antifreeze

[Guest AlK]

Greg:

I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings but I think you mis-read the mans post as to his intention. If I read it correctly he will be tearing the engine down or re-building various and sundry systems in the engine and did not want to keep putting in expensive anti-freeze that he would have to keep changing every time he did this. If all he is interested in is keeping the block and such from cracking then W.W. fluid is the ticket from both a functional and cost standpoint. I may have given the impression that I was advocating using it entirely in place of anti-freeze, if so I apoligize. I have never refused to accept new ideas, but there is nothing wrong with clinging to the olds ones if they work and you have a specific need.

[Twitch]

Yes, the original question morphed into several topics. I agree, drain, save and re-use if you're going to be working on the engine in a given period of time to save on the cost.

I'm just not going to worry about going broke if I have to flush my coolant 4 times in 100,000 miles instead of 1 or 2 times in a modern daily use car. I mean at $10 a gallon times 2 gallons or $20 that's .0002¢ per mile for one in 100k miles. If I do it twice that's .0004¢ per mile. And 4 times in 100k miles is still just .0008¢ per mile.

What me worry?

[Guest 70 Electra]

AlK,

I guess my enthusiasm got the better of me: open mouth, insert foot....

You are correct, and the misunderstanding is all mine.

[Guest 70 Electra]

Hi Twitch,

I agree completely: on an individual basis, the cost of fluid changes is peanuts! And that's on all cars, both new and old.

However, consider the bigger picture. The enormous motivation that the auto makers have for extended (or eliminated) fluid changes is two fold:

1.) First, and most obviously, it eliminates the "nuisance" of servicing the car. For Joe Lunchbucket, that means a trip to the dealer or the local quickie lube. When an extended/eliminated drain interval is first offered as a new "feature", the marketing folks consider it a competitive advantage; when all/most vehicles have it, it's considered "the cost of doing business"

2.) Second, and perhaps more importantly, is the environmental impact. When 15 million cars/trucks are produced each year, the disposal of oil (5 qts per car every 3000 miles) and coolant (couple of gallons per car every few years) becomes a significant issue for society to deal with. You won't often hear me sing the song of the environmentalists, but you can't deny that disposal is a HUGE issue.

Fortunately, the impact of frequent fluid changes on collector cars is a drop-in-the bucket (no pun intended ) towards the overall disposal problem.

[Twitch]

Yeah I think it's one thing to mess with a secondary collectable car and leisurely disassemble something on it and finish work on it next week or whenever. But when we have our primary transportation car in mind we don't relish servicing it since it causes inconvenience for the average person. Ya gotta take it somewhere and leave it and have someone pick you up and drop you off again. You need to leave work early or come in late and even if you do some stuff yourself you need to finish it on the weekend ASAP to get it in service again.

Tech is good. And extended anything is better if all elements are satifactorily up to spec allowing "extended" to be safe. Every mechanic I've ever known has pretty much paraphrased that oil/filter changes are the cheapest insurance to protect your investment.

I know for certain that my recycled oil is used in some product and not dumped in a hole somewhere. I haven't had the need to do any radiator flushing myself lately. I know that my radiator A/C place has a disposal truck come to pick all that stuff up. I've been having them do any flush/change of coolant since I've had cars in for other A/C work at the same time 99% of the time.

And that's a good question. While there is oil recycling what about coolant? Just where is Joe Shadetree supposed to dump it? Besides larger towns the average person changing their oil is going to just dump it like we all did before if there is no facility to reclaim it. What DO you do in small town America?