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Changed my mind about using coolant additives after a job in Bakersfield last summer

Was helping a buddy swap a water pump on an old Pete. He swore by that purple additive stuff. I always thought it was just snake oil. But the pump we pulled had a ton of scale and crap built up inside the water jacket. His rig had been running the additive for years and looked clean as a whistle inside. Still not sure I'd use it on every truck, but for high-mileage ones it might actually help. Anyone have good or bad luck with that stuff?
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2 Comments
jason524
jason5244h agoTop Commenter
My buddy down in Modesto ran a fleet of old school buses. He started using that purple stuff after a #8 injector cup pitted out on a DT466. Said he was tired of pulling water pumps every 60k miles. After two years of running the additive he pulled a pump off one of the high-mileage units and the casting looked almost new inside. No scale, no crud, just clean metal. He swears by it now for anything with over 200k on the clock.
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charlie_allen
That's a solid real-world test right there. Pulling a water pump after two years and finding clean metal instead of the usual crust is about as good a testimonial as you can get. If he's seeing that kind of result across a whole fleet, the purple stuff is doing something right in those old engines.
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