Are we talkin' about aluminum radiators that the manufacturer requires distilled water in, or all radiators?
Water in its purest sense is the best solvent on the face of the earth. The reason is that water is a gluton it will leach every mineral it can find until it reaches a point that it is so mineral laden that it can no longer move. The cleaner the water the more corrosive it is.
Distilled water - with Ph adjusted to neutral - is the accepted norm for all sorts of "official" laboratory testing. Out of the jug from the grocery store it will test slightly acidic - common lab procedure is to adjust it to neutral with one drop of ammonia (for one gallon). This chemical advice is pretty easy to find - and accurate. The reason the distilled water is not a perfect neutral has to do with exposure to atmospheric carbon dioxide during processing. The best reason for using distilled water is that it has no tendency to deposit lime in your cooling system - which is detrimental to heat transfer at high levels of contamination. Many more engines have suffered from lime than the urban legend "ionic transfer". It is common restoration practice to flood contaminated engines and heads with white vinegar - acid - to try and free up the water passages. By comparison - we virtually never find one that is eaten up by acidic decomposition. GM suggests adjusting the Ph of the distilled water one to one and one half steps toward "base" for use in engines with aluminum cylinder heads, blocks, radiators, etc. - before adding anti-freeze or additive packages. An additional (second) drop of ammonia will do this.
I had no idea that there was so much science in water in your radiator? I use straight coolant, let's see if we can get four more pages!
Running straight coolant has the opposite effect on heat transfer.... You lower your boiling point, not raise it, by using it straight.
I may be wrong but on the back of any bottle of concentrated coolant it says add distilled water... and this is from the people that make the coolant... I think they would know best.. but then again they all had silica in them for years.. and we found out that stuff is a nono.. so who knows.... I add pee... uratic acid works wonders for keeping the cooling system clean.....
I worked in a service station for many year , my Grandfather has 2 service stations for a very long time , I also worked in Ford and Chev Dealerships for about 10 and I NEVER used anything but tap water ! Never had a problem and used tap water in all my cars until the sealed batteries cam around . I can't even think of the thousands of batteries I have done nothing but ad tap water too and never had a problem . So now ever thing is different I guess . But then why did the old batteries seem to last an awful lot longer than the junk we get now days . OH yea , we have all this recycled metals we get stuck with now ! I have heard so many different story's and read many on the batteries and they just keep changing the rules to keep them up to good condition ! So who should you really believe ? Sometime I think they say the things they do to cover up for poor quality parts ! Just my opinion . Retro Jim
Hey 1950coronet600 you mean pissing in my Radiator is good for it? I use to live in the country when I lived in OK and one of my greatest pleasures was standing in my front yard and pissing. I can't do that here, have neighbors all around and I really miss pissing out doors. But I could go out in the garage and piss in my radiator. It might satisfy this longing I have for alternate piss sites. Thanks for the info. I'm on my way to the garage.
you really gotta be careful pissing on engines. had a brother once who ended up drunk one nite and his 57 wouldnt start- so smart ass thought he'ld piss in his rad. and missed by a bit and hit the coil.. woke up in the ditch with a twitchy pee pee
HA HA never piss on a coil before. Did grab a spark plug on a running engine and crapped my pants. But I've crapped my pants in a lot of places so it wasn't life changing
distilled water as I understand it is de-mineralized since as they distill it (evaporated and condensed) it leaves the minerals behind. We don't allow demineralized water through a stainless steel chiller barrel as it is mildly acidic I think, or basic. Whatever it was it would eventually eat the barrel. So I can only imagine that it would do the same to our cars. That being said if we want a perfect situation softened water has minerals, is neutral, and doesn't have the excess of minerals that cause build up. Hope this adds something to this. Not saying it's right or wrong, just adding what might be helpful info.
Wow!!! what a thread. I stated earlier that I use a 50/50 pre mixed so I googled Prestone to find out the breakdown: 50% antifreeze for temperature/corrosion protection and 50% demineralized water for heat transfer protection. I'm not saying we all haven't put tap water, lake, canal, river or any thing else that was wet or who's right or who's wrong.........but these people are in the business of selling this stuff for cooling systems and I would not like to think they threw a dart at a board with various ingredients for the recipe.
Check out 'Evans lifetime coolant, www.evanscooling.com' for some more eye opening information on this subject!
I stopped flushing the radiators in my fleet because I was losing water pumps right after doing so. I chalked it up to coincidence at first. But apparently the plain water doesn't have the slippery antifreeze/coolant has and it was roaching pump bearings even without a chemical flush. So, now I just drain and replace yearly in my keepers. I use preformulated due to minerals in water. I would never use just plain water as there is no lube and no corrosion protection and the boiling point is higher than with plain water. I'm not talking about boil over point. I'm talking about the micro scopic boiling bubbles that form at little tiny hot spots in your engine which cause damage. Your local race track probably requires plain water for clean-up and slippery safety reasons.
My New Holland manual says to change the coolant yearly. I have been putting in the Ford conditioner as well.
