Do you need water wetter for 60/40

[james10]

Hey guys
Random question
Do you need water wetter or another alternative when using 60 percent water to 40 percent antifreeze?

 

[james10]

Or is this just for higher ratios?

 

[M-Sport fan]

Redline (and all of the other companies making similar products) claim that their product is most effective in 100% water.

But they all also claim that it still has some positive effects even in a 50/50 solution, and increasing effectiveness in any mixture with greater water content from there.

 

[james10]

Redline (and all of the other companies making similar products) claim that their product is most effective in 100% water.

But they all also claim that it still has some positive effects even in a 50/50 solution, and increasing effectiveness in any mixture with greater water content from there.

While your response is appreciated
Wondered what people with experience with these products recommended.. dont really trust marketing these days

 

[M-Sport fan]

I have run LubeGard's equivalent product ('Kool-It') in about a 60/40 solution, on a factory radiator/thermostat, in the peak of summer heat here (albeit NOT as bad as the U.S. Southwestern/Southern heat, but worse than most you would ever experience).

For whatever it's worth when running the above combo, when I was monitoring the actual coolant temps I never got above ~210*F, even in extended stop and go traffic, or pushing it as hard as I could within the confines of street driving in a totally untuned, and factory turbo FiST.

Just how much of that was the additive, and how much was the solution's water percentage, I do not know.

 

[Dialcaliper]

Redline (and all of the other companies making similar products) claim that their product is most effective in 100% water.

But they all also claim that it still has some positive effects even in a 50/50 solution, and increasing effectiveness in any mixture with greater water content from there.

Water is most effective in 100% water. But water freezes at +32F, so we add glycol which has a much lower freezing point, and is still able to carry about 2/3 the heat as water

Water wetter is just a detergent that helps cut surface tension for better surface contact and better heat transfer. It is not really required for anything and it’s very likely that the Motorcraft coolant already has something similar in it. You can run 60/40 Motorcraft without anything else, even by the factory recommendations. If you don’t expect to encounter cold, you can run even less, including pure water.

I’m running around 75/25 because California has mild winters and I don’t expect to encounter temperatures below 10F, and if I do I’ll need to bump up the glycol.

The second consideration is that the jug of factory coolant also contains corrosion inhibitors. When you cut the glycol % you are also reducing those as well, which means you need to replace . The factory service manual says anything between 60/40 and 40/60 is fine.

If you go lower on the glycol, long term corrosion can become an issue. Water wetter has mediocre corrosion protection - they say (or used to say) specifically that you must have run coolant in your system for some duration before attempting to run 100% water.

With my 75/25, I’m experimenting with an alternate “wetter” product - HyperKuhl from Norosion. The detergent effect in any of these products is minor and you can apparently achieve basically the same effect with a drop or two of Dawn dish soap, but this one is made by a company that has experience with corrosion inhibitors for industrial pure water cooling systems, which is something I’ve worked with in the past, and they claim to have a robust additive pack, I’m more interested in than that than the “water wetter” effect. It also has a cool gimmick which is a PH indicator that turns from blue to pink when the coolant starts to become too acidic, at which point it either needs changed or another dose of inhibitors added. Most coolant dyes will apparently mask it, but it seems to still show up well as a blue-green color when mixed with the fairly lightly dyed Motorcraft yellow

The downside is it is kind of spendy as it only comes in $50 4-packs direct from the company that makes it, and I haven’t found it sold anywhere else. Are their claims real? I don’t know, which is why I said “experimenting with”

 

[Erick_V]

I run a mix similar to @Dialcaliper (70/30) but I run water wetter with it. I also live in a climate where freezing isn't a worry for me. Even at the mix I run it would have to get to insane record lows for the coolant to freeze here in South Texas. Haven't noticed any corrosion issues. I have been running the same coolant for about 3 years now.

