what if all i have is food stamps?
is that okay??.......

how bout monopoly money....that's just as good right...?

 

No way, it's the other way around man :P:

 

chaser. no hang over

 

I know this is besides the point and this thread is a couple montha old but I hade a blown coolant seal and it was blowing tones of smoke. it was my only car at the time so you know what I did.. drained all the coolant and put regular water it doesnt burn white like coolant or smell. Pluss coolant has smaller molocules than regular out of the tap water so it getts into smaller cracks I ran plain jane water and drove the car another month before I got another motor.


Chirs

 

Oh damn, I would start with another core

 

Good luck with your rebuild, you may get lucky like I did. Mine was massive coolant seal failure, and everything still was in good shape internally, just full of water. Instead of drinking, I got to work straight away in a bud's shop and we had the motor out and on a stand a few hours later. Next day, we finished tear down and started cleaning everything up. 2 months later, its a completely different car. Stock port w/ stock twins to Large Street w/ Single turbo made it a whole new animal.

 

Entirely different events? Not necessarily....

Did the coolant seals go first? Any ethylene glycol based coolant (common antifreeze) in the combustion chamber will severely reduce the octane rating of the mixture and result in detonation.

Once again: Any antifreeze in the fuel mixture will cause severe detonation. I don't think this is widely known as it is counter intuitive, but it is fact. It is probably responsible for many unusual, unexplained detonation related engine failures.

To this end: Never, never, put ethyene glycol into a water injection system!

 

i'll join you in the drinking game, i'm waiting for a new engine myself..

 

Hmmm, a friend of mine has been running windshield wiper fluid (water, meth, small amounts of ethylene glycol) in his FD's aquamist system since about 2001 on his dedicated road race car with zero problems. I have been doing the same thing for about the last year on my FD. Perhaps there isn't a problem b/c the w/w fluid contains only traces of coolant?

Btw, I'm not doubting you, but I've been around these cars for almost a decade and have seen many many blown engines as a shop owner and engine builder and have never seen anything like what you describe.

 

I can't speak specifically to rotary failures except to say that ethylene glycol in the concentrations normally encountered in coolant will promote detonation in any internal combustion engine.

I don't think it's well understood, but coolant ingestion often leads to seemingly unrelated failures in piston engines. A common scenario might be a small head gasket leak in which coolant is introduced into a cylinder resulting in detonation in only that one cylinder--which sounds like a rod knock (and is often mistaken for one) typically collapsing the piston skirt and/or top ring land and pounding out the rod bearing--eventually leading to a real rod knock and lot of junk parts shortly thereafter. Oh, the engine just blew.... just being the key word.

Anyway, I have never seen it discussed in the rotary forum, but I want to raise the point that if a coolant seal fails in a manner that leads to raw coolant getting back into the intake cycle of a running rotary engine, then it would likely result in detonation. Therefore, there may be detonation related failures that were caused by coolant leaks, as opposed to AFR problems, overboost, timing, etc.. Unfortunately, it may be difficult or impossible to tell exactly what caused the onset of detonation and if it was a cause or effect.

I don't know at exactly what percentage of dilution the ethylene glycol ceases to be a probem. At the usual coolant concentrations it will definitely cause damage and it doesn't take much (by volume) to do it. My point was really directed at someone who might be tempted to dump regular antifreeze in their WI during cold weather or in lieu of methanol--don't do it!

Rich, I am curious as to just how much ethylene glycol you think is in your washer fluid mix.

Joe

 

this thread fails without pics of torn down motor and carnage.

BMW windshield washer antifreeze:

Ethanol < 65%
Propylene Glycol < 15%
Alcohol, Ethoxylated, Sulfates, Sodium Salts < 5%
2-Butanone, Ethyl Methyl Ketone < 1%
Water < 30%
Volatile Organic Compounds 56.4%

Took this directly off the label. Of course this is concentrate. Then we fill it the rest of the way up with water.