Do you have to use Toyota coolant?

The manual says you can use alternative coolant, but then goes into a list of cautions regarding the alternatives:



For me the shortest, simplest path is to get the kosher stuff, let someone else experiment.

It's kinda cool, up here we get the 55% stuff:

 

Really worth it to save $15 every 3 years ???

 

I think it's funny that people will invest 10, 20, 30, thousand dollars or more, into the automobile they own, but then try to save a few pennies on fluids or other maintenance items.

Yeah, the price is sometimes ridiculous. BUT...you've already put a significant amount of investment into ownership. Why risk any level of damage or reliability or potential longevity of operation because of what really amounts to next to nothing?

All manufacturers recommend using their fluids. Honda was horrible, with HUGE warnings on almost every page of the owners manual about how using Non-Honda fluids would result in a rip in the fabric of time and space, and total destruction of everything good.

But in the end? Any monetary savings I might of gained was really not worth taking the risk that the warnings were probably mostly BS.

 

Damn I like that.

 

As mentioned, the higher costs for OEM fluids is not a factor in my book relative to keeping my car for as long as I can. I have always used Toyota 0W-20 synthetic when I change my oil twice a year and plan on using the SLLC coolant for the inverter and engine coolant changes and the Toyota WS fluid for the transaxle. The inverter/engine/transaxle fluid changes are so infrequent as to make the increased costs negligible.