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Coolant to use.

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2wrench

2wrench

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I have in the garage a new bottle of Prestone "Any Color,"
coolant and want to know if there would be any problems
using the stuff. What might you recommend?
 
Water is reputed to be a better heat transfer agent than antifreeze and since I don't drive my TR3A during our frozen winter seasons, I use about 25% antifreeze and 75% water. I use de-ionized water that I buy at my local drugstore or I use the water that I collect from my de-humidifier. This helps ensure that there are no hard calcium or other undesirable unknowns in the water. The antifreeze is only there to prevent the water rusting the cast iron interior cooling passages in the engine block.

It'll soon be time to drain it all and re-fill the system again for about the third time in the last 18 years (100,000 miles) and I have had a bottle of Water Wetter on the shelf for abbout three years that I won as a door prize somewhere, so I was thinking I'd dump that in as well.
 
My radiator shop guy shared with me a trade secret, which I will pass
on to the Forum. He said to me: Put one cup of soluble oil into this
radiator (just rodded and flushed) and I dare say that I will never see you back to my shop again.

Wow! I bought the soluable oil and intended to add it to my radiator mix
along with the antifreeze. Now I'm thinking just to go with water and
soluable only. Any thoughts?

By the way, the raditor guy is a huge Vintage Car Resto buff. He has
a few such cars in his garage as well, but no LBC's.

Snake oil or True Value soluable oil...which do you think it is?
 
2wrench said:
Snake oil or True Value soluable oil...which do you think it is?
Click to expand...
Might do OK at protecting the radiator against corrosion, but I sure don't think it will do anything for the aluminum thermostat housing bolted to a cast iron head, not to mention the aluminum plug in the top of the head.

Antifreeze has chemicals to prevent dissimilar metal corrosion, which soluble oil cannot do.

Also, the oil eventually forms a coating on surfaces, which isn't going to help cooling any.
 
Sherman was on the board a month or so ago and mentioned a Toyota coolant, red in color I think, that was produced for cars a few years old, worked really well. Sherman, which one were you talking about?
 
I asked him if there was a part number for that, but I don't think that he replied. It would be nice to have to call ahead with.
 
The Toyota is recommended for the Wedge V8 motors as it is comfy with the Al. motors.
 
I am going to use red pentosin, used by mercedes, bmw, saab, volvo, etc when I get all the bugs worked out. Just using water right now until I pull the radiator one last time. It's about $10/liter online.
 
DNK said:
The Toyota is recommended for the Wedge V8 motors as it is comfy with the Al. motors.
Click to expand...

Maybe it was Volvo or Saab
I remember it was RED in color
 
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