what water to mix with antifreeze

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As the title says, If using plain old green antifreeze in my classics, would my reverse osmosis water be as, or nearly as, good as distilled water to mix with full strength antifreeze???. Years ago, I used nothing but plain tap water and never had any problems, but then I seemed to get a different car every 2 or 3 years also. Not because of problems, but just something different caught my eye.
 
Distilled is the most pure, and is really cheap. You can get it at the drug store for $1 a gallon. It is meant for use in CPAP machines and humidifiers etc.
 
De-mineralized is a generic term for water with "hardness" ions removed, it can be accomplished in a variety of ways including distillation and reverse osmosis. Either one of those is fine for this use.

Even your tap water can be fine but it depends on the locality. When I lived in the City of Milwaukee the water there was extremely low in TDS and was fine for cooling systems. But here in the suburbs where it comes from a well it is completely different, it has a high hardness value and I'd never use it for cooling systems or batteries. I think the distilled water at Walmart is under $1 a gallon, that is about as cheap as it gets.
 
Flush the system with some water, drain and refill...I guess i'm going to be wrong here but I take the garden hose and fill as needed after one gallon antifreeze... allways works for me... No need for distilled anything...
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use prestone full strength mixed with your water...
 
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Distilled/DI to be safe. If your local water isn't too hard that works as well.

Hard water was reason for the Europeans not liking phosphated coolants - phosphate ions do bind to calcium and magnesium ions and take it out of solution, causing precipitate.
 
I have a reverse osmosis system for my saltwater fish tank. It is absolutely perfect for your coolant mixing. It removes “all” minerals.

Something I did was use an empty gallon milk jug and pour 1 qt of water in it. Take a marker and make a line at that water level. Pour another qt of water and mark that level, etc. I ended up with lines ar 1,2,3 and 4 qts. Then it was so easy to make my 50:50 mix of coolant and be consistent in adding it to my coolant system. I’d wait and fill up my reservoirs last.
 
Originally Posted By: kschachn
De-mineralized is a generic term for water with "hardness" ions removed, it can be accomplished in a variety of ways including distillation and reverse osmosis. Either one of those is fine for this use.


/\ this
 
De-Ionized is what many coolant manufacturers instruct right on the jug.

Personally, I have found that melted glacial ice taken from core samples at a depth of about 70-73 meters work best.
Fijian water is a distant second.
 
Personally, I have found that melted glacial ice taken from core samples at a depth of about 70-73 meters work best.
Fijian water is a distant second

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why I did't think of that...
 
Originally Posted By: Gebo
I have a reverse osmosis system for my saltwater fish tank. It is absolutely perfect for your coolant mixing. It removes “all” minerals.

Something I did was use an empty gallon milk jug and pour 1 qt of water in it. Take a marker and make a line at that water level. Pour another qt of water and mark that level, etc. I ended up with lines ar 1,2,3 and 4 qts. Then it was so easy to make my 50:50 mix of coolant and be consistent in adding it to my coolant system. I’d wait and fill up my reservoirs last.



It's easier than all this... just put a sharpie mark about halfway up. Fill it that far with water and dump your pure antifreeze in up to the top. (And by "top" I mean leaving a little air space like it originally came with.)

Then refill your antifreeze bottle with water to its top. Mark both as 50/50 now so you don't forget.

One bottle might be 45% strong and the other 55%. No worries!

Alternate a quart from each into your car. When you get down to 1/2 gallons pour the milk jug back into your AF bottle.

RO is a completely legit demineralization.

I use hose water but my private well is between a couple of Poland Spring bottling plants.
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Originally Posted By: Reddy45
Distilled. Contains little to no TDS so it's pure H2O.


Hmmm! I ordered a TDS meter, so it'll fun to see how low all water sources are!
 
Go find a large canister of hydrogen, and another canister of oxygen which is half as big. Burn the two in a closed system and collect the resultant fluid. Pure.


All kidding aside, I've always just used gallon bottles of distilled water from Wal-Mart. $0.88 each and functionally as pure as you could possibly need.
 
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