Rain water & Ethylene Glycol?

[Guran]

Damn you Guran, beat me to it by a distilled second

Hey, I'll drink to that too.

[bruce]

And here I am happy with my hose!

[Steampunk]

And here I am happy with my hose!

Yeah, I heard enemas are good

[bruce]

Can't wipe the smile off my face !

[malstc]

I've tried to collect rainwater - fail, it ended up full of ltlle floaties stuff from nearby trees I guess. The first drops of rain can be pretty acidic and polluted too.

I'm sure someone here has suggested pure drinking water. $6 for 10L from coles, the one with 0 for all the analysis numbers.

[zephyrus17]

I just went ahead and bought 8L of demineralised water for $5 from Woolworths

[bootz]

Thanks Guran, I wanted to know what the diff between demineralised and distilled was.

[GP]

Demineralised water would be filtered. Distilled water is what it says distilled.

[manga_blue]

I use filtered rainwater (typically through a sock - you only need to get leaves and stuff like that out). Boiling it for a minute would drive out dissolved gases like CO2 and SO2 if you were really fussy about that

I'm not a fan of the ethylene glycol though. It has a much lower specific heat capacity and lower conductivity than clean water. So it absorbs less heat from the engine and conducts less of that into the radiator core. Use it if you must for anti-freeze protection but otherwise there are better products around for cooling performance, lubrication and inhibiting corrosion.

[zephyrus17]

Living in Adelaide where it never goes below 0, would I even actually need anti-freeze?

[manga_blue]

You must use some form of corrosion inhibitor.

[zephyrus17]

Ah aye.. That's true. What's good brands that you would recommend?

[Guran]

Some good advice there Phil. Have you logged any temperature data with and without ethylene glycol in the system? Knowing you, I'd be a bit surprised if you hadn't! How much difference did it make after a hard go on the track? I use a 33% mix of coolant/water and have never seen the temperature gauge change from normal after a run, even on hot days. On a stock car, admittedly, so it's under less stress than a modified car might be.

[manga_blue]

No, haven't logged it, Bryan, apart from having boiled badly at Winton with EG in and not having boiled since. But it was so hot the day I boiled it that the flies were dying during the drivers' briefing.

These guys have, though I do have some doubts about their results.
http://www.turbomagazine.com/features/0703_turp_cooling_system_additives/test_results.html

[wun911]

Impurities retard the effectiveness of water as a coolant. It will change its boiling point ie no longer boil at 100 C (at sea level).

Ethylene glycol is the main component of antifreze it retards the effectiveness of water as a coolant but it is anti freze so its kinda needed when it gets cold. (Dont need much of it in summer). I hear but I'm not sure it can lube parts like water pumps I'm not convinced it is anti-corosive though (like prevents oxidation of metals in the presence of water). It's made green so people don't drink it and die, otherwise its just a clear slighly viscous liquid nothing special.

Distilled is probably more pure than demineralised although technically there are other solutions/impurites that will boil at or below 100 ie will end up in your distilled water simply because it also evaporated and condensed.

If you must have it pure like H20 you will distill it twice and then filter it via reverse osmosis milipore etc etc then store it in glass bottles (chemically inert) etc etc.