well apparently i didnt mix enough coolant in when i did my engine swap, i swear to god i had a 60/40 ratio. well anyway i go to start my car yesterday and i starts briefly and dies so i keep trying, eventually its flodded, or at least i think, i go out today and notice the radiator hose is bulged a little more than is usually is, so i grab it and its damn near solid, i then go to inspect everything and all the lines with water in them are frozen, my radiator and hoses are now in a cooler in front of a propane heater and there is a base heater under my hood in hopes of de thawing the thing. i just hope i didnt **** the engine block up.. garr..

 

oh man that really sucks. I'm getting paranoid and am about to go test my radiator fluid

 

Did you use premixed coolant and then mix it with water, its an easy mistake to make.

 

good luck

 

I use 50% antifreeze/coolant and 50% water. My car runs great, and its about 30* here

 

i think lastnight is what did the trick, it was like 8 degrees ferenheit lastnight. wish me luck on the progress, ive got all the hoses that have coolant in them off the car and a base heater under the hood, its coming along slow, i just hope i didnt crack the housings.

 

I broke the impeller off a waterpump in one of my other junker cars when that happened to me once. I semi did it on purpose though, I knew it was frozen, I knew there was only water in it, and I knew something bad would happen when I tried to start it, but it was a running parts car that I didnt intend on fixing or driving, so I tried it. It was sort of one of those "Ive always wanted to know what would happen if..." type things. Later when I tore the engine apart, I found the impeller just rattling around inside the water pump housing. Spun it right off the shafty thing somehow. It was kinda cool.

~T.J.

 

Yeah just using 50/50 premixed is the best thing for the money

 

you guys made me scared, I'm gonna go make sure everything is alright with mine tomorow. I'm just starting to realize how damn cold it gets up here in Minnesota.

 

How cold does it get in Spokane?

 

ya hit like -2 yesterday in plymouth, **** that was coldddddddd

 

damn... and i bitch if i get a wee bit of frost on the car from 43 degrees. (just takes too long to warm up) takes mine a good 5-10 minutes for the choke to kick off. what about you guys up in minnesota?

 

I drive mine with the heater or defrost on full blast and my ears are still frozen by the time I get home. FB heaters suck.

Supposed to be a high temp here today of 6 degrees above zero! Woohoo!

Car runs freaking strong in this temp though...

 

Aye they do... plenty of condenced air. Not sure if these cars have it or not but a trick i learned for the summer is to put a resister in the way of the air temp sensor so that in the summer the car thinks that it has colder air. but not sure how it works on RX7s still really green...

I need to check mine also... but i still see really green fluid in the over flow tank. a little mirky guess it is time for a coolant flush.

best of luck on the fozen issue

 

I refuse to but pre-mixed antifreeze. If your not smart enough to figure out how to add water, you'll probably just pour it into the oil filler anyway. It's just another way for companies to raise the price on something and hope you won't notice. Anyway, I always mix my antifreeze with Dasani water, with just a little slice of lemon.

 

-5 with wind chill in Buffalo

 

Minus 25 Celsius this morning.

Gregs story scared me a bit because my car is in storage and I haven't checked on it for a while. I pulled off the cap and the fluid in the rad is still liquid, so i figure I'll be safe for the rest of the winter. It doesn't get much colder than -25 here.

 

damn! -25 thats nuts, we hit zero degrees lastnight.

 

-25 celcius? now you know why the Canucks make such great wiskey

Kenn

 

^^^lol

 

I myself was worried about this exact thing...my coolant looked really wattery after I did the intake gasket and O-rings so I went to canadian tire and got myself an ethylene glycol meter thingy. When I checked it the arrow shot right up to the most protection it shows. Im still a little skeptical still but at least it passed the first test. My question is, are those antifreeze testers accurate at all or is a refractometer the only way to go? I am prety sure it will be fine but you can never be too sure right? (especially here in winnipeg) So prety much, did my meter thing tell me what I needed to know or should I look into it again? anyone ever have problems with the cheap testers? I would be so pissed if I found my engine frozen after checking it.

 

Gen1onr, when is the last time you changed it? even if it passes the antifreeze test there are other properties that change after a year or so.

Most service manuals reccomend an antifreeze change every year, due to the build up of corrosive agents in the antifreeze, and while many new types of antifreeze have come out, for the price of a gallon of quality antifreeze, I would just change it, your car will thank you and your wallet will also thank you in the long run.

kenn

 

I did the intake stuff maybe a month or two ago. So I think im good as long as that meter was accurate enough. If its fresh and passed the test Im good to go? or should I find someone with a refractometer? Or should I just pull it out of its winter home and give it some fresh greeeen stuff?...Id really like to do as little as possible. But if it could cost me big, Im definately up for the preventative maintainence.

 

Long ago (15yrs), and far away (northern N.Y.), my friend had a chevy monza that froze up.
A friend of his used some of the same "cheap" antifreeze and tested it, it was very weak.

I think those testers work on the density of the liquid and are accurate, but I really don't now that much about it.

Put some of the mix in your freezer, and see if it freezes, although thats not as cold as it gets in the great white north, dare ay.

 

I live in Ottawa, Canada, home to some of the coldest winters you've ever felt. To give you an idea, since -40 Celcius and -40 Farenheit are the same (the only point on the temp scale that is), we actually get that cold a few times a winter with the wind chill. (Thought it averages around -20 to -30 C most of the winter). That should give you an idea. Calgary has it worse from what I hear though.

premixed 50/50 ethelyne glycol antifreeze does us just fine all year around. I stopped mixing my own coolant a few years ago for a few reasons:

1. If I use premix, and I always have a 2L jug of premix to top the car off with, I know I'm guaranteed that I always have enough antifreeze. I never have to guess "should I top up with water this time, or should I top up with antifreeze? what did I add last time?"

2. If you use tap water when mixing your coolant, the minerals in the water can cause deposits inside the engine's coolant passageways which restrict flow. That's a bad thing. It's especially bad in areas with "hard water" but even in areas with "soft water" it's still a concern. Premix is done with demineralized water, so there's never any danger of deposit buildup.

3. Premix costs *almost* the same as buying full coolant. It may be a dollar or two more expensive in the end (buying 10L of premix vs. 5L of full stuff to mix with) but it's not so prohibitively expensive that it puts it out of my range.

4. Premix stands temps down to -40 (and possibly lower, though I'd never want to feel that) with no problems. Good enough for me!

Jon