Thot I would pass along some advice. A mechanic friend of mine was telling me that especially on aluminum engines the antifreeze should be changed out every two years or engine damage could result. Apparently the anti reacts with the aluminum and the anti degrades rather quickly.

 

Most mechanics and the antifreeze manufaturers suggest changing the antifreeze every two years even with cast iron blocks.

 

Yep, I've heard this as well. IIRC, my owners manual says every 30K miles.

 

I am not going to tell you no.

I will tell you that you should be using a Phosphate Free antifreeze and Deionized water mix.

I'll tell you more if you care.

 

Please do.

 

Deionized water will not conduct. You have a cistern of water....if you add a charge to it by connecting a 12v DC power supply what are you going to get using water with particulate all in it? Electrolysis. You will dissolve metals and plate other things you don't want plated.

Phosphate attacks aluminum, The guys with Aluminum blocks learned the hard way when the put regular antifreeze in their block just as they had for 40 years.......Pitted aluminum especially around the heated areas. Head Gasket anyone?

Deionized water is available in Gallon Jugs at the Grocery store. Phosphate free antifreeze is expensive. But so is replacing that Heater core.

 

Thanks for the heads up!

I'm gonna start looking in the grocery store for the deionized water....I was using steam distilled in my system.

Dumb Q....who make non-phosphate coolant....any auto part store carries that stuff. I'm using GM 1825-M coolant in my system also but it's getting a bit hard to find...local dealer don't stock it any longer.

Thanks again for the info!

Tom

 

No such thing as de-ionized water.

Some hydrogens unbind, giving you h3O (acidic), and hO (basic) in equilibrium.

Basic stuff binds / deposits ON stuff (like soap, onto your hands). Acidic stuff removes FROM your hands (like skin, from your hands)


Mr wizard out

 

My other car is a BMW, so I know about using phosphate free antifreeze in that car. If you can't find it anywhere else, the BMW dealer sells it. It is kind of pricey, I think they charged me 15-20 bucks for a gallon.

 

Of course there is such a thing as de-ionized water. It is used in solutions for all kinds of products and has been for years. Now I don't know about buying it in gallon jugs at the grocery store. Distilled water has worked fine in my cars for years.

 

Yes, but it is purified of all other ions increasing it's electrical resistance.

 

Although they do sell Deionized water, I guess he is technically correct. H3O and OH ions are still present so I don't know if it's the best name for the stuff...

 

Not correct. It still conducts. It just has a much higher resistance.

 

Maybe someone would be willing to stand in a puddle of de-ionized water and test that for us. All water is a poor conductor but it still conducts electricity.

 

When you are talking grocery store, deionized and distilled will be pretty much the same, they are just two different ways of getting most of the ions and other impurities out of water. In my other life, I was a water treatment engineer, actually worked on a device to make "ultra-pure" water for the semiconductor industry. We used ultra filtration, then electro-dialysis, then reverse osmosis, then ion-exchange, then ultra-violet light to treat the water.

one thing to remember, there is no such thing as pure water.

When water gets cleaned up real good, it will start dissolving most anything it comes in contact with, including glass and other pipe materials. Of course the amounts are insignificant to 99.9999% of the situations, not enough to notice a degradation in the pipe, but enough to cause a problem when cleaning semiconductors.

For our cars, either distilled or deionized from the grocery store is fine. And depending on where you are, tap water is fine. I think less than a dollar a gallon for distilled water is cheap insurance that I am not putting extra minerals in my cooling system that may cause a problem down the road.

 

De-ionized vs distilled water. De-ionized is produced with ion exchange and/or reverse osmosis. This produces near pure water that is very slightly on the corrosive side. The more exposed to the air, the more CO2 is absorbed resulting in a little more corrosiveness. But, on a pH scale of 0 to 14, 7 being neutral, the de-ionized water will be low lower than 6. HArdly a corrosion concern.

Distilled water is an evaporative process that leaves contaminants behind. Not as pure as de-ionized, but close.

Anyway, by using a 50/50 solution of anti-freeze, any corrosiveness is neutralized and there will be no deposition of impurities.

Just thought I'd bring this to the front. I've got 35 years as an industrial chemist. Experts in any field are what forums are worth.

