hey hypotheticly, what would happen if you put 100% antifreeze in your car and filled the whole cooling system with it. someone told me it will build too much preasure and boil over. is this true?

 

no

 

Antifreeze is thinner so there is a possibility it could make it through the seals... but why would you JUST put antifreeze in your car?

 

it would work fine for a while, it wont build and boil over....

however there is a chemical reaction called electrollisis SP??

where the antifreeze will actually start to eat away at the alluminum housings of the engine!!! this only happens if your running too much antifreeze ( like 100%) and the coolent is very old and starts to break down or somthing like that....

 

wtf are you people smoking?


antifreeze is just what the term indicates, it prevents the cooling system from freezing over. for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction thus the antifreeze also reduces the cooling systems efficiency to keep the engine cool.

antifreeze (with the exception of Dex coolant) is not thinner at the molecular level than water so why would it leak?

oxides in coolant/water are what cause electrolysis, not the coolant. use distilled water, untreated well water has tons of minerals which will cause havoc with electrolysis on engine internals!

edit: coolant actually has corrosion inhibitors in it as well as lubricants for the water pump just to note.

 

It would kill your water pump.
Pure coolant is more viscous that water; pure coolant would induce added resistance to the water pump turning.
Also, cooling efficiency drops, cause water has actually better heat transfer properties (specific heat?).



-Ted

 

Go to the Prestone web site and read about it for yourself.

 

LMAO!

 

I was thinking the same thing!

Some of those answers sounds like they are from a bunch of crack smokers hanging out on the corner speed shop.

Karacks answer is correct

 

http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/et...col-d_146.html

there is a site on it. I would use a 50/50 solution. 60/40 if you are in a very very cold area of the world. Do not use tap water, it has chlorine in it (among other things) which will affect engine internals. Like Ted said, it does have less specific heat capacity than clean H2O does, which is why there is a water pump in autos, to have more circulated volume. "In a 50% solution with operational temperatures above 36F the specific heat capacity is decreased with aprox. 20%. The reduced specific heat capacity must be compensated by circulating more fluid." Anitfreeze will also raise the bp of water about ~25 degrees F . I think* the viscosity thing should only be important below operating temps of an engine, from what i have found, water's usual viscosity is about 0.89 where as C2H6O2 has about .70 to .95 in engine operating temps and I think anywhere from 9.0 to 2.0 below op-temps (unit is mu i believe ?).

Then again, I could be an idiot , so check for yourself.

 

It's a galvonic reaction, it decays two different types of metals that contact eachother.

*I hope* I just passed college chemistry, basically the chemical complexity of anti freeze causes the changes in the Ksp which changes the boiling and freezing points; however some of the complexities are electrolytes and therefore make water more conductive, the less you dilute the anti freeze the more the galvonic reaction between the two metals will occur. It's kind of like a battery.

 

you are correct Ted, its specific heat. I know my sciences also tap water has calcium in with builds up in the rad, housings, and just about anywhere else coolant runs. also distilled water doesn't conduct electricity.

 

That would be Galvanic. Galvonic is not a word.

A galvanic reaction is any reaction which produces DC electricity. Dissimilar metal reactions as you describe are a galvanic reaction.

When an electrolyte, an ionized compound, exists between the metals, the reaction is electrolytic, so technically, you were wrong in correcting him (except maybe for his spelling of electrolysis).

A battery, which you allude to, is an electrolytic cell. The battery acid is the electrolyte.

This sort of material should have been covered in Chem 12 back in HS.

 

It is a lead storage battery, which is a galvanic cell. Electrolytic cells use electrons to drive a nonspontaneous reaction -> exact opposite of a car battery.

 

I forgot all the terms, but you guys are right.
I knew "oxides" was the wrong term, and it's actually "ions" which cause the corrosion.


-Ted