The advice I got from one of the most knowledge members on the board (jclyman or lscman I think) was to stick with the BMW coolant. Apparently the "normal" stuff is not the correct formulation and can cause deposits / corrosion.

d-

 

If you use BMW fluid (blue, NOT green, as the normal "cheapie" fluid is), you should not even top off with NON-BMW fluid. They don't mix well at all.

:M5launch:

My $ 0.03, and I don't own any BMW stock ... yet!

 

My opinion is that although the BMW fluid is expensive compared to others, using it is cheap insurance to know that my Beast will perform as the Engineers intended. The coolant isn't changed very often, so the cost amortized into the many miles of driving would be low.

Al. Wise

 

Use BMW coolant always the other coolants will damage the cooling system, if you have to top it off use nothing but distilled water.

Don't mix with other coolants either if you put anything else in the cooling system you need to drain it and put the BMW fluid back in it.

 

Have you guys even checked the price of prestone anti-freeze lately? They're around $12-$13 here in NY, Not that much less than BMW anti-freeze as they use to be!

 

bmw antifreeze smells like watercolor paint. lol.

 

Hey, THAT'S cheaper, yet!

 

I haven't bought coolant in years (I still have much of what I bought the last time), but I think it was like $ 26.00, 3 or 4 years ago. (BMW coolant, that is.)

 

I never heard of sniffing antifreeze.... Just wondering why would you????

Topper... As many have already said, the BMW blue antifreeze is formulated to work with our engines, just like we are suppose to put super or 93 octane gas in these vehicles. They don't work well over a long period with any octane lower. Justr as any car, you put back what the engineers designed it to use.

 

I flushed my system and used "cheap" prestone. less then 2 months later I had to change my thermostat cause it went bad. Coiensidence, I don't know.

Normal coolant (green stuff, store bought) doesn't contain as much silica or none at all, as BMW stuff does. I don't know if that makes a huge difference, however it may be a safer bet to buy BMW.

You can get a discount if you are a BMWCCA member though.

 

Hey, there's nothing wrong with Prestone, it just isn't for BMWs.

 

BMW Coolant doesn't contain a corrosive chemical that other brands may (phosphates?, I think). This will corrode the aluminum and eventually really mess up the coolant flow and possibly head gasket. Not sure if Prestone is free of that or not. Also, use distilled water in a 50/50 mix with the BMW stuff.

 

I thought that the BMW coolant was premix...no water needed.

 

Wirelessly posted (XV6700: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; IEMobile 6.8))

bmw is NOT premixed. The tech guys always tell you to mix 50/50 with distilled. I included a bottle of water wetter.

 

Hey look at me bringing an old thread back to life!!!

Anyway...I have an open bottle of BMW coolant in my garage. My former roommate had a ~2004 3-series she bought a bottle for to diagnose a coolant leak. Turned out to be a shot radiator. So I was going to use this on my M5, but before I did I just wanted to be sure there wasn't more than one BMW blue coolant. There's no part #...it's just BMW coolant and it's blue.

Safe to use?

 

Almost all antifreeze excluding dexcool is glycol based including BMW coolant, the difference in the formulations is based on the type of metals the manufacturer uses to produce their motors. I only run OEM coolant in my cars but many customers come in with the green stuff and I haven't seen any problems associated with it unless it's mixed with dexcool. I always stick with OEM fluids for my own cars and my clients.

 

Yeah I know better than to mix coolants etc. I have an R32 that uses G12. Just making sure any blue BMW coolant was the 'right' stuff for the M5. Wasn't sure if BMW had multiple coolants of their own that just all happen to be blue.

 

The color is just dye, mercedes doesn't dye their coolant so it's clear.

 

It used to be pink at one point, then blue