I am planning to a flush out of my coolant system and add some Water Wetter when I refill to help ease off some of my over heating problems. Could someone give me a step-by-step guide of how to do a coolant flush on a zed and where I can find all the bits I need to remove etc? Much appreciated. Also, for those of you who are using Water Wetter how much do you use and how much regular engine coolant do you use? From researching on here I can see that most people say one bottle is fine and it does have anti-corrosion properties so can do without additional antifreeze but this will last me through the winter (car outside at night) so don't want to take unnecessary risks but also don't want to loose the improved properties of Water Wetter. One final question is will the type of anitfreeze/coolant used after the Water Wetter properties at all? I plan to use the advanced Halfords stuff in the dark blue bottles.

I use one bottle of WW in winter with added antifreeze and two bottles in summer with no antifreeze

 

HTH

 

Steve :)

Set temp on heater to 40 so as to open through flow. Crack bottom hose off and remove filler cap and drain. Then get an hose pipe in your inlet pipe and flush the whole systen through till only clears water comes out. Do the same with rad. First flush from top via filler cap and then from bottom via return. (better doing this with rad out)

 

Then connect everything back up and fill with pure longlife coolant. The pink stuff which is about 90% glycol and 10% etholyne. This in it's self will reduce your temps but a bottle of WW for good mesure will help. Don't bother with water at all. The glycol will transfere the heat far more efficiently than the water. Infact the Zed should be run on 70% glycol and 30% water in standard tune at all times. Especially in summer. To run without in summer is a seriously risky. This also protects you engine to -50 C.

 

You'll have to bleed the system to get rid of any air bubbles and check and top up for next couple of days possibley. So get 2 4.5 ltr longlife coolants. It's not cheep but a cooked engine is far more expensive.

thanks for your help, a couple of q's. Do you have to do this with engine running(!) or how will the thermostat open and stay open if that is what your are saying with the setting to 40C part? Also, I was told at university that the only thing with better heat transfer properties than water is mercury(!) and on the Redline Water Wetter website it says that race cars use 100% water because best heat transfer medium and dont need to worry about corrosion and freezing. WW aparently works by lowering the surface tension of the water so less bubbles form in the engine block which means better heat transfer. I want to put antifreeze in to help the WW with the anticorrosion and antifreezing (glycol/alcohol part) but i dont want to put too much in which might prevent WW doing the job it was designed for and harming my pocket to much by buying 10 litres of quality antifreeze.

Aircraft use Glycol because of the extreme low temperatures of altitude and high revelutions of the engine which cause very high temps at low altitude. 70% Glycol increases the boiling temp to about 160 C which means it isn't vaporising in the hotest areas of the engine so it continues to absorb the heat from the heads and block evenly and transfere that heat via the rad core to atmosfere at a similar even rate. If water is trying to vaporise in the engine it becomes more presurised and this creats more friction which inturn generates more heat.

 

I aint a scientist but that seems about right to me and in the owners hand book it clearly states 70% Glycol to 30% water and those little japs know what there doing.

 

No you don't have the engine running. The heater temp is to open the matrix valve so you can flush it out and avoid air locks when refilling.

 

The thermostat will be closed, but it does have a small valve in the top of the flange that lets a small flow through. This is to provent the water jackets building massive presure before the engine reaches temp to open the Thermostat.

 

P.S you'll need the engine running to bleed it.

heres a bit of info on coolants you may find interesting, (i know its for computer cooling, but physics is physics lol)

 

http://www.overclockers.com/pc-water-coolant-chemistry-part-i/

 

http://www.overclockers.com/pc-water-coolant-chemistry-part-ii/

poole? as in poole in dorset?