Ph balance of coolant?

[rot]

A year ago I flushed out the old coolant and 1 year later the mechanic states the PH is 6 and needs to be changed.
I probably only driven the car less than 8k miles.

I read Ph is an indicator of when to change, but like I said only a year and under 8k.

also
Has anyone used Royal Purple,s Purple Ice coolant additive, Is this worth using?

Thank you

 

[Colt45ws]

Year,Make,Model and how many miles?
By flushing I assume all the old coolant was removed and replaced, not a radiator drain and fill? Did you DIY or have someone else do it

Those additives are usually for racing where they use plain water, not really for improving a antifreeze mixture.

 

[Olas]

Tell him that you'll change it yourself and stay away from coolant additives unless you run pure distiller in a racecar.

 

[Merkava_4]

I do a drain and fill every year -- that way I never have to worry about flushing.

coolant and distilled water at 50/50

 

[mctmatt]

Just as Colt 45 said when you read the bottle of Purple Ice and other coolant additives they all recommend to use plain drinking water and not distilled. Here is a link from HyperLube Super Coolant http://www.hyperlube.com/mc_images/category/8/distilled_water_in_cooling_systems.pdf

Just a quick question did you flush the coolant or did you pay to have it flushed. I paid to have mine flushed several years ago and the shop did a very poor job. Less than a year later I needed to do the job again but this time I did it myself and have never paid anyone again for this job. Now it is just drain and fill .

 

[larryinnewyork]

Quote:
I paid to have mine flushed several years ago and the shop did a very poor job. Less than a year later I needed to do the job again but this time I did it myself and have never paid anyone again for this job. Now it is just drain and fill .

Exact same thing happened to me.
Now I just do a Drain-N-Fill every 2 years using Zerex G-05 & distilled water.

7 on the Ph scale in neutral.
Op says he has Ph of 6.
Maybe someone can comment on how far from Ph7 you can go.

I always wanted to try the Ph strips but I believe they have an Expiration Date so may not be good for home use (go bad and throw off reading).

I figure if I keep the fluid fresh, I won't need the strips.

 

[kschachn]

We've had some fairly lengthy threads on pH of coolant mixtures in the past. Coolants are buffered solutions, so they will attempt to keep a narrow range of pH values up until the buffer is depleted. So whatever you measure of a virgin mixture should be approximately what you will measure throughout the "lifetime" of the coolant, if it starts deviating radically from that value then the coolant is past the point of being able to control the pH.

Make sure you are measuring the pH of a water/glycol mixture since a pH measurement of pure glycol will be meaningless. A pH of 6 while slightly acid is likely well within the ability to measure. Anything around 7 is difficult to measure accurately.

 

[kschachn]

That PDF file from Hy-Per Lube is misleading and demonstrates the pitfalls of having just a little knowledge about a subject.

Yes, distilled water is devoid of metallic minerals and yes it can leach those metals from engine internal parts but this is at the parts-per-million range and will never, ever be noticeable in any way. The only time this becomes an issue is when you have fresh, new distilled water continuously flowing over metallic surfaces (as in industrial piping or in the still itself), not in a closed system. Once the water in a cooling system becomes saturated with metals (at a very, very tiny level as compared to the massive bulk of an engine) then it will stop leaching metals and become passive. There is no way this is an actual issue from a practical standpoint.

Besides, soft water won't make any difference. Sure the calcium and magnesium ions are replaced by sodium ions, but those metals aren't the ones we are talking about in an engine. The water is still just as able to dissolve iron and aluminum as it was before softening, and in fact soft water is now able to dissolve more calcium and magnesium (and more iron as most softeners remove some iron) since they were removed and replaced with sodium ions. It's not a static equilibrium - remove the "hardness" minerals and replace them with sodium ions, and the water is now able to re-dissolve those removed ions once again. That PDF file that tries to make a distinction between "stripping" and replacing ions is meaningless. No matter how they are removed they can still be put back.

But in the end it doesn't mean anything. We are still not talking about the metals in an engine and the truly minuscule amount of metal dissolved in a closed cooling system is not even worth mentioning. It would likely take thousands and thousands of coolant changes to ever see any effect. Besides, coolants contain passivation compounds to protect the interals anyway.

Originally Posted By: mctmatt
Just as Colt 45 said when you read the bottle of Purple Ice and other coolant additives they all recommend to use plain drinking water and not distilled. Here is a link from HyperLube Super Coolant http://www.hyperlube.com/mc_images/category/8/distilled_water_in_cooling_systems.pdf

Just a quick question did you flush the coolant or did you pay to have it flushed. I paid to have mine flushed several years ago and the shop did a very poor job. Less than a year later I needed to do the job again but this time I did it myself and have never paid anyone again for this job. Now it is just drain and fill .

 

[rot]

toy corolla S 2005 220k miles.
I paid to have a complete flush by a local mechanic that has a good reputation.

 

[rot]

I Paid to have it flushed, At the time I wasn't physically able same as now, otherwise I'd do it myself.

 

[KevinP]

The article is wrong in some details. Soft water has almost the same condictivity as the hard water. You replace Ca++ and Mg++ with Na+ in proportion to maintain a stoichimetric balance. Both water before and after have almost the same conductivity. What is true is that soft water is much less corrosive than DI water. The proper pH for a mixed metal system with aluminum is from pH 7.0-8.0. If you stray much from that and you start pitting aluminum.

 

[JustinH]

Some of my mid 90's fords used to crack heater cores unless you put grounding straps on the heater core. Electrolysis would eat them and they would leak inside the car.