GAZZUZZ:
Now imagine what goes on in the radiator whn you use tap water?

sule944:
can I drain the water in my old Toyota camry 1999 model 2.2l and put coolant? And what type of coolant should I use. Thanks

empron:
Water=rust

nurey:


wrong

impurities in water = Rust

as we all know water is a universal solvent so even the coolant contains water too.

most Nigerians use tap water not distilled water.

water turns to steam at 100degrees centrigrade which most engine even surpass reason why water only should not be used in car cooling system to avoid evaporation

nurey:


wrong

impurities in water = Rust

as we all know water is a universal solvent so even the coolant contains water too.

most Nigerians use tap water not distilled water.

water turns to steam at 100degrees centrigrade which most engine even surpass reason why water only should not be used in car cooling system to avoid evaporation

Inception:


Evaporation of water can occur at any temperature as it is dependent on surface area of the liquid exposed.However temperature can increase the rate of evaporation.

Boiling on the other hand occurs at a particular temperature and pressure. The higher the pressure on the liquid, the higher the boiling point.

The reality is that a car's cooling system is usually pressurized as temperature increases, and this means that the boiling point of water in such system is usually higher than 100 degrees Celsius.( by a few degrees).

Tap water is bad because of the calcifying effects(as shown in Gazzuzz's first pics) it can give cooling systems( it is hard water). [b]This can effectively lead to blockage or restricted passages in cooling systems, eventually leading to overheating. [/b]this is also bad for the bearings of the water pump.

nurey:
thebigkendo, adanny01 and inception weldone ooo, all of you said the samething I am saying. distilled water won't cause rust but impurities is what causes rust. Una just wan use molecular chemistry derail the thread

one litre of distilled water from lab is around 500 to 1k, your tap water and even AC water isn't 100% distilled water.

thebigkendo:


And water in an engine cooling system will not boil at 100degrees C

GAZZUZZ:


yes you can, use toyota genuine long life coolant.

nurey:


there is a difference between boil and steam. water doesn't need to boil or reach 100 degrees before it starts turning to steam.

if you put water in a bowl and leave in the sun, does it boil no, but it evaporates thereby reducing the quantity.

water in the radiator starts turning into steam and some will condense back to water but rate of evaporation would be greater than condensation. since some of the water would be in molecular form, pressure would build up in the system, you are bound to lose water in form

change in state
absorbtion
osmosis/diffusion

how do you explain reduction in water/coolant without any known leak?

adanny01:


To the bolded, particularly the radiator.

Water boils at 100 and freeze at 0.
Coolant boils at 106 and freeze at -37.

It is critical to use coolant in an area where atmospheric temperatures goes below zero.

The small increase in boiling point of coolant is also important. The last and only time my engine over heated, the temperature reached 113. At that temp, the coolant was not boiling but the pressure was very high that it found a weak point. It was a weak hose clip that coolant leaked from. A twist of the clip re-tightened and the leak stopped. My friend's car over heated to 114, his radiator broke due to high pressure.

Mine was a 4 cyl 2003 accord with coolant and my friend's was a 4 cyl 2008 accord with water. In my case, the coolant temp sensor/fan switch stopped working which caused the over heating while my friend's car was a broken wire to the same sensor.

These are 2 practical cases expressing why water is not suitable as coolant.

The next point to consider is radiator caps, which are the pressure valves of cooling systems. As coolant temp gets higher so does pressure. Radiator caps will contain the pressure up to a set psi, beyond that, the valve will open to relieve the system. This sends water to the reserve tank and overfilling then spilling the coolant.

