i bought my rx7 recently and noticed that the 19 year old 'wigga' redneck that i bought the car from was using i think water as the antifreeze. is that bad for the rotors since i know you can use water for piston engines?

sorry the title should say using water as antifreeze

 

you mean like straight water as coolant?
If so, you can....just beware that rust will occur in the system.

 

yes, that's what i mean. how would i go about checking the rust?

 

The problem with water is it will begin to evaporate.

 

Drain it, refill with proper mix.

 

if the3 water is reddish-orange, that usually means the irons are rusting up, darker the color, the more rust there is in the cooling system.
To get rid of it would require multiple flushing.

 

thanks for the reply.

 

You may want to do something fast before the temperature drops below freezing and your engine gets destroyed. I recommend flushing it really well and filling with a mixture of distilled water and ethylene glycol antifreeze (green not orange) as per the service manual. If you have extra time, it may not be such a bad idea to replace the thermostat while you are at it.

 

I agree with what everyone else wrote^^ one of the problems with using water instead of antifreeze is rust AND water has a higher freezing point and lower boiling point then antifreeze so it has a greater chance to freeze(destroying your system) or it will evaporate quicker and will not cool your engine down as well as antifreeze will. just flush out the system a couple of times and replace with antifreeze

 

it doesn't really destroy the engine.... that's what freeze plugs are for.

 

It can destroy the engine if all the water runs out of the blown freeze plugs once he starts the car unaware the water has frozen then thawed and the car overheats.

 

Buy 10 gallons of Distilled water, usually can be found for maybe a buck a gallon.

Then buy 4 bottles of those Prestone Radiator Cleaner stuff.

Drain it, pour 1 gallon of distilled in first, then pour 2 bottles of those cleaner stuff into it, then add Distilled again until it fills up.

Run your car for couple of days. Just drive it like normal. if you make short trips, try to drive 100 miles first.

Drain it after about 100 miles

Repeat the cleaner, drive, and drain again

after your 2nd treatment, this time, pour nothing but straight distilled water into the system, again run it for another 100 miles or so.

Drain, then add regular Anti-Freeze, depends on your location, minimum should be 30/70 (antifreeze/distilled)

 

man, that is some overkill there, bet you could drink out of your cooling system nycgps, if both distilled water & antifreeze werent poison that is

 

Water actually cools the engine better than antifreeze.

The term "freeze plug" is a misnomer for a core plug. They are designed simply to fill casting holes, and will not pop before your gaskets and seals. If you doubt this, then simply fill your system with 100% water and let the car sit in the dead of Winter, and then post pictures on this forum showing how the "freeze plugs" popped out and saved your engine.

You can flush the engine with tap water. I used a regular garden hose for a flush and then filled with distilled water / coolant as regular maintenance on my first new 13B engine, and the internals were nearly spotless when it was torn down 10 years later. My mechanic said it was the cleanest engine he had ever seen.

 

Freeze plugs won't help you if the block freezes solid.

Case in point, I just disassembled an engine on Tuesday that had frozen solid due to not enough antifreeze in the coolant. The starter would not turn the engine, nor would a long breaker bar on the front hub.

During disassembly, the damage became obvious.

After the water pump housing was removed and the engine turned over, oil began pouring from the cooling passages.



The rear rotor was OK, but the front rotor was another story. The water froze in the center iron, expanded, and blew out the area just above the intake port. This locked the rotor in place and prevented the engine from rotating. Some of the cooling passage walls also broke off and fell into the oil pan.





DO NOT RUN STRAIGHT WATER! Not only can it freeze and cost you an engine, but it also doesn't lubricate the water pump nor does it contain any corrosion inhibitors.

 

holy crap

 

Hence the reason why "freeze plug" is a redneck misnomer for the core plugs on our engines (and most other engines), lol.

Anyway, thanks for posting the pictures for the people who refuse to listen to me.

 

****... that makes me wince... I took a trip up north in my rx and during the trip, I encountered about 4" of hard packed snow/ice over the mountains... got into a ditch cause I had no chains (stupid me). I got the car out and got to where I was going, only to go out the next morning and realise what happened. My master/slave cylinders for my clutch ran dry, and I was very low on coolant, so I dumped some water in there to top it off until I could get antifreeze in there... long story short the car sat a week in the snow with idk how much antifreeze total in the system, but thank god that didnt happen to me.

 

Not always - if they were running water and something like Redline water-wetter, the resulting mix will also be reddish/pinkish (but also clear).

As was mentioned earlier, straight water carries heat better than a coolant/water mix. This is what I run at the track for just that reason. The problems with this setup are 1) lack of lubrication, and 2) freezing of the mixture and thus cracking the block.

To deal with #1, I use a bottle or two of water-wetter, which will provide lubrication. To deal with #2, I drain some of the mix out in the winter and add in some ethylene-glycol (standard green stuff) to prevent freezing. Here is the mid-south, we'll only get a couple nights down in the single digits each year, so I don't need to add that much to the mix.

In any case the solution is as the others mentioned - flush the system and replace with a proper mix of water/coolant. It doesn't get too cold up at Ft. Campbell, so you should be fine.

Since you just bought the car I would recommend (if you have the time and facilities) to replace *all* the fluids, especially given the examples of "redneck engineering" you found in other area of the vehicle. Drain and refill the tranny as well as the diff.

Good luck,

-b

 

Of course you could, but why would someone wants to add more minerals to an already fucked up cooling system? thats just asking for more trouble.

If someone is cheap about that 10 bux worth of distilled water, he/she shouldn't even own a car in the first place.


Pure Water can carry A LOT more heat than any Pure Anti-freeze, I seen someone runs nothing but 100% EG anti-freeze and he wondered why his car overheats everytime he drives and he kept bitching at Toyota saying their car sucks ... rofl

You need some Anti-freeze in the system because : to lube the water pump seals and most anti-freeze carries some sort of rust inhibitor to prevent rust.

If you're 99.999% sure your area will never see freezing water temp, then you can run all distilled water + stuff like Water Wetter/ICE/etc. but some people over at the 8club said that WW/ICE does not do **** and might actually decrease the water's cooling ability. So use it at ur risk

 

Simply flushing the engine with tap water for 5 minutes will not cause mineral deposits to adhere to the cooling system internals. It's not such a bad idea to chase it down with a gallon of distilled water prior to closing the drain plugs, but even that probably isn't necessary. It certainly doesn't hurt to use distilled water for the entire flush procedure, but I see no significant advantage in doing so.

Yeah, a lot of people on this forum run a 50/50 mix in 100deg weather and wonder why their 400hp engine is having cooling problems, lol.

 

well i found out that there are also incompetent Jamaican mechanics. i got a coolant flush but **** forgot to drain my reservoir and my coolant is now all slush. isnt a coolant flush include reservoir flush too?

 

I think you need some water + radiator cleaner to remove some of the **** in your cooling system.you got this car from some 18 yr old, well, god knows how long those water has been in that car.


50/50 isnt really the problem, the lack of cooling is.

People usually up the power by 2-3 times but not doing a **** to the stock cooling system. then starts crying when the engine blew up. and who they gonna blame? Mazda. for some reason this happens a lot in the Rotary community. and this is why Rotary have such a bad name.

 

Most shops do not flush the reservoir, and it has nothing to do with their ethnic background. FYI many of the oil change chains suck the oil out of the top of the engine as opposed to draining it out of the bottom, so be careful of that too.

It is usually better to perform the maintenance yourself as long as it is within your ability. Military DIY auto centers are great because there is a mechanic there to help guide your maintenance if necessary, and sometimes classes are available. Just make sure you have a ground guide when driving your car onto the lift.
http://www.fortcampbellmwr.com/Recreation/autoCrafts/

It depends on the extent of the cooling problem. Sure, many other factors are in place, and the 50/50 mix is one of the factors that causes a lack of cooling ability. If that were not so, then racers would be running 50/50 as opposed to water.

 

Well, there is also that issue with coolant being rather slick and not evaporating all that well when you blow off a hose connection at high RPMs and dump the contents of your radiator at the end of the main straight. In the braking zone. Yup. Got extensive first-hand experience in that area.

-b