. . . That's it: ELECTROLYSIS is the culprit, and that is not affected by which water is used. Galvanic corrosion is due to dissimilar metals.
I figured as much... but some of these characters believe ANYTHING and EVERYTHING they read on their monitors, and I was (stupidly) concerned for them...
And yet another thread on water and coolant and still no resoloution, go figure!!! I live in the country, I've lived in the city, for 44 years I've been going to the faucet and getting water and mixing it with equal parts of anti-freeze and never had a problem. Stop over thinking this stuff. I'd bet the real traditional guys here are going WTF!!!!
The water back east (personal experience with Mich for example) doesn't seem to be as hard as the water in Ca. Home water heaters in Mich seemed to last many years; home water heaters in Calif barely make the warranty period - they usually start leaking from tank rot out about 2 months after the warranty. One can easily tell if a motor in Ca has been run with tap water (in most places in Ca you can get by w/o antifreeze). A tap water only run Ca motor will have some eaten up coolant passages! For instance; Olds motors had a steel plate on the front of the motor seperating the crankcase from the outside world and the water pump. The back of the water pump(pump vane area) is exposed to this plate - I have seen this plate eaten through because of running hard tap water. I currently have a 8ab that is nearly useless because of the eaten up water passages. When I came to Ca in 72 as a young GI, an auto parts store/machine shop old timer told me, 'if you don't want to have problems with your cooling system, don't use tap water'. After taking a few motors apart, I under stood what he was talking about.
So long as people are guided by anecdotal legend, on what they assume or believe, or by what you can get away with most of the time, there will never be a consensus on topics like this. At any time this could morph into a endless debate about "regular" vs synthetic oil, brittle #8 bolts, slowing down coolant flow to improve efficiency, what type of welding is best, solid engine mounts on the street, ammeters vs voltmeters, etc, etc, etc.
CITY TAP WATER is usually filtered and PH adjusted. My well water has so many minerals in it that I can't wash my car without running it through a filter. Otherwise the car will have more spots than a leopard and they are too crusty to wipe off without damaging the paint. If I used that in my radiators they wouldn't last long. In some areas you can't use copper pipe in your house because the chemical makeup of the water eats it up. I've dug up enough water lines to see what even CITY WATER can do as far as damage. I use PREFORMULATED Anti-freeze/Coolant and change it yearly in my keepers.
I have well water that has been tested, and as long as I fill it up from the faucet in the house as opposed to the hose (hose spigot is pre-sediment filter) I'm good. But, for what it's worth, I just put a new aluminum radiator in my tow vehicle, and the label on the radiator explicitly says putting any other water besides distilled will void the warranty.
Here is another wrench in the soup. I race my toy, and paved tracks do not allow anything but water(seems some people find driving through a puddle of prestone with 15 inch wide slicks a bowel movement inducing experience). I have a copper rad, aluminum intake, and cast block and heads, so what is a vintage racer to do?
I'm with Chevy Gasser. After experimenting when I was young, I started using 50/50, pure, fresh antifreeze and distilled water. I flush the whole system and put fresh in every year or two. Radiators seem to stay clean, and thermostats too. These half-plastic radiators on more modern daily drivers bug me though. Seems like asking too much of plastic, IMO.
You can throw a can of antirust/water pump lubricant in there. That would take care of any problems you might have with not having antifreeze in the system to handle corrosion and lack of lubrication for the pump. I think the racing authorities who set your rules should be ok with that in the water, but you might want to check. Just last week I had to call PRC (Performance Rod and Custom) who have built a few radiators for us, and that we have liked a whole lot. I spoke to one of their tech guys and got his take on the "perfect" way to get an engine to cool properly. He said the very best coolant is pure distilled water, but since it doesn't have the antirust/lubricating properties mentioned above, he said to put in about a half gallon of antifreeze, and the rest distilled water. He also said they prefer the green antifreeze as opposed to the pink. Gotta clarify though, that mix is not going to give good freeze protection up north, but is either for Summer use, or for use in warmer climates. Up north you would still need 50/50 if you might experience temps below 32 degrees. He and I also talked about products like Water Wetter. He said they don't like them. They found that sometimes they can break down and start sticking to the engine block, then break away as flakes that will plug up the radiator. He also sees no need for an additional antirust product beyond antifreeze, unless it is in a racing application where antifreeze is not permitted. Another subject we talked about was engine temps. He said about 190-195 is ideal. It will cook off any moisture in the oil at that temp and keep the engine running pretty efficiently. I asked what is "too hot." He said if it starts getting beyond 230 that is on the edge of not being good, but that 230 and down are really not as bad as we might think. That surprised me as I am old fashioned and felt anything over 180 was too hot. But I recently bought a new car and it runs at 208-212 normally. When I asked the dealer about it they said the same thing, that anything below 230 is fine "if it gets hotter than that bring it in to have it checked." They told me to turn off the information center on the dash and stop checking the temps all the time. I realize that if you talk to another "expert" they might have an opinion that is 180 out of phase with his theories, but I figure since they build some pretty good radiators they must know something about cooling and coolants. Just thought I would throw one more piece of the puzzle into the mix. Don
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