A bad radiator cap will either hold too much or too little pressure. When this cap is bad holding too little pressure, water will boil at 100degrees and spill at the slightest heating causing overheating due to loss of coolant. In this case coolant has a 6 degree advantage. If the cap holds too much pressure, water will have more pressure than coolant because pressure spikes during boiling. Pipes or the radiator itself could burst having experienced more pressure than they were meant to carry. If cap is good holding adequate pressure, boiling point of coolant will be higher than.A 6 degree increase in boiling point of coolant is very good to avoid spilling the coolant or damaging cooling system.

thebigkendo:


If the reduction is very noticeable over a short period of time the system has a leak at high pressure,
Water in engine system will not Change state under normal engine running conditions remember we are talking normal everyday cars not all do turbocharged and supercharged cars that run at higher temperatures

Remember your cooling system is supposed to be a closed system.. So let's assume even if its evaporates, it should condense back in the system..
All the loss you are talking about will probably amount to less than 5CL over a long period of time.
One advantage coolant has is that leaks are easy to detect because of the colour but when one uses water and it leaks, it will dry.. And we assume no leak

Lets use this small illustrations.. I put a 5L Jerrycan of water outside, Jerrycan's cover is closed, how many years will it take the water to dry or even reduce?

nurey:


for your question you will have to run the experiment yourself.

for the remaining ones we all are on the same page atleast no one has recommended water over coolant

nurey:
the.bigkendo, a.danny01 and inception weldone ooo, all of you said the samething I am saying. distilled water won't cause rust but impurities is what causes rust. Una just wan use molecular chemistry derail the thread

one litre of distilled water from lab is around 500 to 1k, your tap water and even AC water isn't 100% distilled water.

nurey:


for your question you will have to run the experiment yourself.

for the remaining ones we all are on the same page atleast no one has recommended water over coolant

weyreypey:

Alfa Nurey can you point me in the direction of a zerex g_05 coolant or any other reputable Mercedes Benz coolant? Thanks

thebigkendo:

Nna see business..


I have pure demineralised water for sale, it cheaper than coolant
Delivery to anywhere in Nigeria

nurey:


my own product is better, come and buy my de-ionized water

thebigkendo:


Your own is from the abroad it will more expensive, My own dey for Lagos

nurey:
thebigkendo, adanny01 and inception weldone ooo, all of you said the samething I am saying. distilled water won't cause rust but impurities is what causes rust. Una just wan use molecular chemistry derail the thread

one litre of distilled water from lab is around 500 to 1k, your tap water and even AC water isn't 100% distilled water.

thebigkendo:


And water in an engine cooling system will not boil at 100degrees C

thebigkendo:


Your own is from the abroad it will more expensive, My own dey for Lagos

thebigkendo:


My brother from SK
Even with your coolant, if you did not have a loosed clip (which released the pressure), you would have suffered the Same fate with the 08 accord or a blown gasket.

As for that coolant sensor on the 08 accord.. My 06 accord fan still functions normally even if I unplug the
coolant sensor under the radiator..
I first noticed this when I bought a salvaged toks 07 accord for a friend, scanned the car P2185(Engine Coolant Temperature Sensor 2 Circuit High) was stored, the radiator was replaced with that of an EOD, so it came with a fan switch instead of the ECT sensor, the sensor connector was not plugged it since it did not fit.. Yet cooling fans still came on & goes off as usual without putting on the AC, in my mind I was like Kazeem Diportivo has done it again!!
When I got home, I unplugged the ECT2 sensor on my car(same model) also.. And left the car idling, cooling fan still came on and went off as usual, ECU threw a P2185 also.

I just assumed that probably the ECU uses average of ECT1 & ECT2 for cooling when all is well but uses the good value when one fails.

So maybe that your friend's overheating episode was due to Some other factors aside the sensor.. Failing fan motor, relay, radiator cap, Kazeem overfilling the coolant reservoir tank etc

adanny01:


I hail bro.

To be precise, the hose affected was a small one called coolant separator line which delivers coolant to the throttle body. The leak itself was a tiny one and was whistling when i suddenly looked a my temp gauge to catch it far off normal. Water i replaced next morning to offset the loss was like a quarter of a liter since i stopped the leak quick enough.

With the leak, i expected the coolant to be boiling but there was nothing. My friend's water was boiling at 114 while my coolant was not at 113degrees. I was in a holdup he was on a freeway.

Going back to the fan switch issue. That engine overheated 2days after installing a toks engine that was bought close to 300k, imagine how stunned we were. One wire to the ECT sensor was missing so it wasnt connected. Before that episode, i had issues with not connecting the wire on the previous engine so we were to get and electrician to sort it out.

Let me tell you my experience with that sensor and this experience happened 3 times with the same car, all leading to overheating. Like you said correctly, with the sensor disconnected, fan toggles on and off. There is however, more problems to deal with not counting the code.