 

[M-Sport fan]

Water is most effective in 100% water. But water freezes at +32F, so we add glycol which has a much lower freezing point, and is still able to carry about 2/3 the heat as water

Water wetter is just a detergent that helps cut surface tension for better surface contact and better heat transfer. It is not really required for anything and it’s very likely that the Motorcraft coolant already has something similar in it. You can run 60/40 Motorcraft without anything else, even by the factory recommendations. If you don’t expect to encounter cold, you can run even less, including pure water.

I’m running around 75/25 because California has mild winters and I don’t expect to encounter temperatures below 10F, and if I do I’ll need to bump up the glycol.

The second consideration is that the jug of factory coolant also contains corrosion inhibitors. When you cut the glycol % you are also reducing those as well, which means you need to replace . The factory service manual says anything between 60/40 and 40/60 is fine.

If you go lower on the glycol, long term corrosion can become an issue. Water wetter has mediocre corrosion protection - they say (or used to say) specifically that you must have run coolant in your system for some duration before attempting to run 100% water.

With my 75/25, I’m experimenting with an alternate “wetter” product - HyperKuhl from Norosion. The detergent effect in any of these products is minor and you can apparently achieve basically the same effect with a drop or two of Dawn dish soap, but this one is made by a company that has experience with corrosion inhibitors for industrial pure water cooling systems, which is something I’ve worked with in the past, and they claim to have a robust additive pack, I’m more interested in than that than the “water wetter” effect. It also has a cool gimmick which is a PH indicator that turns from blue to pink when the coolant starts to become too acidic, at which point it either needs changed or another dose of inhibitors added. Most coolant dyes will apparently mask it, but it seems to still show up well as a blue-green color when mixed with the fairly lightly dyed Motorcraft yellow

The downside is it is kind of spendy as it only comes in $50 4-packs direct from the company that makes it, and I haven’t found it sold anywhere else. Are their claims real? I don’t know, which is why I said “experimenting with”

Norosion also used to have a product which had a strong corrosion inhibitor additive package, but without the Water Wetter, etc.-like surface tension release agents/detergents in the solution.

I have not dealt with them since I had my Z28 7+ years ago, so I am not sure if that product still exists or not.

 

[Dialcaliper]

Norosion also used to have a product which had a strong corrosion inhibitor additive package, but without the Water Wetter, etc.-like surface tension release agents/detergents in the solution.

I have not dealt with them since I had my Z28 7+ years ago, so I am not sure if that product still exists or not.

They have two versions - “Norosion” which is more like industrial derived inhibitors meant for iron/steel/copper cooling systems, and HyperKuhl which has additional additives appropriate for more modern systems that also have aluminum components. Both have cheesy names and “polymer dispersants” which are a fancy name for a surfactant, of which “detergents” are a type of, and something people have heard of so it seemed descriptive enough. My suspicion is that the surfactants in Norosion are probably similar but they advertise it more towards preserving classic iron block/copper radiator cars than for cooling performance.

The main difference I’m interested in is the aluminum additives, for obvious reasons.

The short answer is that Water Wetter is not really “needed” for any coolant mix, even straight water, but might have some benefit.

 

[WannabeST]

While your response is appreciated
Wondered what people with experience with these products recommended.. dont really trust marketing these days

I ran water wetter with Distilled water only in my cars. I go to the track and canyon a lot. If you get a leak with water it dries fast. If you leak coolant it does not dry and will require cleanup and will leave the surface slippery for other drivers and make a dangerous combination. I never had overheating issues in any cars and I've done this on 3 cars that have all been driven hard on and off the track.

 

[Dialcaliper]

I ran water wetter with Distilled water only in my cars. I go to the track and canyon a lot. If you get a leak with water it dries fast. If you leak coolant it does not dry and will require cleanup and will leave the surface slippery for other drivers and make a dangerous combination. I never had overheating issues in any cars and I've done this on 3 cars that have all been driven hard on and off the track.

