Alfa Prime vs Flamingo Coolant vs Guard Coolant vs Osaka Coolant?

Buy caltex/havoline concentrate and mix with water yourself. Its the best value for money and good for 5 years use.

coz apparently arranging distilled water seems difficult in pakistan.

even though i have found guard and exide battery water with 0-5 TDS value and can be used as a good water for mixing with coolant concentrate.

also there are only 2 concentrates available in the market at the moment (toyota and caltex) and their concentrates are quite expensive these days.

Concentrate always come out cheaper as you have to buy half quantity. And you can get a perfect 50-% mix in the system too.

ok. i am not clear whether any concentration more than 50% or less than 30% is harmful ??

with havoline you will end up with a perfect mix of 50% in the system, with the ZIC super, you will end up with something like 30%

all you need to do with concentrate is (assuming your system holds 4 litres)

after cleaning system, let it drain out as much as it can, measure what came out, if its more than 50% (2 litres) of the systems total capacity then you open up the two concentrate bottles you bought and pour them in directly, then top up with water and start the engine, till the thermostat pops open or starts to pop open, let it bleed out any air. - cap it and you are done.

With premix you will always end up with less than 50% mixture as the already premixed coolant will mix with water already present in the system. To raise the concentration again you will need to buy another large container of premix and waste the old weaker premix unless you can find the same coolant as concentrate.

btw - the ZIC coolant is more expensive than havoline as you only get 1.5 litres of coolant concentrate for Rs 2610/- with buying the ZIC coolant, (water is free/almost free) while with the havoline you only pay Rs 2532/- for 2 litres concentrate coolant (which yields 4 litres)

So - in a nutshell, you could have spent Rs 2532/- (plus some clean water) and have 4 litres of ready to use coolant. while you spent Rs 2610/- and only got 3litres of ready use coolant, that too of inferior quality. (seems like shopkeeper made a nice sale (they get paid more by ZIC than by Havoline/Chevron).

in short

ZIC charging you Rs 2610/- for 3 litres ready mix actually cost you Rs 1740/- per litre concentrate (there is only 1.5 litres concentrate in that bottle))
Havoline is available for Rs 1266/- per litre concentrate.

But its your money - you may wish to spend as you wish,

The recommendation of that was based on very old designs with gasket materials and manufacturing porosity that were not fully up to spec compared to todays cars, For those the IAT coolant was used as it coats the system with a layer of silicates and fills micro gaps. Older cars also were designed with an airgap in the top of the cooling system and this coupled with the original formulation of OAT coolant caused gelling.

however nowadays the formulations have changed for better and OAT coolants can be used in such systems (provided you dont buy NOS items from some guy who sells it from a shack in the woods) - The manufacturing and gasketing materials have also changed for the better.

If you have a real old machine and require an IAT due to some oddball reason - I would suggest to buy a Si HOAT like glysantin G05 or G48 - they work great in such system and have a 5 year service life.

I have used Guard green in my Khyber for a few years. Never once did it overheat due to the coolant - it overheated once because the welch plugs were corroded (previous owners used tap water).

I have used it for years, and each time I replace it (once a year), the system is remarkably rust free.

I have recently switched to Caltex coolant though, because it was the only coolant available in the market that's available in concentrated form. Even Guard comes mostly premixed nowadays.