I have always believed that water is by far a better dissipater of heat than antifreeze. You need antifreeze to lower the freezing point of the coolant and to raise the boiling point as everyone knows. My question is why does the manual state that the intercooler must be filled with 100% antifreeze, yet the radiator they say 50/50? I believe that using more water in the IC resovoir would help the IC cool the incoming air charge better. I may be wrong, can some of my fellow Lightning owners shed some light on this for me.

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00 Black Lightning
No mods yet, just enjoying her stock for now!

 

When mine started leaking they told me to put straight water in it until they change the intercooler. A mixture of antifreeze and water will stay unfrozen at a lower temp than straight antifreeze. Who knows???????

 

The RedLine Oil company markets a coolant additive called Water Wetter. The following quote is from their website.

"Water has amazingly superior heat transfer properties compared to virtually any other liquid cooling medium - far superior to glycol-based coolants. As shown in Table 1, water has almost 2.5 times greater thermal conductivity compared to glycol coolants"

Maybe their product would work well in our application.....

http://www.redlineoil.com/wwti.htm

 

A lot of people here use it, me included.

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Red '00 Lightning,
Adopted 4/19/00,
Power Surge Performance enhanced,
Sound effects provided by Flowmaster,
Track time pending...

 

I looked on the Water Wetter page and I found an interesting quote:

"For maximum temperature reductions use the most water and the least antifreeze possible to prevent freezing in your climate"

That would lead me to believe that it would be very beneficial to use a water/coolant mixture in the intercooler.

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00 Black Lightning
No mods yet, just enjoying her stock for now!

 

Looking at the solution in the intercooler it doesnt look like pure antifreeze. ( I know it is not scientific, and no my eyes are not calibrated ) It looks like the same stuff in the radiator, meaning a mixture of antifreeze and water. Antifreeze bottles say on them NOT to use more than 50%-70% mixture. I have the factory mix plus a bottle of watter wetter.

Doug

 

Oops! Posted twice.

-tvw

[This message has been edited by tvw (edited 06-12-2000).]

 

Is there any chance that the reason for using 100% antifreeze as the intercooler coolant relates to pump life? Maybe there is a lubrication issue.

-tvw

 

I just checked mine with a refractometer. It was 55% from the factory. The freeze point of 100% Ethylene glycol (EG) is -6 Deg F according to Prestone. The specific heat and thermal conductivity of water is better than EG. So the more water you use the better. The down side is you lose corrosion inhibitors and freeze point and boil point protection if you go with low EG concentrations.

 

I was told by the dealer to put in 50/50. I would think that the Water Wetter could be used with just water in the summer months, but put coolant back into the mix in cold months.

 

PFA,
Oops, check below

[This message has been edited by SVT-Snake (edited 06-12-2000).]

 

PFA,
You might not want to totally go with 100% water and water wetter in the summer. Antifreeze also raises the boiling point and I am not sure how hot the fluid in the intercooler gets, the water wetter does raise the boil. point but not sure how much, just my 2 cents.

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00 Black Lightning
No mods yet, just enjoying her stock for now!

 

Check with Joelightning. I believe he has temperature records of interecooler fluid with and without his cooling fans. I don't believe that the intercooler fluid comes even close to the boiling point of water, let alone that of an antifreeze mixture. Lubrication could be a factor, however.

adp
#1530
Black '99