What color coolant?

[Jesse]

I'm in the last stages of a repair, modification, and maintainance job on my Perkins 4108 cooling system and for the life of me I can't remember which coolant to use. I wanted to try Rydlyme to remove the deposits inside the heat exchanger but was unable to find anyone local handling it, so I tried CLR and was pleasantly surprised to find that it works just fine without turning anything pink. I haven't tried it on the aluminum castings yet but I have an old surge tank and exhaust manifold that I'll try it on first. I'm hoping some kind soul will remind me which color coolant works in a cast iron / aluminum / bronze heat exchange system. Thanks Jesse

[AnchorageGuy]

Red is best.

[fcsob]

Not orange but red. I use Toyota red in all. Orange is Dexcool, google it. Not good.

[slacker]

I always heard that Dexcool was the prefered coolant for Perkins engines.

[HorizonMarine]

Dexcool as invented for the new generation of aluminum alloy engines. Your Perkins does not fit that bill. It should use standard green antifreeze, not the reddish orange dexcool (blue in Europe). Dexcool woul be detrimental to your engine.

[GordMay]

Since antifreeze is clear when it is manufactured, and water is clear, dye is used to colour the antifreeze for identification, and marketing purposes. The colour of antifreeze is no longer an accurate indicator as to whether it is an IAT, OAT, HOAT or NOAT formulation.
Different manufacturers may use different dye colours delineating different chemistries.

The Colour of Antifreeze:
http://www.filtercouncil.org/techdata/tsbs/05-2.pdf

[Jesse]

Thanks for the input guys. And thanks Gord for the color info, I guess the question I should be asking is which formulation would be best for this application. While on the mainland today I asked at least six people who should know this and got four different answers and two dunno's. Is there a table of reference I can check? There doesn't seem to be any recomendations from Perkins in this regard. I'm tempted to simply pick the one that smells best and looks good in a wineglass.
Jesse