

Follow the money, and you will find the tricksters! Just use a HOAT coolant, and you will have exactly what you need. It's a marketing gimmick designed to burrow deeper into your wallet like a blood-sucking parasite. They do this on purpose to control you and manipulate you into being freaked-out about other colors so that you will buy their over-priced coolant. The coolants are the same, but the color dye is different. Car company B sells another that is Y color, etc. Car company A sells their own brand of coolant that is X color. Other Asian companies may use Blue, Green, or whatever. The Toyota Pink is not backwards compatible for the older years, like our Camrys. The Toyota Red is forward compatible to the newer years as well. Toyota uses Red (concentrated) or Pink (diluted). The colors are ONLY for ease in identification of the coolants because certain auto manufacturers used certain colors. I confirmed this with a Beck/Arnley specialist who told me that their four colors (Red, Pink, Blue, Green) were actually the exact same thing (two are concentrates and two are diluted with a slightly different additive). Do you think your Toyota can sense what color dye is in your coolant? Huh? I personally don't mix the colors, but if you do it's OK as long as the ingredients are the same. As long as the ingredients are the same, that is what counts. There may be others, but as long as it's a phosphated OAT (HOAT) with no silicates, no borates and no amines, you are good to go. There are a couple of non-Toyota coolant brands that I know of that fit the bill: Beck/Arnley, Pentofrost A1 (Made by a German company named Pentosin), Zerex Asian Vehicle formula (but I can't find it in concentrated only pre-mix). BUT, it does not have to be the Toyota red or pink coolant, as long as the ingredients are the same. This means that most coolants on the shelf at your local auto parts store will NOT fit the bill. The coolant should be made out of ethylene glycols, phosphates (inorganic acid salts) with Organic Acid Technology (which makes it a Hybrid Organic Acid Technology or "HOAT"), no silicates, and no borates or amines (2-EHA is an amine). I came to the conclusion that there is a specific type of coolant that the Asian engineers decided works best in our cars. I researched this almost an entire day a while back. Perhaps I can help with the coolant issue. Someone posted this on ToyotaNation and thought it gave some insight to the coolant madness in today's cars, especially Toyota:
