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MG MGF Technical - OAT COOLANT

just had to replace one of my heater hoses.
decided to flush the system and refill with the OAT stuff,i'v just been looking on here and there seems to be a few people saying that it could attack the seals and gaskets.....its a 96 mpi and it had the green coolant in.
can anyone tell me if i'v done the right thing ,or should i have stuck with the green stuff????

cheers in advance

mik
j watson

If you have had the system fully flushed and also run the system up to temperature with clean water there should be no problems in changing to OAT.
The diff. between the 2 fluids are that one is alkali (sp?) and one is acid. The old one has during the time built up a special protection layer on the different metal parts in the system. These layers are now broken down and the acid OAT will start to build new protection layers = some waste of material and a slight chance for new leaks.
But the real benefit is of course longer re-newal of fluid for the cooling system. Some even state "Sealed for life" ( for what thatīs worth ;O)
BR, Carl.
Carl Blom

Yep, no problem as long as the system was properly flushed through. The coolant is supposed to be changed every 5 years (up from 2(?)) - so I hope that's not quite "for life"!! :) There's an MG service bulletin about it and I had it done on my car ('96 VVC) at the last service.

Tim.
Tim Jenner

thanx guys
i didnt run it up to temp with clean water but i flushed the system for about 15 mins with a hose in the expansion tank ,where can i view the bulletin?
j watson

If you didnīt run the system up to temp with pure water there is still a lot of old antifreeze left! With shut thermostat and other pockets within the block as well as heater matrix there is no chance to totally "clean " the cooling system without running it for some time with water circulating... / Carl.
Carl Blom

Having read dire warnings about changing to OAT on this BBS, I did a bit of research on the net which seemed to suggest that there had been a few problems, mainly with diesels, after mixing coolants. I flushed my own engine three times with fresh water with a full warm-up in between and so far, no problems.

Brian

This thread was discussed between 20/09/2004 and 22/09/2004

MG MGF Technical index

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