I know when it comes straight out of the bottle, it's a clean blue/green or orange depending on the type of coolant. But when I take the cap off of my radiator's cooland resavoir and look down inside of it, it looks brownish with just a hint of blue/green.

It was supposedly changed by the Lexus dealer 25,000 miles ago (at 30,000 miles)

Is this normal?

 

Usually starts to look like that from rust deposits...

 

So does that mean it needs to be changed/flushed? Is it normal for rust to be forming after only 25k relatively easy-driven miles?

 

I really don't know, but my guess is that if it looks the way you described you should get it flushed/cleaned.

I have only seen fluid get like that for 2 reasons.

1. Rust
2. A Chevy dealer once put oil in my radiator by accident when the tech pulled the wrong hose to fill.

Normal after just 25k miles? I doubt it, but I am no expert.

 

FWIW, If someone put Bar's Leaks in it it can also turn that color.

 

Make that 3 reasons...

 

Hello,
Toyota generally uses the red long life coolant in the system of all of its' cars. If your system was servi ced at a Toyota / Lexus dealership they should have replaced it with the factory recommended stuff.

As an example, my 99 GS4 has 96,000 miles on it now. The coolant was slightly orange/brown when I changed the timing belt last week. The cooling system was immaculate, with no rust or sediment built up anywhere. I am not sure if it was changed at 30 or 60 thousand miles, since I bought it at 78,000 miles.

If you don't know how long it has been since the coolant was changed, I would suggest that you do it when you can, and then you will know.

Thanks

GSEREP1

 

Worse case..maybe you have a blown head gasket.

 

OK well I took it by the dealership and my service advisor said that was the normal color. He told me that if you look directly at the fluid from above then it will appear very very dark red almost brownish, but he told me to look from a slight angle and watch the edges... he said if the edges are visually a clear red then I'm good to go.

 

This is my first Toyota, thanks for the FYI.