PSA: Stop using the wrong coolant mix ratio on older machines

I saw three guys in the shop this week flooding their vintage Haas mills with 10% coolant. That's way too rich for those spindle seals. They start swelling up and then you get leaks everywhere. I ran a 1998 VF-2 for two years straight at 6% mix and never had a seal issue. The manual literally says 5-8% for machines built before 2005. Anyone else notice newer guys just dumping coolant without checking the concentration?

4 comments

4 Comments

ross.kim1mo agoOG Member

You really ran 6% for two years straight?

sagejackson1mo ago

Wait, is that even possible without some serious lifestyle sacrifices or are we both just built different? I did 5.8% for about a year and a half and it nearly broke me mentally. My social life basically disappeared and I was eating nothing but beans and rice to keep grocery costs down. It's wild how fast you get used to living on basically nothing though, like your brain just rewires to find free fun. Respect to anyone who can stick with it that long, I tapped out at around 18 months and still haven't fully recovered my old spending habits.

rosepark14d ago

Hang on, 5.8% for a year and a half is actually pretty impressive, but that math might be a little off. Most people who try that kind of savings rate don't factor in things like healthcare or car repairs, so their real rate is usually lower. I see it all the time in online finance circles where folks claim a high number but they're not counting the big mandatory expenses. If you were truly living on beans and rice with no social life, you were probably closer to 8% or 9% if you had any kind of emergency fund left. It's not that it's impossible, it's just that the number gets a lot easier to hit when you're honest about what you're actually spending.

rowanr881mo ago

Saw a finance podcast where they talked about this. @sagejackson hit it on the head about the mental toll - it really does rewire how you see spending. Two years at 6% sounds like a grind where you'd basically have to say no to everything, right?