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MG MG Y Type - Tap or Distilled Water used in coolant system

What's the consensus on using tap or distilled water for a cooling system in Y Type.
I live in a very hard water area and considered using distilled water however research on forums is mixed, views vary from Distilled being Ion hungry and too acidic that it creates more problems than it solves.
Currently I run with mix of tap and anti freeze mixture.

R E Knight

Hi Richard

I am no water treatment chemist - that was my father - but since the water is in an enclosed system it is not a huge deal I would have thought. However, I guess it depends on how much you use the car and how frequently you top it off. Mixing with anti-freeze I run about 50:50 anyway so that cuts the volume of water required anyway.

Here are a few links to look at that I have found:

http://www.sancarlosradiator.com/VoltageDrop/water.htm

https://community.cartalk.com/t/distilled-water-for-radiators/13173

https://community.cartalk.com/t/the-hungry-water-theory/67423/4

I personally like the theory espoused in the first one.

Paul
Paul Barrow

Paul,
The first link made for interesting reading. I think that I will stick to tap water.
There are those who go waterless with the new ideas but this costs fortune and also surely could be more dangerous if for some mechanical reason the engine was over heating and the indicator of boiling water wasn't there to pre-warn of a problem, hence how I sorted out the overheating issue on my YT which now "touch wood" is trouble free.

Richard
R E Knight

Good decision there Richard.

Enjoy

Paul
Paul Barrow

In most parts of Australia there is no risk of water freezing in our engines, so anti-freeze is not really required.

I use the old school formula - rain water with a few thimble-fulls of soluble(cutting) oil. This leaves an oily film on everything and prevents a build up of oxide residue in the engine block.

I don't know if this is better or worse than using modern cooling additives, so happy to hear advice from others who might know more about soluble oil in Y-Type cooling systems.

Cheers

Tony


A L SLATTERY

I understand that coolant or anti freeze has a higher boiling point and transfers heat better which I suppose is a help when using modern high burning temperature fuels, also I'm told it inhibits electrolytic action between dissimilar metals. The devil I find is rust which is due to oxygen dissolved in the water [not the H2O bit], so take your pick Bryan

Please check out what I say
B Mellem

For what it is worth - Prestone clearly state that their premixed AF has demineralised water.

Carplan also sell deionised water (much the same thing) for use in car cooling systems.

There is no suggestion that you should use water without a corrosion inhibitor and since AF provides that as well as raising the boiling point of the coolant it is the additive of choice.

However I think for our old cast iron blocks a 25% AF mixture provides better cooling,
Chris at Octarine Services

There's no mud like sludge or even discoloration in the radiator of my car, the previous owner used deionised water, so I continued with the same, and just as Chris advises, I use a twenty five percent mix with antifreeze.
The choice of water doesn't really seem an issue to me, an internal combustion ignoramus. Antifreeze is, or was, the biggest corrosion problem. My first car, bought in 1963, was a 1955 Hillman Husky. It's side valve engine had the spark plugs at the top of the engine, sitting in a small recess like the shape of an egg cup.
The occasion when these cups were filled with water wasn't, as my father suspected, a cracked block, but a corroded thermostat cover. The antifreeze had corroded the aluminium causing water to seep out and into the spark plug recesses.
The engines cooling system works best when all the parts are kept in good order, that's why I have the hoses replaced when they start to feel 'soft' and why I have the cooling system drained once a year.
One other thing, I've never had starting problems, not even if the car has been standing idle for a long period during a cold snap. The garage is a double but it's an inline double so we park our VW Golf head light to head light with the MG. Sandwiched between the two cars is an oil filled radiator, that runs on cheap overnight electricity. Neither car's engine block ever gets cold.
See you tomorrow Richard, I might just dress the part.
R Taylor

Robert,

Sadly I wont be at tomorrows Cobweb spin in the Y's got work night shift finishing at 0700 hrs. Have taken the YB on 42 mile run today, did 10 miles in YT yesterday making the most of the dry weather.
Have you thought about Brooklands on 2/4/17, early start but usually good turnout. My tickets arrived today, pray for good weather now.

Richard
R E Knight

I well remember the old anti freeze [glycol I think]and seemed to make unexpected leaks all of its own.

Usually once the free oxygen in water has combined the rusting stops or so our plumber says, so don't go changing the water too often.
B Mellem

Robert,

Good to see your YB amongst pride of place in central Winchester today. There was Chris Adamson's nice "YB" Priscilla there too, and lots of other nice tidy MG's including some nice T Types.

Bryan, your comment about not changing the water too often makes perfect sense, and I suppose the only reason to drain and change system yearly is because the antifreeze loses it's effective properties and not to do with the water side of the mixture.

Richard
R E Knight

Good to see you too, Richard, especially after you had just finished a long shift, or was it a case of dodging the children's birthday party?

As I mentioned before, I'm an internal combustion ignoramus, but I did pay attention in the physics class. The logical reason that I can see about draining a cooling system too often is the risk of getting air in, although I vaguely remember something about be able to "burp" the air out. I'm sure that those with the knowledge and skill will either scotch my speculation or endorse it.
R Taylor

Actually, water transfers heat better by itself. I run water in the summer with a corrosion inhibitor and add antifreeze in the winter.

Here is a good article by Dow on the various chemicals that can be used as heat transfer fluids. Dow recommends distilled or de-ionized water mixed with their antifreeze for air handling systems.

I would think it would transfer over to automobiles.

http://www.dow.com/heattrans/pdfs/DispellingTheMyths.pdf
Bruce Cunha

First off, and no offense to Bruce, but whenever you run across any article with a title like "Dispelling myths about" or "the truth regarding" 99 out of 100 times it will be written by a slick advertising house to peddle a product. Advertising houses are expert at disinformation, period.

All the articles linked here in this discussion are such very biased articles. Use your heads when trying to learn something, don't go out looking for biased articles used to peddle products. Both Bruce and Paul (1st link Paul) have found rather thinly veiled propaganda, that quite frankly does not stand up to any thoughtful evaluation. When talking about distilled water, for instance, they talk all about putting distilled water only into some old decrepit rusty slug of a cooling system to explain how you are committing atrocities against it. Well yes indeed I would expect some changes in a system running one coolant for 50 years that is suddenly changed to distilled water. Then they go on to say that mixing fresh anti freeze/coolant with distilled water will of course destroy the ability of the coolant (designed to be cut 50% with distilled water by the way) and leave you with a giant lump of rust all over your garage floor or driveway, because we have all been told (just before) about how wful an idea running straight distilled water is. Complete utter nonsense. And for all the gullable folk who run tap water or whatever wter in their radiator, exactly how much better heat transfer do you think you are getting in the summer? What is wrong with your cooling system that you need that 2% better transfer in a thermostat controlled system?
b fisk

This thread was discussed between 17/03/2017 and 04/04/2017

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