Is coolant coolant?

Can you use ready to use Castrol car coolant in a motorcycle? Or is there
something unique about motorcycle coolant systems that necessitates the use
of a specific type of coolant?

 

It`ll tell you everything you need to know about Glycol and aluminium
engines...

Then mix it 50/50 with distilled water and be happy


--
Petel .(air-cooled tractor engine)
02 M2 Buell.
C90-ZZR.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/peteh1/website/index.html

 

Petel was seen penning the following ode to ... whatever:

But the other half of the pages tell you to use tap water instead
because the antifreeze is already formulated to take care of the nasty
limescale in tap water.

Alternatively, curium might buy some of the proper stuff - I recommend
the green Comma X-Stream as it last longer and doesn't cost much more.

 

Nah, that's old technology.

What curium wants is some of this:
http://www.evanscooling.com/main27.htm

No water, no pressure, no grief.

 

Pip have you actually used this stuff?

It just concerns me a that its specific heat capacity is a little low. In
theory this means that more coolant has to be pumped from the engine to the
radiator in order to achieve the same cooling effect. The table on the
website indicates that its viscosity is higher and therefore it will require
more effort to pump it between the engine and radiator. The net effect would
be a substantial reduction in the amount of heat transfer between the engine
and radiator.

Whilst I think that propylene glycol is probably a better product than
ethylene glycol from the chemical handling point of view I would always add
the amount the bike manufacturer recommends with the balance being made up
with water to maintain a decent specific heat capacity and viscosity.

The only reason I think it works is that maybe bike cooling systems are
designed with a bit of a margin or they are not used at full throttle all of
the time.

I see the various claims they make about better heat transfer but wonder why
I have never seen these types of claims made by other manufacturers and
producers of glycol as I design cooling systems for a living [1]. I am
starting to think snake oil here.


1. Albeit large commercial and industrial ones.

 

WTF do you know

--
cane [at] ukrm.org ¦ fireblade, r30
botafo t#50 f#03 YTC #15 bbb #6 pm #6 apostle [kotl] flo#12[with bar]
New? http://www.ukrm.net/faq/ukrmscbt.html
Rideout? http://www.horrible.demon.co.uk/botafof/
"Suckling the Mender"

 

Big Tony was seen penning the following ode to ... whatever:

Blimey, we really seem to have an expert for just about everything on
this newsgroup.

After reading the webpage (including the smallish print) I must say
that the needle on the snakeoilometer twitched noticably. I'll stick
with old technology that works even for me, thanks.

 

Pip was seen penning the following ode to ... whatever:

But it works. Even for me...

 

You need 20 million dollars transferring out of the country, and you're
offering him a cut?

 

Well, when I gave the buggers notice they were really snotty with me and
have cut my old address off, I was thinking I'd keep it as a pay as you
use number. They didn't give me an option for that and couldn't wait to
hang up on me.

Fuckers.

 

I am not sure where you get those figures from but you will need about 30%
more fluid to transfer from engine to radiator to achieve the same amount of
cooling as for water. As you point out you could run the engine at a 30%
higher outlet temp, which this stuff should be able to cope with as it's
boiling point is some 87°C higher at atmospheric pressure. Whether this is a
good thing or not for the engine I don't know.

The radiator would be more efficient as the delta T between the fluid and
the surrounding air is higher but all this means is you could have a smaller
radiator. This could be useful for GP teams who want to shave every ounce
off their machines but is a bit OTT for Curium's CB500.

AOL