GM is being sewed over dexcool because it eats through gaskets, ex. 3.1L, 3.4L engines in grand am's, montie carlos, ventures ect... the intake manafold gaskets and even sometimes the head gaskets go bad because of the dexcool!!! i don't know if they changed the formula yet but im staying away from it. last i heard GM is now replacing those gaskets for free since it is there coolant that is ******* them up!

Also if you mix dexcool and regular green, it takes the properties of the green, it is only good for 2 years and i think 30K miles, it doesn't sludge up if you mix them, dexcool does that anyways, lol! Dexcool also stains the coolant bottle! I choose green coolant all the way!

 

they put it in their so they make money on intake gastets

 

Riiight. Cause its the manufacturers pure intent to cause a major part on a car to fail... GM wouldnt even make nothing on it anyways, what a few $$ for the parts, its the labour thats cost alot and nothing of it goes to GM.

Its funny reading all the responses about DEXCOOL. There are a few intelligent, correct answers but most are just someone stating something cause they think its right when they know nothing. There is nothing wrong with Dex-Cool as a coolant, it has better cooling properties then Ethylene-Glycol based ("green") coolant, is safer from a medical stand point. When used correctly just like anything there is no problems. Now when it gets mixed with "green" coolant its gets thicker gums up and cools less, and causes failures that way. Also what materials the engine and parts are made of, wether its aluminum, iron blocks, or silicon or rubber seals depends as they react different between the 2 types of coolant. Dexcool does NOT eat gaskets per say..it may contribute to it but its cause there a material being used that isnt compatible with the Dexcool. So for all the haters out there of Dexcool theres nothing wrong with it, and there is no advantage of running any other type. If GM says to use it then use it. They didnt say it just for the hell of it, its been engineered that way.

 

GM is replacing the gaskets because of faulty design of the gasket NOT dexcool. The gaskets were plastic and would crack in certain areas. The new design gasket has a metal tab in all the places the gasket was know to crack.

There is nothing wrong with dexcool. I have plenty of customers who have gone the 5 years and had no sludge whatsoever when we flushed the system.

It's too bad there is so much misinformation on the internet that gets copied and pasted here.

 

You're right, in fact even the pre-Dexcool engines of that particular design (3100 and 3400 V6) suffer the gasket failures.

The good news for our cars is there are no coolant passages in the intake manifold, so the gasket failures should be a moot point.

 

my last gm car had over 200 thousand miles and had no problems with dexcool chunking up but i have seen people mix coolants and it chunked up bad dont mix coolants i dont care what the bottle tells you

 

If you convert to the green coolant, make sure that your coolant system is completely flushed of DEX before filling it with the green... Dex and the older conventional style coolants are incompatable and will create a mess if mixed.

Anyways, you do not have to use GM's brand of Dex... as long as you use something that meets or exceeds GM's specs, you're fine.