeve diesels, or if not time then at least a bunch of expired test strips. < (poor attempt at humor) I know it wouldn't account for a lot of time, but the minutes seem to add up quick and before I know it its dark time. Thanks for sharing your personal experience Lavoy, I'll feel a lot better about just running factory fill coolant and changing at recommend intervals.