Coolant/ anti freeze
- Thread starter 79_cutty
- Start date
- Status
hello people: 50/50 I believe is the way to go but you might want to add that additive they sell for x-tra cooling that's out there.. You might want to change the thermostat while your flushing maybe heater control valve also. Inspect hoses and you'll be ready for the road...have fun
IBBY
IBBY
Harbor Freight sells 50/50 for about $9 a gallon. I can't remember which brand.
Buying pre-diluted antifreeze is the biggest waste of money in my opinion.
With the pre mix you don't have to buy distilled water separately. Tap water makeup and quality varies quite a bit from region to region. The well water in my area has alot of iron in it and I don't want it in my cooling system, also causes issues with my pool.
Pre mix is important in really old engines that don't have water pumps to mix up the coolant like with my 46 tractor, the coolant must be premixed before it added in such engines. But most here probably don't wrech on such old engines that use heat convection for coolant circulation.
Going back to coolant mixtures, pure water has the best heat capacity, antifreeze has much weaker heat capacity than water. This is why in warmer areas people often run a water rich 60 / 40 mixture. It is also why you don't want to run a AF rich mixture.
Pre mix is important in really old engines that don't have water pumps to mix up the coolant like with my 46 tractor, the coolant must be premixed before it added in such engines. But most here probably don't wrech on such old engines that use heat convection for coolant circulation.
Going back to coolant mixtures, pure water has the best heat capacity, antifreeze has much weaker heat capacity than water. This is why in warmer areas people often run a water rich 60 / 40 mixture. It is also why you don't want to run a AF rich mixture.
Distilled water has some of the un-dissolved solids removed, but not the ionized materials (salts). Deionized water has the ionized salts removed and that makes it very corrosive,
I wonder why they recommend it for distillers and cooling systems? Supposedly a 7 PH when made but drops to 5.2 or so once exposed to air. I don't see how something on the middle of the PH scale with the salts removed is corrosive.
Last edited:
Deionized water is bad.
When you deionize the water seeks out an electron bond and what it finds is atmospheric c02, which it bonds with. The chemical reaction is 2 molecules of h20 bond with 3 molecules of co2, end result is h2co3.
H2c03 is carbonic acid.
You can read about it here, ( https://itstillruns.com/the-effects-of-carbonic-acid-on-steel-12590472.html. ) but, basically it introduces rust into your cooling system, and that can impact sludge formation in your radiator fins.
Depending on the nature of the system it is used in the opportunity to react is minimized - such as in a pure stainless steel system, carbonic acid doesn't have the pitting and rust formation effect it does in normal/carbon steel..so on so forth.
Application is everything.
In South Georgia I can run pure water in the radiator in March and suffer no issues. If I do the same thing in Minnesota I'm blowing freeze plugs in a best case scenario and doing other various bad things like cracking a block.
Again, application matters.
Last edited:
Good to know. I am just using our reverse osmosis tap water from now on, used it this last time, pay enough for it as is. It seems there is draw backs, no matter which water is used. The waterless Coolant isn't strong enough for our Winters. Turbo Power is the one selling Deionized Water up here as the stuff to use in your radiator.
- Status
Similar threads
