Originally Posted by Warstud
Originally Posted by WyrTwister
I never check my coolant with a hydrometer . Not for years .
I use 100% variety of coolant and never put water in a cooling system , baring a mishap / emergency .
No problem , works fine . No calcium build up ( our tap water is pretty hard ) . Cools fine . Never gets cold or hot enough to cause problem .
If there is no water in the system , it is not going to rust .
Let the flames begin .
You can get away with it in Texas as long as it stays above freezing but I'm not sure what your trying to prove by using 100% since it costs more. A coworker used 100% in his car until the temps dropped down into the teens one night. He started his car before leaving work one day and it ran for about 15 minutes and quit. Burned the motor up. Don't be foolish....use coolant as it was intended.
Coolant doesn't absorb heat as well as water, which is why depending on where you live it's advised to do a 50/50 mix of water/coolant...if you run straight coolant you run the risk of not being able to remove heat for the combustion chambers and cause engine overheating. So I think the cold weather may have caused the heat exchange into the coolant to be even more difficult (maybe) and caused the engine to overheat.
But the argument of running straight coolant just to save corrosion buildup is a very poor argument. I've yet to see a rusted cooling system that was properly maintained - water is not an issue - anti-freeze has corrosion inhibitors. The only time I've seen rust is when the system has been severely neglected and the person developed some sort of leak and constantly topped up with straight tap water. THEN I've seen issues...rust, frozen blocks, clogged radiators and heater cores. Otherwise I've never seen an issue. Even the GM debacle of Dexcool (early 2000's), it wasn't really rust, it was sludge because the coolant couldn't be mixed with air...and the Dexcool ate away at the materials on their intake gaskets, causing air to enter the system . It really was the perfect storm. GM has since finally fixed this HUGE issue by making their gaskets with materials that won't be affected by the Dexcool (and now I see people never even changing their coolant). And that's the real issue. Maintenance. Outside of Bob is th Oil Guy, a lot of people don't give one once of attention to maintenance. Just ran into a guy last week that had 161,000 miles on his Ford Edge...came in for a misfire (original plugs), fixed that, then I asked if he had ever changed the coolant...he looked at me and said, no but why don't we do it now while it's here? And he has never changed the tranny fluid either or differential fluid (that one did bite him pretty good at the tune of $2,500 last year - front diff burned out).
