Unpopular opinion: Your coolant concentration gauge might be lying to you

I was at a little job shop in Akron last month watching a guy run a Haas VF-2 and he told me his coolant always smelled bad. So I grabbed a refractometer and checked his mix. It read 8% which is fine right? Wrong. He had been topping off with pure water for months because the concentration was reading high. His gauge was way off because he never cleaned the prism. I replaced his coolant and cleaned that prism and the reading dropped to 4%. Now I check my prism every single time before I take a reading. Anyone else ever get bit by a dirty gauge?

2 comments

2 Comments

jordancoleman1d ago

I cleaned my prism once and realized I'd been running coolant-flavored water for months.

evan_dixon671d ago

Coolant flavored water @jordancoleman? You mean you were drinking coolant.