Nope, that’s controlled by the thermostat and the fan. You’re theoretically correct, but incorrect for a car with its thermostat, fan, and pressure cap.
OK. I’ll be more exact. If you are having overheating issues it should help. I don’t recommend lowering antifreeze concentration unless you ARE having overheating issues and have already tried flushing your system and you may be like me, i.e. too cheap to invest in a better radiator or you don’t like running your heater to help keep it from overheating.
Nope , if someone is having overheating issues then they should have the problem fixed before they destroy an engine .
You can do what you want but that is not good advice for anyone.
Wrong. Totally.
Again wrong. Read what they say-
These products include a unique agent that lowers temperatures by reducing or eliminating bubbles or vapor barrier that form on hot metal surfaces
- Reduces or eliminates bubbles or vapor barrier that form on hot metal surfaces to reduce coolant temperatures by up to 20°
No, actually not wrong (you can read basically what I’ve said from a brochure available on their website, however not very easy to find; you can click on the link below).
What you repeated from the website doesn’t actually describe how it works; rather it describes what it reduces the likelihood of occurring (i.e. bulk boiling in the coolant channel or the vapor barrier mentioned). Read up on nucleate boiling. The very small bubbles formed require the latent heat of vaporization in order to form (which is absorbed from the engine and then given up in the coolant as the miniature steam bubbles collapse once they are swept away from the surface by the coolant flow ). Also read up on departure from nucleate boiling (DNB). The promotion of nucleate boiling by reducing water’s surface tension reduces the likelihood of creating the vapor barrier mentioned. DNB can lead to the formation of a vapor barrier.
Nucleate boiling is going to occur at the highest heat flux areas due to the relatively low pressurization of the system (a 14 psig pressure cap only raises the saturation temperature by about 50FF). Assuming cylinder heat temperatures above 300F at the water channel, boiling is most likely already occurring. If you browse various forums you’ll see that most people report a very minor reduction in temperature with that product unless they also reduce the antifreeze concentration. Less antifreeze increases heat transfer capability of the coolant and allows water wetter to work better as a surfactant (i.e. greater % water in the coolant).
They purposely don’t want to advertise that is works mostly by being a surfactant (i.e. reducing water’s surface tension which promotes the formation of very small vapor bubbles). It’s quite possible that something much cheaper can give essentially the same effect. Take some time to research how it actually works. What is a better “wetting agent” anyway?
The information on how water wetter works was actually in a Water Wetter brochure I once found on the internet and is still available at (https://www.redlineoil.com/Content/files/tech/WaterWetter%20Tech%20Info.pdf)
Please read the entire PDF file and THEN comment back if you like.
If you look closely at the graphs you’ll most likely come to the conclusion that the addition of water wetter is NOT the primary reason for better heat transfer (for example the 50/50 lines with and without water wetter run very closely to each other as does the 100% water lines with and without water wetter). However, the reduction of the antifreeze concentration does make a big difference.
I wasted my time writing a long reply as I made the mistake of including a link to the WaterWetter brocure (which caused it to be flagged as spam). I read it a a couple of years ago. Do a web search for WaterWetter brocure and it should be the first thing that pops up. It is actually from the RedlineOil website
You can form your own opinion after reading through it.
So who brought this up again after nine years? I know at least one of the posters is dead now, rest his soul, and others haven’t been heard from in years. At any rate heat transfer is not the issue, but lubrication, rust prevention, and freeze prevention in Minnesota.
See so it’s possible the discussion on part mark ups could go on for ten years or more and have thousands of responses. Who knows?
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VOLVO_V70
Agree that reducing antifreeze concentration isn’t the proper method (and only for the mechanically minded) and I wouldn’t want to go that route for a newer vehicle, but for an aging, “on it’s last leg” vehicle it might be an easily solution. I would certainly have been advised not to use the off the shelf products on my 195K mile Excursion to make is usable due to excessive water loss into the cylinders (it got so bad that occasionally it would not “push through” that cylinder on the first attempt to start). Using an “off the shelf” head gasket leak product has allowed us to drive it to 245K miles without dumping $2K into replacing the head gaskets and it loses less coolant than it did when it only had 50K miles on it.
It was one of the first items that came up when I Googled the question. The WaterWetter brochure I mentioned (and anyone can go get) probably provides the best answer to the original question (any many others that were asked). And then the answer is not just a personal opinion.
Hmmm. So the person that wrote the brochure is not just providing a personal opinion? People write those brochures usually to try to sell something. Maybe it’s a scientific paper though. Not really anything I would be interested in but don’t be taken in by a nice looking brochure.
I have been advised by a vehicle manufacture to adjust the coolant to 40% coolant, 60% water for customers operating under extreme conditions, this is not unheard of by those in the repair industry.
Do you really need help reading this thread?
I suspect that coolant/antifreeze is not allowed in vehicles on race tracks in Minnesota so there is a reason to use water in a cooling system.
That is because people here don’t like new members, the post before yours has a link to Red line/Water wetter.
The information in that brochure is really more “anti-promotional” as it made me realize that it’s not intended to help cars with cooling problems (which is what one may think when they see it on the shelf at the auto parts store), but that it’s intended to reduce octane requirements in racing applications. So, the brochure had the opposite effect on me. It may lower cylinder heat temperatures, but it can’t help heat transfer in your radiator as no boiling is occurring there.
As Sky King used to say: “Over and Out”. Or was it Captain Midnight? Same era.
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Unfortunately there are some posters here who think it’s OK to be snarky with other posters. It’s a shame. I can’t remember who it was, but in a discussion on gas tank emissions controls I said something and his response was, “You really don’t know anything about how they work.”
That did seem unhelpful.
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When I’m wrong, I’m not afraid to admit it. I was wrong. Your last post had me go back and review and I learned a few things. We have been making some fundamental mistakes in our modeling. These are very difficult phenomena to prove empirically and they are quite interactively complex. I did find an article in the process of researching that highlighted where I think we have been missing the boat on our simulations. The inlet temperature and flow rate are highly influential in the process and I think we need to revisit some of our designs to ensure we can operate in this region for extended periods v just blowing past it or never getting to it in the first place. If anyone is interested, check this out- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214157X1830128X
@xssnbubblehead_157277 made some excellent points. But the difference between a car cooling system and, oh, say, a nuclear reactor on an attack submarine, is that the car is exposed to much more extreme low temperature ranges that necessitate the use of antifreeze. The engineers on the boat don’t ever have to worry about the temperature in the reactor compartment being 40 below. Car designers do, and that’s why they put antifreeze in there.
It’s true that antifreeze reduces the cooling ability of water, but that doesn’t matter because the 50/50 mix cools to the designed operating temperature just fine. Kind of like how an air conditioner is a whole lot more effective if you get naked and wet before you turn it on yourself, but it doesn’t matter because the air conditioner does just fine at cooling you to a good operating temperature when you’re dry and clothed, and everyone around us is probably happier as a result.
Plus there’s the corrosion inhibitors, etc, in antifreeze that are necessary.
That said, back when I spent a lot more time at race tracks than I do today, there were guys who’d run pure water, or water-wetter-treated water, in their radiators. But that was a special application where the engine was putting out a lot more heat than a normal street car engine does, and one in which they didn’t have to worry about the water icing over between races because it was summer.