 

Hey Good Post here!!! Really helpful !!! I was just in my garage checking the fluids and air in my tires and was looking over my AntiFreeze. I have not changed it in 2 yrs.....I don't drive my Vette Daily...the antifreeze looks clean.....although I don't have an antifreeze checker....I was wondering If I should just change it anyway. This Post really helped me make a definate decision and also to invest in and make sure I get Phosphate Free antifreeze and make sure I use distilled water. Thats why this Forum ROCKS!!!!

 

As someone said, there is no pure water. It wants to return to a contaminated state. So it will absorb whatever it can come into contact with.

So to throw out my Quals I have a Degree in Physics and I worked for two years on a Reverse osmosis filtering system for the purpose of reclaiming and re using Antifreeze back in the early 90s.

Water...PURE water (which does not exist) does not conduct. The contaminates in contained in the water do. The lower the Contamination the higher the resistance. So no matter how we are getting "Clean" water, Distilled or Deionized, we use that over Tap water from the garden hose.

Your mother knew this as she always had a gallon jug for her Iron. And she told you not to drink it......and that is why it is in the Grocery store.

One of the phosphate free Brands that I readily know is Sierra. But any brand that is PF will have the words proudly displayed on the front. They also will say "Aluminum Safe" on the front. Both of these will be justification for being twice the price as the one sitting next to it.

You can also look on the back and see if it is Propylene Glycol or Ethylene Glycol.

Propylene is what you want.

 

And to answer, Should I change my two year old stuff.

If you think about it That water absorbing contaminates over time...even in a sealed system....but it is not sealed as the coolant transfers back and forth from the overflow all the time.

So yes that stuff is getting more and more contaminated as time goes by. It'll keep it from freezing or over heating, but it still is a mini electrolysis lab experiment.

 

Wow, all I can say is.

DEIONIZED WATER

Years ago, high purity water was used only in limited applications. Today, deionized (Dl) water has become an essential ingredient in hundreds of applications including: medical, laboratory, pharmaceutical, cosmetics, electronics manufacturing, food processing, plating, countless industrial processes, and even the final rinse at the local car wash.

THE DEIONIZATION PROCESS
The vast majority of dissolved impurities in modern water supplies are ions such as calcium, sodium, chlorides, etc. The deionization process removes ions from water via ion exchange. Positively charged ions (cations) and negatively charged ions (anions) are exchanged for hydrogen (H+) and hydroxyl (OH-) ions, respectively, due to the resin's greater affinity for other ions. The ion exchange process occurs on the binding sites of the resin beads. Once depleted of exchange capacity, the resin bed is regenerated with concentrated acid and caustic which strips away accumulated ions through physical displacement, leaving hydrogen or hydroxyl ions in their place.


DEIONIZER TYPES
Deionizers exist in four basic forms: disposable cartridges, portable exchange tanks, automatic units, and continuous units. A two-bed system employs separate cation and anion resin beds. Mixed-bed deionizers utilize both resins in the same vessel. The highest quality water is produced by mixed-bed deionizers, while two-bed deionizers have a larger capacity. Continuous deionizers, mainly used in labs for polishing, do not require regeneration.

TESTING Dl WATER QUALITY
Water quality from deionizers varies with the type of resins used, feed water quality, flow, efficiency of regeneration, remaining capacity, etc. Because of these variables, it is critical in many Dl water applications to know the precise quality. Resistivity/ conductivity is the most convenient method for testing Dl water quality. Deionized pure water is a poor electrical conductor, having a resistivity of 18.2 million ohm-cm (18.2 megohm) and conductivity of 0.055 microsiemens. It is the amount of ionized substances (or salts) dissolved in the water which determines water's ability to conduct electricity. Therefore, resistivity and its inverse, conductivity, are good general purpose quality parameters.

Because temperature dramatically affects the conductivity of water, conductivity measurements are internationally referenced to 25°C to allow for comparisons of different samples. With typical water supplies, temperature changes the conductivity an average of 2%/°C, which is relatively easy to compensate. Deionized water, however, is much more challenging to accurately measure since temperature effects can approach 10%/°C! Accurate automatic temperature compensation, therefore, is the "heart' of any respectable instrument.

Mr. ordinary guy with a little education out