Coolant Additive

[nemo]

Originally Posted by Cobb

Good point. One reason you should measure the coolant going into the vehicle. I find when you add the water wetter it makes the coolant go in better and avoid the air traps. I always fill up the over flow bottle so if I miss some it can suck it out as needed and check it a day later.

And run the heater.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by TexasCotton

I put some Wetter Wet coolant additive with my Zerex 50/50. I guess I was a sucker for slick marketing and from what I can tell has not lower my coolant temps but rather increased them.

Why did you need to lower your coolant temps? Creating a larger opening in the grill block, or using the correct thermostat is the proper way to control coolant/engine temperatures.

Water is an extremely good fluid for both conducting heat, and absorbing large quantities of energy.

Water Wetter's website shows how good water is in their chart. You'll notice the chart compares water to many substances, but not Water Wetter.

If I lived in a climate where extreme freezing was not a danger, I would lower the antifreeze ratio to something much lower, perhaps to 20%. This would greatly increase the heat capacity and thermal conductivity of the coolant.

How bad does it freeze in Texas?

Originally Posted by Cobb

I find when you add the water wetter it makes the coolant go in better and avoid the air traps.

Water Wetter is a detergent, so it breaks the surface tension of water. It reduces the viscosity of water.

[Cobb]

I use it to run more grill block and keep the engine happy, use less cooling fan ie POWER.

In stop n go traffic in the city with no ac and auto stop in full effect I see the engine temp hover around 154 degrees F. Last time I had a rental car and hooked up my sg2 I notice the vehicle seemed to have more control over its temperature.

Of course I dont EOC, the engine spins and the water pump, pumps the whole time. I imagine if you EOC in a regular vehicle you may actually see the temp go up vs down unless you are engine braking.

[Ecky]

I read the first page and was going to post basically what redpoint5 posted.

Water has a fantastic combination of thermal conductivity, heat capacity, and low viscosity. The reasons I can see for additives are:

1. A detergent, to help remove bubbles

2. An anti-corrosive

3. To raise or lower the boiling and freezing point


Antifreeze, generally speaking, is less effective as a coolant than water. It is used because it has the important properties of inhibiting corrosion and lowering the freezing point.

I'm willing to bet that the radiator/air is your bottleneck though, and not the coolant. You might try replacing the radiator with something more conductive, such as copper or silver, but you'll then need to keep an anti-corrosive in your coolant because of mixed metals.

[Cobb]

Maybe he should of flushed it before testing? My use was as a new vehicle and just recently after a flush.

[Daox]

There isn't anything wrong with the coolant temps Texas Cotton is seeing. Its not like he is overheating or even getting hot enough to turn the fan on.

[chefdave]

Hi
have used water wetter in a pervious car. the main benefit was ability to dump excess heat after a lomg slow hill climb in searing heat. 3 minutes afyer reaching top of hill temp gauge went from just under red to normal halfway. so if engine os under load generating huge heat that std cooling cannot cope with it is ideal. i have always flushed and refilled cooling system with correct antifeeze and percentage by volume on all cars new to me.

[fbov]

Originally Posted by TexasCotton

I put some Wetter Wet coolant additive with my Zerex 50/50. I guess I was a sucker for slick marketing...

There's no slick marketing involved here, just a suboptimal application. I've used Water Wetter, Redline's product, in an RV when we went West, so I researched it at that time.

It starts with Thermodynamics, so I understand the reticence to dive in, but perhaps I can explain.

It starts with "heat capacity" defined as the "energy required to change a object's temperature." It's usually called "specific heat" as the amount of mass being heated matters, so we express it as energy/(mass x degree) or Joules/(gram Kelvin). It's also calories and BTUs, although those terms have disappeared from technical usage,.

Water has a heat capacity of about 4 J/gK.
Propylene glycol is more like 2.5 J/gK, roughly 60% that of water

Mix the two and you get three things
- higher boiling point
- lower freezing point
- specific heat that's inbetween; 50/50 would be ~3.2 J/gK
You also get lubricants and anticorrosives in coolant to improve the reliability of the cooling system, but we'll assume those are unrelated to heat transfer in a new, clean system.

So a pure water cooling system has 25% greater heat transfer capability per gram than a 50/50 mix, but a narrower temperature operating range. So far, so good.

How does Water Wetter help? It decreases surface tension, so the resulting mix can't support bubbles as well.

That's important when you get water close to its boiling point, as boiling always starts as bubbles of steam that expand. That's really bad because steam has lower specific heat than coolant alone, so a steam bubble at a hot spot reduces heat transfer where it's most needed. It's not hard to see why that's a bad thing. Prevent bubbles from forming and the hot spot stays cooler, preventing bubbles from forming.

So why set up a cooling system like this? Weight and size.

Given the same radiator efficiency, a wetted-water engine cooling system needs a smaller radiator, a lower volume of liquid in the cooling system, and lower flow rates to transfer the same amount of heat. Plus all the positive benefits of pressurization remain, negating much of the boiling point elevation advantage of a mix.

Think RACE CAR; lighter weight, with less parasitic drain on engine power with nearly the same temperature gradient.

Also think LOW DRAG AERODYNAMICS.

Grill blocks reduce drag, but they also reduce radiator air flow and so thermal efficiency. Hucho shows how radiator air flow optimization can be a powerful tool for optimizing a body for low drag, and smaller give you more options. As a guy on the Corvette forum put it:

"Water cools WAY better than antifreeze. School of hard knox has let me master the auto cooling system,flow rate,rad thickness, copper,aluminum,flue width,airflow,and so on.As ive said in other posts I cooled a 575HP smallblock on a GM v6 radiator 1"1/2 inches thick. This thing wouldnt hit 200 for nothing."

If this all makes sense, you can see how there's no magic or snake oil involved, just as there's little to be gained unless you're re-optimizing your entire bodywork and cooling system, you rebuild the engine regularly, and it never gets cold where you live.

And it's not a panacea; our radiator still sprung a leak driving the RV up Rabbit Ears Pass!

Have fun,
Frank

[locomonkeyboricua]

Hi guys water wetter and all those magic bottles that say they lower water temperature are for use with distilled water filled systems with max coolant at 20 %. They dont work if used in a system with coolant. When I was using this stuff in my track car in summer I ran only 10% coolant 90% distilled water. I used the coolants just so I could smell a leake as water has no strong smell when vaporizing. With my scanner I noticed about 12* difference . It works very well if used as intended.

[Mcgiiver]

It's not possible to generalize about Water Wetter lowering or raising temps as it depends on where the temp sensor is on various cars.
I personally won't change coolant without adding WW. The nice thing is it transfers heat better than coolant mix so I get better output from the heater.