It's a maintenance item. You can do the testing and add the depleted additives as needed, or just flush and refill. Depleted antifreeze will eat components.
After the head gasket blew on my F150 , I was told that over time coolant becomes acidic, and eats gasket material In hindsight, it would’ve been relatively inexpensive to flush and replace that coolant.
I have changed the anti-freeze in both my 01 F250 and my 07 Tacoma. I did a complete flush job on the F250 and switched anti-freeze over to the Cat anti-freeze with EC-1 rating so that I don't need to worry about adding any SCA additive. On my Tacoma I simply have drained the anti-freeze out of the radiator at both 100,000 miles and 200,000 miles and refilled which isn't the correct way, but keeps it fresh enough to keep me from worrying about it.
My F250 has almost 197,000 miles and my Tacoma has about 204,000 miles.
If conditions are met it can also develop an electrical charge that can damage electrical components. Example: Those that use a five volt logic system of plus or minus a half volt. Coolant with a charge over about 1.3 volts I would consider replacing because of this issue alone. I plan on changing the antifreeze in my streetrod every other year because of.its $1000 custom fabricated aluminum radiator.
no I didn't. I found instructions on line that I went by. Pulled upper hose, and thermostat and lower radiator hose, flushed with a garden hose until it was clear, then started adding distilled water, forget how many gallons, then buttoned up and topped off with CAT anti-freeze that was NOT diluted.
'02 GMC 6.0 here. Drained the radiator and refilled at 100k. Complete drain and refill at 140k when replacing the water pump, valve cover gaskets, and exhaust. Refilled both times with the orange Dex coolant. I guess orange and green coolants don't mix well and can solidify.
I drive GM trucks. They use a five year antifreeze and I change it every five years...... or so. I use Dex coolant too. My "good" truck only has 75,000 miles on it after 18 years so it has been changed three times so far. Some people are having problems with it though. Here is a link to some potential Dex-Cool problems. Might be bogus, I sure have not had any problems so far.
Full fluid swap @ 135K. It's recommended maint. @ 150K on my '11 F250 6.7L PSD but it was a convenient time for me to let the shop have it for a couple days so I did it a little early. Fluids are far cheaper than fixing metal/mechanical stuff.
I used to flush my vehicles radiators every two years. I quit doing that after I had kids and time was limited. I was meaning to flush my son's radiator this summer as the truck is 10 years old with the original coolant, well not anymore. Water pump went out last week and dumped all the coolant. It's fixed now, but I will stay on top of the maintenance of my truck and wife's car a lot more when I return home in August for good. I'm starting will the differentials and transfer cases on the trucks first and foremost, and then the transmission fluid on my truck. Outside of that, my truck should be good to go on everything until 100,000 miles.