On the 3 occasions this wire was not connected on this car, the car overheated abnormally with no probable cause.

On all 3 occasions, car will overheat but temp gauge remains at normal position until the ignition is turned off and on again then it flies to the sky. On 2 of the occasions, having known there is an over heating issue, my scanner was connected for a live scan. On both occasions, live scan temp didnt correspond to temp gauge until the ignition is turn off and on again.

On the 3 occasions, temp was above 110 (precisely 111, 114, 117) but fan was off at the instance of discovery. The question i have no answer to is why would the fan be off at over a 100degrees? On normal live scans, fan toggles on at 98degrees on the 2008 accord while on my 2003 accord, 96 degrees (all at idle).

My last discovery was that, during live scans, with the sensor disconnected, the normal toggle on and off at 98 and 94degrees resp. changed. It became 104 and 96degress on and off resp at idle. When driving, it could hit 110 without turning on until i park, a minute later, it will come on and go off even before temp safely goes down. What i mean to say is the the fan actually goes berserk but it works.

Lastly, one thing i always do when a car overheats is to turn off the engine, turn back ignition to on but not starting the engine, turn on the AC. This usually starts the fan immediately. I do this to cool the engine for 2 mins or more before doing anything. I did this on all overheating experience with both cars. In fact, i drove my 2003 home on AC after the overheating episode and my fan was coming on with the AC clutch without experiencing overheating.

My conclusion was that, for whatever reason, i wont risk driving a 2008 accord with a disconnected ECT sensor.

Modified

Yes the car has ECT 1 and ECT 2. I think the radiator one is ECT 2.

I did notice one more thing during live scans and by the placement of the 2 sensors. ECT 1 is placed at the coolant outlet of the engine while ECT 2 is placed at the radiator outlet. There is bound to be a temperature difference with the 2 sensors. My guess is as good as yours that the ECU is programmed to turn on the fan as a precaution when there is no input from ECT 2. ECT 1 is the engine temp used by the ECT to determine stoichiometric values while ECT 2 controls engine temperature or tells the status of the cooling system.

Back to live scan, i did notice that fan toggles on at 98degrees, it takes sometime before the temp starts rolling back then fan goes off at 94 degrees. As at when fan goes off temp keeps going down to about 92 before it starts climbing. My car does same, fan is on at 96, goes off at 92 but the temp keeps going down to 89/90 even after the fan is off. This delay means the sensor that i am reading is not close to the one that the fan relies on, giving the explanation to why there are 2 sensors far from each other on the same system. So ECT 1 is engine coolant outlet temp and ECT 2 is engine coolant inlet temp.

Naturally, i would expect some repercussions if either of the sensors does not report. ECT 1 would cause fuel trim issues, ECT 2 will cause cooling system errors.

thebigkendo:


Well I still believe something is amiss on that 08 accord, probably the other sensor was failing also because I drove the toks 07 accord without ECT2 for about 2 weeks before replacing the sensor, no strange cooling system behaviour with/without AC.
As for when the fan should start, I think the value differ depending on certain parameters.
There was a time I did not drive my car for 2 days, on the 3rd day I decided to idle it, the cooling fans did not start till temperature got to 103C.
I was scared at 100C so I tested the fans by putting on the AC, it ran & the temp Dropped. With the AC off, I left it idling till the fan came up at 103C.

NB: When all this was happening i noticed a pending code (system too rich) which later disappeared

adanny01:


Well, in my 2003, it is fixed. 96 on, 92 off. On the 08, its 98 on 94 off when ECTs are connected but when ECT 2 is not connected, there is no sure value and sometimes failing completely.

Also, the 3 occasions i described happened twice on the old engine and once on a new engine. The missing wire was ground so the elect just tapped from anywhere. The radiator plastic top that broke was replaced and overheating became history. The engine change wasnt overheating related. It was crank shaft, bearings and oil pump related.

Lets not assume ECT 2 is useless just because fan comes on and off on idle.

GAZZUZZ:


yes you can, use toyota genuine long life coolant.

eagleeye3:

How much is this and do you have it in stock?