How critical is it to change my coolant? Truck is a 2005 with 38000 miles on it.

Friend of mine (Chevy Guy) says it should go a lot longer than that.

I'm not sure what the manual says.

 

As long as the coolant is clean (ie, doesnt have dirt floating in it) you should be fine. I have an 05 with 110k still going strong on factory coolant. You can have it checked to make sure the fluid is "cold" enough so it can handle the heat of your engine when its working hard.

 

Your friend with the chevy is correct, 38k miles is too low. 75k-100k is more realistic.

 

Yeah you are fine, Rengnath on the other hand.... you better flush out man haha. Blown and I both did ours and my truck is only at 68K, we both had some nasty coolant, including rust. I don't think you will notice the problem without flushing it, the dirt and bad stuff will be at the bottom.

 

did you use one of those prestone backflush kits? always wondered if those things actually backflush....

 

That is the kit we used and it worked great. Like Travis said, there was some pretty nasty fluid that came out of those radiators, lol Mine had 102,000 miles at flush.

 

Here is a nice little write up on the use of the back flush system.

http://www.customclassictrucks.com/t...tem/index.html

 

I usually do mine every 2nd or 3rd year. Overkill? Maybe.....but at least it's done, and it's easy enough so....

 

No such thing as overkill for maintenance.

 

So what would you say, about 60k each flush would be about right?