Plain green coolant has worked well in my wifes car for the past several years.

I've read the prestone all makes has the same additive that gives dex its bad name.

My guess is that going back to green is the best.

Dex doesn't eat gaskets. There is no proof that Dex collapses the intake gaskets around the air/fuel intake runnings that I have seen to date. Dex congeals ... take a look at a overflow container in a Dex system that wasn't maintained. You'll have ring around the jug.

I disagree, Boosty. The plastic gaskets used through 95 with the green stuff last longer than the plastic gaskets used from 96 on with the DEX. It'* the same material from the L27 through the L36, and the L67'* alike.

The gaskets exposed to DEX look HORRIBLE at 30-40k or sooner. The gaskets exposed to green (glycol) coolant still look good over 100k. The acidity of the DEX is a direct cause of LIM gasket failure.

Exactly my point Bill and thank you for proving my point.

We need to stop touting about how bad dex is on the gasket itself. The gaskets at the intake ports where only air and fuel are present collapse nearly identically to the coolant passages. No dex is present in the intake runner.

Not exactly your point. DEX migrates around the silicone inserts to the intake runners and collapses them. It alters the properties of the plastic.

You can clearly see how it migrated there from the coolant ports on the set I have here to show people when they ask.

ALL DEX LIM gaskets will look like that. NONE of the non-Dex gaskets will. It is clearly a DEX issue.

Shoot me some pics please. All the sets I've seen haven't shown any visible signs of migration from the coolant ports. Only the collapsing.

The set I have here has about 30k on them. I shot pics before I left the house this morning. I gotta spice 'em up a bit. I'll get them up today.

Anyways.......JC ( The thread did not ask for yet another debate about DEX).......those pics definitely look like green as added to some extent at some time and the coolant most likely never replaced. For the little money a new radiator costs: I would replace it , add a cleaner, and flush the living hell out of the system.

The thread is directly about DEX.

Here'* a set of L36 LIM gaskets at about 30-35k miles. Please note that the DEX was probably already acidic when these were installed:










Now for the explanation: