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Antifreeze: Red or Green? What's the Difference? What's the Difference Between Antifreeze and Coolant? Engine Coolant Leaks: Symptoms and Solutions.
Your Privacy Rights. To change or withdraw your consent choices for LiveAbout. It can also result in other forms of severe engine damage. Meanwhile, in extreme cold, just using water would result in the water freezing inside the engine, which could cause cracks in the radiator or heater core, warping in the cylinder head and damage to the engine block.
The water you use in this mixture should be pure, distilled water rather than tap water, the latter of which might have minerals that could build up inside the radiator and prevent proper flow of the coolant. In addition, make sure any coolant you use is suitable for your specific vehicle, as using the improper type of coolant can cause corrosion inside the engine and damage to specific parts, such as hoses, belts, cylinder gaskets, radiator and water pump.
It needs to be disposed of properly. Be sure to transfer the liquid into something watertight. It needs to be in a container that will be feasible to put in your car to take in for recycling. Used engine coolant can be properly disposed of pretty easily. Most mechanics will take it off your hands for free they make money when they sell it off to the disposal companies. You can also recycle the fluid at your local disposal center or hire a private waste disposal company to come pick it up from you.
I reiterate here, engine coolant is toxic. We do not want it in our water systems, in our pets or in our children. That would be bad. Be responsible. From there you can choose a brand or generic amongst this category of coolant. There are three common varieties of engine coolant: they are inorganic additive technology, organic acid technology and finally hybrid organic acid technology.
This solution a bit outdated and is less superior than its competitors nowadays. As there are now more effective options on the engine coolant market you typically only see inorganic additive technology in older vehicles. If your car uses this type of engine coolant it is important that you stay on top of flushing your system and replacing your coolant. Inorganic additive technology coolant must be changed every 24, miles or two years, whichever comes first.
This is far more frequent than newer coolants that are on the market. The next coolant we are going to discuss is much more with the times and requires far less maintenance and upkeep. It is increasingly popular in vehicles newer than the year Organic acid technology coolant, which is widely used by General Motors, only needs to be changed every five years or , miles!
That is a remarkably long length of time that you can go without replacing your coolant. This saves these car owners time and money involved with maintenance procedures. It is derived using fully neutralized organic acids and azoles and these are the components that make the fluid anti corrosive. This is also where the substance received its name. Both of these coolants have essentially comparable replacement cycles.
When this happens your car is at greater risk of engine overheating which can lead to costly repairs. Its best to be proactive here and change this antifreeze combination every 30, miles or so for most vehicles. Until very recently the most commonly used color of antifreeze was a neon green. This is because this is the color that is associated with the variety of coolant called Inorganic Additive Technology or IAT.
IAT has been on the decline as the choice of car manufacturers simply because there are now more effective coolants on the market. Increasing in popularity are orange and red coolants which are typically of the Organic Acid Technology variety of coolant. While these types of coolants are traditionally these colors you should always verify that you are using the proper coolant for your car using your owners manual of your vehicle.
The purpose of companies who manufacture engine coolant dying their products is for marketing purposes as well as safety concerns. Antifreeze is by nature clear.
By making it a ghastly bright color it does a couple things. It makes the substance easy to identify when compared to water. This is super important because remember antifreeze is very toxic.
If you, your family members or friends or your animals were to drink it it can be deadly. Antifreeze companies can add whatever color dye they would like to their product. For this reason I encourage my readers not to use color alone as a way to distinguish the variety of antifreeze that is good for your car. Some individuals refer to battery water when talking about the liquid within car batteries called electrolyte.
Electrolyte is a mixture of sulfuric acid and pure water. It should never be added to the coolant system in your car. Please do not drain your battery into your cooling system. To others the term battery water refers to the water that you add to your battery. This water is just distilled water. Putting distilled water in your radiator is a generally accepted practice however I encourage people to opt for soft water over distilled water. My reasoning here is that soft water has a full set of valence electrons whereas distilled water does not.
Essentially that means that soft water will not strip the metal in your engine block in the same way that distilled water will. If you are confused by this I cover more on the science behind distilled water and soft water towards the beginning of this article. Opt for soft water over distilled water.
Most of my readers are interested in engine coolant because they are actively undertaking the replacement of their engine coolant themselves.
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