Brown coolant

The other week I flushed out my old coolant that had the usual green to it. I than replaced it with new coolant and checking it today it is brown. Any ideas?

 

Hortona,

How many miles are on your rig? Is the radiator itself in good shape? What kind of shape is your engine in? You could possibly have a rusty radiator or a blown head gasket.

Good Luck,
Paul

 

So the OEM fluid from the factory is a red/pink. And you flushed your coolant and it was green, right? No biggie, per se, as long as whoever swapped it over to the green coolant made sure to get rid of ALL of the existing red or pink coolant when they flushed it. Toyota red coolant cannot be mixed with the 'one size fits all' types of coolant, like the green or orange or whatever. The mixture of coolants will clump up(forget the technical term...coagulate maybe?) and eventually plug up your coolant passages. The OEM coolant will work as well as the green, as long as there is no mixing of any aftermarket coolants with the Toyota coolant, if the Toyota coolant is being used.

 

Can you post a pic? Does it look like Dunkin' Donuts coffee with milk - like exactly like that?
I've seen two major oil and coolant mixes now and been involved with their repairs.
One was a forum buddy's blown head gasket on a Kawasaki Ninja ZX6E
the second one was more of a mess: a 1998 Ford e250 that I bought as is - blowing out oil/coolant mix, and it turned out to have a blown oil cooler.
Does the coolant feel 'oily' in your fingertips at all? It's probably not this issue (anyway).

 

Yeah it looks like Dublin donuts coffee with milk, but before I changed it it was perfectly green

 

errrr... I'm getting a not good feeling over here about this...
gonna post two pics. Look like this?
(this was my "cooloil" mix as I fondly called it)

 

My coolant looks nothing like that, feww, when I drain it out the bottom its green but when I pull some out of the radiator cap it's coffee like

 

hmm. could some oil have gotten in there and contaminated it? Maybe it was different types of coolant reacting if the old stuff was different and not drained fully and all flushed out?
Does the reservoir look ok and green?

 

Idk yet ill have to check the reservoir but I flushed it twice so I hope I got all the old stuff out

 

Looks like you mixed pink and green. It kinda turns to a muddy mixture with floaty stuff in there. Seen it a few times.... just flush it out well and replace with all green or all pink. Probably nothing to worry about. Flush it and refill it and only worry if it returns quickly.

 

That's probably a conservative (safe) good call.
I know a little oil in the cooling system isn't going to be that big of a deal. Some people panic about it. Meh.

 

Well to add on to that the other day I was changing my spark plugs and when blowing compressed air in one of the tubes with the plug still in it shot up a little oil around the outside of the spark plug tube

 

That's just oil from leaky valve covers or some shit. That's not anything to worry about

 

Could very well be a mix of some green coolant and some toyota red. Do a pressure test to make sure.

 

Hey Everybody,

How is everybody doing? One of the things a Toyota mechanic told me long ago was to always use Toyota factory coolant on Toyota products. I have always subscribed to this theory. Unfortunately, Toyota coolant is expensive. Although, I, personally, do not see what harm it would do if somebody ran another manufacturer of coolant in their Toyota engine, but I am not an expert on coolant systems by any stretch of the imagination.

The best thing to do if you are unhappy with the color of your coolant is to flush the engine multiple times with distilled and chemical free water. This will get just about everything out of the coolant system in your engine.

My wife and I have a 1999 Toyota Tacoma with the 3.4 liter V6 engine in it. We flush the coolant system on our old Tacoma every three years, and as I said earlier, we always use Toyota coolant. We drain the system from the drain cock on the radiator, and then we replace upper and lower radiator hoses. We then fill the entire system back up with distilled water, and drive it around for twenty minutes with the heat on full blast. We then drain the system again, and fill both the radiator and the overflow reservoir to the appropriate levels. The other thing to remember is that these first generation Toyota motors are now very old so don't try and find the drain plug on the block and unscrew it because at this point in time, it is probably completely frozen to the block.

Good Luck,
Paul