- Messages
- 635
- Reactions
- 52
- City
- socal.
- State
- CA
- Country
- United States
- What I Drive
- 2015 s3
While I have been having the coolant issue related to the water pump housing leak, I wondered more about the coolant?
Can I purchase brands that I can find from auto parts stores?
A few questions came up, which we can discuss here as I never got a solid answer. prestone is the most common brand I can find at my local store. You may find other brands to use.
Questions such as can I use brands like prestone and top off the coolant after I do the repair?
Should I remove and flush out the system and use brand new prestone coolant?
Should I use OEM Audi coolant?
So far, the only thing I did find out is that Audi has two versions of the coolant.
- G12 and G13 Audi coolant.
- you can NOT mix these two.
- each model and year require different versions. for my s3 2015, I need to use G13.
- dealerships have also flushed out systems on customer cars when techs have accidentally mixed G12 and G13 coolants. Yeah, it's that dangerous they are willing to flush out entire systems. Knowing this is huge. They said that mixing will create sludge and the system when mixed.
With that information, new questions arise.
- can we even flush out the coolant and use aftermarket brands without damaging the internal parts? I was told that over time it would cause issues if I mix or use the wrong version. this made me believe that the internal components are way more sensitive than I would have thought.
- would using aftermarket brands cause other failure points that may not appear related to the coolant system?
Can I purchase brands that I can find from auto parts stores?
A few questions came up, which we can discuss here as I never got a solid answer. prestone is the most common brand I can find at my local store. You may find other brands to use.
Questions such as can I use brands like prestone and top off the coolant after I do the repair?
Should I remove and flush out the system and use brand new prestone coolant?
Should I use OEM Audi coolant?
So far, the only thing I did find out is that Audi has two versions of the coolant.
- G12 and G13 Audi coolant.
- you can NOT mix these two.
- each model and year require different versions. for my s3 2015, I need to use G13.
- dealerships have also flushed out systems on customer cars when techs have accidentally mixed G12 and G13 coolants. Yeah, it's that dangerous they are willing to flush out entire systems. Knowing this is huge. They said that mixing will create sludge and the system when mixed.
With that information, new questions arise.
- can we even flush out the coolant and use aftermarket brands without damaging the internal parts? I was told that over time it would cause issues if I mix or use the wrong version. this made me believe that the internal components are way more sensitive than I would have thought.
- would using aftermarket brands cause other failure points that may not appear related to the coolant system?
