Strawberry Milkshake

[ledger35]

Question, I read a lot of posts referring to the dreaded strawberry milkshake and understand what its all about. If this is so common does this qualify as a manufacturers defect in the system? I mean I never heard of this before but if enough drivers are getting it what is the cause behind this entity? Advice/Education?

 

[the great him]

manufacture defect on a 12+yo vehicle, HAHAHA good luck man. its called old age, and people not keeping up on preventative maintenance. no one ever said that a radiator was a lifetime part... they get old and fail, they need to be changed in any vehicle about every 8-10 years at least, just like everything else... the problem is, people just ignore it, and have the mentality "if its not broke, then dont fix it..." well not replacing a worn part can and will get you into a lot of trouble if your not careful.



along your line of thinking, we should probably try and claim old spark plugs as a manufacture defect....

please its not like a door is falling off when you open it. and again our trucks are how old?...

-its not really all that common, what makes it so prominent is the fact that when it does happen its generally pretty devastating, and its the end of the road for a major part of the truck ie the transmission. there are several ways to prevent it, and yeah its in no way toyotas fault. toyota is not the only auto maker with this issue

 

[ICD]

Well said ^^^

The milkshake can be all but eliminated with about 70 bucks and a couple hours of your time.

 

[FIRE74]

Milkshake

Had a new B&M remote cooler in back seat of truck, was going to "change it out tomorrow" and was sitting at a light when smoke started pouring out from under hood, it caused the plastic part of my radiator to fail, throwing up strawberry milkshake everywhere , shut truck off, towed home, ordered new radiator and installed it and had tranny power flushed with BG three times, that was 6 months ago, hope it hangs in there but prepared for the worse.....dont wait another day to do this mod!

 

[ledger35]

Hey Kid,
This hasn't happened to me I'm just asking what the hype is all about. I'm not a dummy, I realize things have to get replaced before their time and I want this truck to have no issues. So with that being said, any recommendations on the best place to purchase said radiator? I replaced the one in my Celica and I believe it was about 60-80 bucks. This could possibly be a spring time job. BTW the truck only has 150,000 on it, that should still be considered young right?

 

[the great him]

Hey Kid,
This hasn't happened to me I'm just asking what the hype is all about. I'm not a dummy, I realize things have to get replaced before their time and I want this truck to have no issues. So with that being said, any recommendations on the best place to purchase said radiator? I replaced the one in my Celica and I believe it was about 60-80 bucks. This could possibly be a spring time job. BTW the truck only has 150,000 on it, that should still be considered young right?

sorry wasnt trying to cut you down and the knees... but the way you posted the question kinda had a flavor of "its toyotas fault for making crap..." a lot of people neglect changing a radiator because "its not leaking" or "it looks good to me" or "its not making any noise"... so why change it? yeah thats the kind of thinking that make engine builders require people to install new radiators with a new or rebuilt motor... its not because the new radiator is the only way that motor will work, but rather it insures that the motor wont fail due to a bad radiator because no one ever bothered to change it when it should of been changed/replaced 8 years ago. i would not keep a radiator in a car for more than 10 years max, and around 100-120k miles. thats just me personally but i know most people dont do that. -i dont want to run the risk of having one crap out on me on the side of the road, even if i am in town and the radiator shop or auto parts store has one in stock... you still out a day of repairs that you were not planning for/on.

i would stick with a koyo or a facotry replacement
(koyo makes the toyota radiators). not a "meet or exceeds OE quality"... thats a fancy way of some knock off company saying, "oh yeah ours is just as good, and in most cases better, but we only charge you half as much..." they are cutting corners somewhere, and i dont want to find out where the hard way.

they hype is along the same lines as the LBJ failures, while they are not common per say, but when they do happen everyone says something about it, because like i said the results are devastating, and we as people thrive on that so we feed off of it(the psychologist in me coming out there sorry). trust me, CEL, warped rotors, rear dome lights not working are far more common, but they do not attract the attention that a LBJ failure or blown trany does, we all want to see it for some reason, and we all think everyone else wants to know about it, which ok yes we do, we all want to see the carnage, its like why everyone rubber necks on the freeway for a car crash, we are not slowing down to see if its a loved one, no we are slowing to to look at the smashed cars and "how bad it is"...



soap box complete