New Prestone® All Makes All Models Extended Life Antifreeze/Coolant

[rcy]

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Originally posted by jthorner:

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sludge from sealant pellets added at the factory

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Our 2002 Olds minivan had massive amounts of brown sludge stuff in the overflow tank and on the radiator cap when it was only about 16 months old.

I flushed the system at that time, removed and cleaned the overflow tank, replace the factory radiator cap with a Stant and refilled with Texaco branded Dexcool at the time. Now 2 years later the system is still running nice a clean. I know, because I just had to replace the thermostat. GM sure made it hard to get at that ***** thermostat!

What bothers me is why the factory needed to add stop leak goop at all? Sure seems like a bandaid being applied to poor design and/or poor manufacturing.

John

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Have a look here

http://www.motor.com/ under the 'motor magazine' button then click on 'articles and features', then click on 'back issues' then look under 'August 2002'. Now scroll down to 'diagnosing cooling system woes'. Holy cow, why can't I post the link??? It's not working. There's tons of cooling articles here if you look through the issues. Anyway here's an excerpt regarding sealant in GM cooling systems...

"Sealer in the system. Cooling system sealer has been shown to be a useful product. In fact, it was called the "great Band-Aid" for the Cadillac V8s of the 1980s, in which it stopped cold-engine coolant leaks. However, lately it's been used for preventive maintenance, a practice instituted at GM plants. GM reengineered its cooling systems to prevent leaks, but kept the sealer in use as a "security blanket" in a few plants. Well, GM finally stopped all sealer usage on the assembly line over two years ago, and so should you."

Great engineering at GM...let's just add sealer to fix our bad designs.