Should I use Anti-Freeze?
 

Living in VA, winter coming up soon I was wondering if I should put in some antifreeze, used to on my old Jeep. Would it be useful? Thank you ! How much should I put in there?

What is in there now?

do you not have anitfreeze in your car now? :crazy:

Yes, you absolutely, positively must use anti-freeze. Why would you not - because of the excessive cost of anti-freeze?! What if you have a freeze early one morning this winter? Just do it.

"As well as preventing water from freezing up, antifreeze raises the boiling point of engine coolant to prevent overheating. The stuff also protects your engine from corrosion, aids heat transfer, and prevents scale from building up internally."

Pure water has better heat transfers characteristics. The greater quantity of water in the coolant, the better it transfers heat. Ethylene/propylene glycol are about half as good as water at transferring heat.

The cooling system should be able to maintain an internal pressure of 13 psi. At that pressure, the boiling point of pure water is about 246F. A 50/50 mix of glycol only raises this about 10F. The big improvement is freezing point depression. Coolant goes from freezing at 32F for pure water to -35F in a 50/50 mix.

Of course, there won't be any corrosion inhibitors in pure water so people should definitely put some antifreeze in their coolant. Since most antifreeze formulations and lifetime assessments are made assuming a 50/50 mix, if less than 50/50 is used then people should shorten their coolant flush intervals or add concentrated corrosion inhibitors.

That said, if OP doesn't know what's in his cooling system now and thinks he can just add antifreeze to the reservoir, he's going to have a bad time. It's a better plan to drain the existing stuff, flush it with DI water and then re-fill with FL-22.