for you people who love distilled water in coolant!

I Work In a freightliner shop.ISB, engine issues. Pull engine apart, 2 Cylinders scored heavily. Everything in tact around it. Cummins came, looked everything over, took samples. Heavy Iron deposits in the water that was used to mix with the coolant was cause of scarring and cavitation. This was not an inhouse issue, we DO NOT use anything but Penray Premix. Now everything that comes in for service gets coolant test, with strips, and strips stapled to the service sheet with the numeral written next to it. We also change coolant filter to Penray Needs release filter. We dont want to have to replace an engine for that same reason. These new engines are too needy to not be taking the proper precautions.
 
madmikeismad said:
Besides the potential for calcium buildup (like a water heater), I wouldn't think so.
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Thats the only reason i ran distilled water for coolant mix in the first place. If you have some sort of water softener on your home tap, that would be the water i would use. Lots of calcium in the water in east Tn.

Sent from my DROID BIONIC
 
I run John Deere Cool-Gard pre-mix and have yet to have any troubles from it. Its probably getting time to change the truck again. I use it everywhere, gas or diesel, makes no difference.
 
I have heard this a long time ago and never had first hand experince with it until now.
2012-04-12_20-15-29_751.jpg
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This is the slush from the bottom of the bucket i drained out of my car. 50/50 mix of prestone and distilled water. with a bottle of wix cool cavitaion/corrosion inhibitor. ran less than a year.<br />
Distilled water is deionized, when put into a closed system it will pull ions from the metal surrounding it, causing corrosion. therefore the mess you see before you. <br />
filtered drinking water is by far the best thing i have found to put in the car. hose water would have done better than this.
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Wrong !!

Distilled water and De-ionized water are two separate things!!
You should work on getting the facts straight before starting another internet wives tale....



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AH64ID said:
I have only used distilled water, and after many engines and many hundreds of thousands of miles I have never seen even a hit of what you are seeing, I would say that the distilled water is not the culprit.

It sounds to me like the "synthetic causes leaks" myth, when actually the bad seal was there just plugged with sludge and the synthetic cleaned the sludge and exposed the existing leaky seal.

The service manual also specifies distilled water.

"This coolant offers the best engine cooling without corrosion when mixed with 50% ethylene-glycol and 50% distilled water to
obtain a freeze point of -37°C (-35°F)."
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Exactly.

* Distilled water is the only correct choice for a closed cooling system system because it's mineral free. Any other water source like tap water, pond water(lol) or anything else crazy like that is just full of contaminants that will shorten the life of the cooling system and the additives in the coolant.

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I've used distilled water for 35 years and never had the issue the thread starter has. Has to be several million miles.
Something else is going on.
You should of had it analysed before stiring this up.
 
KB3MMX said:
Wrong !!

Distilled water and De-ionized water are two separate things!!
You should work on getting the facts straight before starting another internet wives tale....



Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...

You mean there are things on the Internet that aren't true? Go on...

Also, did you seriously dig up a four month old thread to make a point about de-ionized water?
 
Who the f are you to tell me about water? Distilled water does in fact have ions removed from it.
Unless people in the corrosion industry as a whole are wrong
 
RO water is the most corrosive without getting into specialty waters like 18.2 MegaOhm water. Even in closed systems it will quickly corrode even 316l stainless. Deionized water and steam distilled are very similar but Deionized water will still contain the organic compounds as the Ion exchange resins used do not remove organics from the treated water. Both are non corrosive in a limited oxygen environment like a pressure based cooling system. That build up is not caused by the water you used. The scale build up caused by using tap water or as some suggest pond water is infinitely more damaging to a radiator's ability to exchange energy than the implied "incorrect" distilled water.
 
distilled water is deionized according to wikipedia
as sinner stated
my wifes tale[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distilled_water"]Distilled water - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

this is my issue, i have a copper brass radiator and the block (anode) was sacrificing itself to protect my radiator (cathode)
http://www.engineersedge.com/galvanic_capatability.htm

while clean distilled water in itself is not a good electrolyte due to the lack of impurities.
cleaning an engine block and radiator can only get so good.
adding a coolant mix to it, while it does have corrosin inhibitors in it, still can add enough impurity to make it a good electrolyte, causing my issue.
http://www.corrosion-doctors.org/Corrosion-History/Form.htm

you guys that have aluminum radiators may not ever see this because iron and aluminum are so close to eachother on the galvanic scale. but the aluminum will sacrifice itslef to protect the engine once it gets through the oxide layer, corrosion is accelerated.

heat, cavitation and water movement all play parts in how much corrosion will occur generally the greater these are the more corrosion will occur.

so yes, it may not be the water i used, but it is the first time i have used distilled water water and it did this. so regardless.. hose water for me!!
 
Tap water will be fine so long as you flush your system with a quality flush on regular intervals to prevent scale buildup.
 
Water, the universal solvent. It will ultimately dissolve anything. When you remove everything from it it becomes extremely unstable and it becomes aggressive in trying to ionize metals. The more you take out of water the more destructive it becomes. But only in the presence of adequate oxygen.
 
People call it that, but in engineering terms, it is corrosion. Electrochemical differences in metal in a common electrolyte with a metallic path to complete the circuit.
 
SINNER said:
Water, the universal solvent. It will ultimately dissolve anything. When you remove everything from it it becomes extremely unstable and it becomes aggressive in trying to ionize metals. The more you take out of water the more destructive it becomes. But only in the presence of adequate caboxygen.
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Cavitation creates the adequate oxygen.



It can be called electrolysis but is actually galvanic corrosion.
 
Man you think you got it figured out then you get learned again so pitting in liners is caused by the combo of the two not one or the other
 
The pitting in wet sleeves. Is this cause by cavitation, the air bubbles imploding on the sleeves or by electrolysis.
 
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