listers,
i cut and pasted this (having read it in the magazine) from
caranddriver.com from an article by Patrick Bedard.
thought it might be of interest.
for the complete article, do a search on their sight for
bedard. its the july 2002 column.
First, do no harm. Medical doctors live by that rule, at least the good ones.
And to my great reassurance, so does Dr. David Turcotte, the good-humored
antifreeze guru at Zerex.
I asked him to write a prescription for keeper cars, those wheeled time
capsules some of us have around for sunny days and reliving the motoring moods
of the past. As cars go, anything older than 20 years is a geriatric case. They
were made for a world that no longer exists. That's what makes them so
interesting.
It also presents problems. In many instances, they've outlived their
factory-recommended care instructions. You can't get those old tires,
oils, and fluids anymore.
As a guy living on Lipitor Lane, new doses for old vitals sounds like an
opportunity to me. So I asked the doctor what he would recommend for geriatric
cooling systems. Corrosion is my big worry. Minimal upkeep would brighten my
weekends, too.
No one, it turns out, likes maintenance less than long-haul diesel truckers.
Turcotte told me about Zerex Extended Life. This red juice is designed to go
full-strength into truck radiators. Do nothing for the first 300,000 miles or
three years. Then throw in another whack of inhibitors, a quart of
Zerex Extended Life Extender, and run another 300,000, at which point
the engine is probably scheduled for a full tear-down.
This product is labeled "heavy duty," which is the supply chain's term for
diesel use. HD motor oils are intended for diesels also.
"This would be absolutely the most bulletproof thing I could suggest,"
he says. "We're pushing it 500,000 miles in our fleet work, and we still
haven't found the point where it's no good."
But he was reluctant to recommend it for broad use in cars just yet.
"In another five years, if things go as we expect, I can probably tell
you this is a better fluid."
For now, his choice for cars "as old as we're likely to find" is Zerex G-05.
"I've got a 20-year history that says this really works."
Zerex does most of its business with new-car manufacturers, developing
antifreeze for the industry's evolving needs and supplying the assembly
plants. G-05 started off as an "exotic European fluid." VW changed to
it early, followed by more companies, including Mercedes for both gas
and diesel engines. Now it's becoming the everyday American factory fill
for DaimlerChrysler and Ford, who serve it up as a "long life" coolant
good for five years/100,000 miles.
Turcotte says G-05 is less radical than Extended Life, and it's backward
and forward compatible, which means that it can be mixed with green
conventional antifreeze or the latest inorganic types. It's particularly
well-suited to keeper cars, he thinks, because of the way it combats the
sort of corrosion that comes with being a garage potato.
All the antifreezes I know have one side effect that's troubling for a few
of our special cars. Ethylene glycol, which makes up 96 percent of what's
in the bottle, has about half the heat-transfer capability of plain water.
So when you mix antifreeze and water in the recommended 50-50 proportions,
you give up a quarter of your system's cooling capacity.
No problem for new cars; they're engineered with capacity to spare.
But I remember British roadsters of the '50s and '60s that would boil
on the streets of New York in the summer, and street rods are notorious
for overheating. You could cure the cooling problems of those cars by
circulating plain water through the system
Most NASCAR racers do that. But corrosion sets in amazingly fast.
Turcotte showed me a sample of coolant that had run 35 laps. It had flakes
of red snow swirling through itrust. I've seen similar rapid rusting when
I've used plain water to leak-check a rebuilt engine.
Another approach: Increase the proportion of water in your mix, thereby
trimming back both freeze and corrosion protection to gain heat transfer.
Turcotte agrees that's a possibility, and he says he tests with dilutions
down to 25 and 16 percent. "They survive," he says. Still, his do-no-harm
approach shies from any antifreeze proportion below 40 percent.
Our conventional 50-50 mix is a one-size-fits-all solution to an
American reality: Any car might drive to any North American location.
So they all go out the factory door with enough ethylene glycol for
freeze protection down to minus-34 degrees F. Antifreeze makers blend
in the inhibitor dose assuming that we in the replacement market will
dilute similarly. Other countries follow different conventions.
In the tropics, where cooling is the top-most issue, the inhibitors are
sometimes blended for up to 10:1 dilution.
Ideally, you could completely separate the freeze protection from the
corrosion protection. Fact is, many special cars don't go out in freezing
weather, particularly those Sunbelt residents that also face the greatest
threat of summeroverheating.
For them, Zerex Racing Super Coolant sounds ideal. It was developed for
attack boats used by Navy Seals. They must operate in tropical waters too
warm to give sufficient engine cooling when you add in the inefficiency of
ethylene glycol. Super Coolant contains inhibitors onlyspecial antifoaming
agents and protection during boilingTurcotte says, and it's compatible with
aluminum, iron, and other materials common in older cars.
Imagine boosting the effectiveness of your cooling system 25 percent simply
by changing the radiator fluid.
--
Best regards,
Bill mailto:pythias@pacifier.com
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