[Vwdiesel] Radiator Choices

[Shawn Wright]

On 23 Aug 2005 at 20:23, dieseltdi at verizon.net <dieseltdi at verizon.net> wrote:

> Just another bit of info for you.  My formerly owned 1.9td  
> transplanted Jetta and the truck I currently have, suffered from high  
> temperatures to the point of almost over heating (especially in the  
> 1.9td jetta).  My son, the mechanic now turned sailor, noticed that I  
> was running the red antifreeze in the cars.  He told me to get rid of  
> it and go back to the green antifreeze.  He said that from his own  
> personal experience in 2 Sciroccos and one Corrado, the cooling  
> systems in the A1s and A2s didn't seem to work as well with the red,  
> long life antifreeze.  Now please note that both vehicles had new  
> radiators, new hoses, new thermostats and , on the Jetta, a new  
> radiator temperature switch for the cooling fan, plus MULTIPLE  
> attempts and flushing but still got too hot.  I flushed them out put  
> in the green stuff and temperature stayed right at the normal level  
> just about mid way.  The TD in my truck has the GTD high flow  
> injectors and can produce a considerable amount of heat upon  
> acceleration or a hill climb, but the gauge rarely climbs above  
> midway even in the heat of the summers we have here Texas (101  
> yesterday at least 100 today). Now some people have claimed to use  
> the red stuff with no problems but that has not been my experience in  
> A1 or A2 platform cars.  Hayden

I have also heard that the long life formulations may not transfer heat as well as the 
old green stuff. (Redline Water Wetter helps though). I can't make a direct 
comparison however - I've run Long Life for 8 years in my Vanagon 2.1L WBX, and 
had no troubles, but it has a very large cooling system compared with an A2. On my 
Jettas, I've mostly run the green stuff, although I did run Long Life for a while, but 
don't recall a difference. 
Interestingly my new '82 Westy had green stuff, which I changed to Long Life a few 
months ago. Since then, it has been running hotter to the point of overheating on 
long climbs. Perhaps I will switch back to the old stuff and see what happens.  

Shawn Wright
http://zuiko.sls.bc.ca/~swright
'85 Jetta D 
'88 Westy 2.1L, soon to be 1.6TD 5 speed
 (see progress at http://members.shaw.ca/vwdiesels)
'82 Diesel Westy