Orange vs Green

The owners manual calls for the use of that orange Dex-cool coolant but I've read several posts poo-pooing it. So what's the diff between the orange and the green? If the orange is so bad, can or even should you use the green stuff? Prolly shouldn't go 9 years without flushing in any case.


I just had the radiator on my 96 pulled and cleaned at a radiator shop because it was so plugged I wasn't hardly getting any flow through it at all and it did have the orange stuff in it... of course the car has 118,000k on it and had probably never been flushed or serviced before.

The orange stuff is mostly used in aluminuim engine equipped cars and is suppose to have longer life span than the green stuff that use to be used. I think 96 was the first year GM starting using the orange stuff.

You cant mix the orange and green...if it had the orange I would stick with it. It was probably just never serviced before. I believe you can go from green to orange but not orange to green...though I am not absolutely positive.

Interesting. I went back with the orange as per the manual. Just wondered about it.