Its probably not really news to anyone, but as long as you’re sure you’ll never be in below freezing conditions, water plus corrosion inhibitor is simply a much better coolant.

The main reason everyone uses antifreeze is like it says on the tin - prevents your radiator from freezing. All higher boiling point gains you is to slightly claw back some of the disadvantage of not using pure water.

Hence the OEM recommendation to use 60/40 in very hot conditions and 40/60 in extreme cold. If the higher boiling point of more glycol was actually an advantage, you’d see them recommending more glycol coolant in hot conditions, not the opposite.

 

[M-Sport fan]

^^^Is it solely because even though a coolant mixture in the above concentration ranges will raise the actual boiling point of the solution, a 100% water fill will actually conduct the engine's heat away from the water jackets in the engine and into the water to be dissipated by the radiator tubes/fins and into the air, much more quickly and efficiently?

 

[TyphoonFiST]

If you really wanna bring down Temps. Replace the Stock radiator with Koyo...whoosh... Mishimoto or Mountune radiator. This will be the Best option for keeping the temps down.

 

[Dialcaliper]

^^^Is it solely because even though a coolant mixture in the above concentration ranges will raise the actual boiling point of the solution, a 100% water fill will actually conduct the engine's heat away from the water jackets in the engine and into the water to be dissipated by the radiator tubes/fins and into the air, much more quickly and efficiently?

Every interface between the outside air and the engine block requires a temperature difference in order to heat across it.

Very simplified (there are multiple steps to each one)
- Radiator to air (conduction through the metal and surface effects)
- Cylinder wall to cooling jacket (conduction through the metal and surface effects)
- Coolant (in this case convection into the water from the cooling jacket, heating it up, at which point it flows to the radiator, where the radiator cools it down)

The sum of temperature changes at each interface determine how much heat is transferred. Or said differently, with a more efficient part in the system, the same amount of heat can be transferred with a lower temperature rise. The cylinder liner we can’t do much about, but adding a “better” radiator reduces the temperature rise across the interface between the air and the coolant.

In the case of the coolant, the temperature rise (basically stored heat) in the coolant is related to the heat flow. More heat, more temperature rise.

But since water holds more heat for every degree of increase, you can transfer the same heat with less temperature rise in the water than with glycol. Water holds about half again as much heat as pure glycol, blends come out somewhere in between.

But since we have a more or less fixed amount of heat to pull out of the engine for a given fuel and air input, and the exterior of the radiator side is pegged at outside air temperature, reducing the temperature rise at any step means keeping the cylinders cooler. And since what we really care about is cylinder temperature because of clearances, this is good, and the thermostat is there to make sure we don’t coo

Likewise if we turn up the boost and we need to dissipate more heat, the temperature difference between the cylinder wall and radiator rises. Unfortunately with the stock radiator, this results in overheating the cylinder walls.

So water is better in pretty much the same way a more efficient radiator is, as cuts a few degrees out of the chain.

For water and coolant below boiling, the temperature change is more or less linear per degree of heat transferred, and since our 50/50 mix is somewhere around 80% of the heat capacity of water, that means a 20% higher temperature rise. But the difference in boiling point between 50/50 and pure water is only about 10F, which while it sounds good on the surface, doesn’t matter a lot - you could make up the difference by running a radiator cap with 3-4psi higher pressure.

While the boiling point *might* save you on an extremely hot day going up a hill with a moderate load, the problem is that turning up the power and flogging the car, we’re trying to dump more heat, and by the time either water or mix coolant boils, you’re very close to fubar already, especially with modern engines designed to run hotter even under normal conditions (and already equipped with much higher pressure systems 23psi vs the 13-16psi systems of decades past.)

If anything, on a heavily stressed (track,etc) car, the lower boiling point of water is going keep your engine cooler for longer, but also pull you into the pits sooner and save your engine from even higher temperatures if something goes horribly wrong.

That was a bit of a novel, but the main reason to use glycol in your cooling system is the much lower freeze point.