Greetings Scotty-Forum Moderators;
I own a 2008 Toyota Corolla CE with Automatic transmission and 120,000Kms ( Approx. 60,000 miles, yes I am in Canada!)
I am the second owner and bought in 2011 with only 30,000 miles. I have always had it serviced by independent garages but due to making two moves across country in 2015 & 2018, I failed to notice with changing garages, that my coolant was NEVER changed! I now know it should have been done at 7 years [2015] or 150,000 kms according to Toyota's manual.
While I haven't reached the mileage limit, I am way past the time limit and having watched the channel for 2 years I know bad coolant CAN cause a bunch of problems, none of which I am experiencing ...YET!
[ No coolant leaks, no overheating, no weird electrical problems.]
That's right... it's now 12 year old original factory coolant! Yikes...
I have the car booked this coming week at my local garage for winter prep including snow tires, oil change and some other maintenance work and asked for pricing for a 'Cooling system Flushing'. I have watched the channel and seen Scotty perform a 'flushing' and my garage offers this for about $190 CDN.*
*( I know... prices in Canada for everything are outrageous)
Just to have a sanity check I also called up the only Toyota dealer in town [ it's a Small town of 50,000 ] and priced out the services I needed and asked for a price on 'flushing' the cooling system. They priced it at $80 CDN but....the Toyota Service department rep I talked to told me that oh no, we don't flush cooling systems anymore saying :
'They took away our flushing machines years ago... something about the flushing process stirred up sediment and caused more problems than it fixed, especially in older cars. We only drain and refill the system'
Especially because I have neglected to EVER change or refill my rad/cooling system fluid, am I asking for trouble 'Flushing' with my independent garage Vs. just draining & refilling at the dealer? Help?
Is this something like the issue Scotty often raises when changing the fluid in an automatic transmission? i.e. NEVER flush an auto trans, just drain and refill as the flushing causes problems with solenoids etc. OR, is this just a way for the dealer to get more service work later when problems develop from the drain & fill only approach?
Perplexed in Canada [Manitoba]
Does the radiator look rusty? If not just drain and fill.
@dumpthepump
Exterior of the rad looks fine, but when I did open the cap to check on the fluid, the pink coolant is tinged with a rust colour too...
If your car isn't overheating and the interior of the car heats up well (i.e. the heater core is not plugged), I would just do the drain and refill. If you don't want to do it yourself, you'll probably wont get much of a lower price than $80 the dealer quoted(I live in Canada as well).
