Coolant flush?

[Badfish740]

My truck had the gold stuff from the factory so I went to Ford, picked up 3 gallons, and changed it today. I drained the original stuff, filled up with water, and drove about 3 miles with the heat on, and then drained the water. After that I did three more flushes with the heat on full and the engine off. The stuff I was getting out of the pet**** still had a strong gold tint to it. Finally I opened the pet****, filled the overflow tank with water, and started the engine. As the engine would pull in more water and spit it out the pet**** I kept adding more. I did this until I filled a five gallon bucket twice. The last bucket of water was still pretty gold. I finally gave up and just put in a 50/50 mix (2 gallons 1 quart each for a total of 4 and 1/2 gallons) of new gold coolant and water.

Should everything be ok then? As far as I know the coolant was never changed as I bought it at 83K and it just turned 100K this past week. I never really gave this much thought to changing coolant in a vehicle, but the cavitation issue scares me and I want to make sure everything is done correctly. Do I still need to test the PH even though the gold stuff doesn't require the additive?

[SCUFFY828]

you should be fine

[powerplant]

Im going to do mine this week mine has the green in it what is the amount of additive to add on a full change. Sounds like you did alot better than most would badfish.

[01excursion7.3]

What the diff between green and gold? I had my truck flushed when I bought it, and my buddy looked at it and said they switched to green. This something I should have changed???

[todd]

mine has green i was thinking on draining and switching to gold anybody have any input on that good or bad idea was gonna do it to quit messing with the additive

[vitalidle]

You can switch to gold, but you have to get all the green coolant out before you change to the gold. Just make sure its flushed good.

[todd]

what happens if i dont get it all out and do you think its worth it or should i stay green

[01excursion7.3]

Whats the harm in the green? Why is gold better?

[mschn99]

green is 30k coolant and requires the additive....

gold is 100k coolant (i wouldnt run over 60k on it though myself) and requires no additive

If green and gold are mixed....ford says to then treat the vehicle as a green coolant vehicle. Ford claims you can go from gold to green with no problems, but you cant go from green to gold. You will never get all the green out so going to gold is almost impossible based on what ford claims....

[01excursion7.3]

whats the additive required? I just want to be sure i'm covered.