to tap or distill?

[Pottree@domain.elided]

Again the question comes up: tap water or distilled water for the coolant 
mixture?

On one hand, the Digest's Leading Water Authority has explained that 
distilled water will dissolve anything.  On the other, it is the stuff 
already dissolved in tap water like what's served here in LA that I would be 
concerned about.  

The 50% antifreeze (<obsolete term for poison green antiboil and antifreezing 
cocktail you put in your cooling system, goes by trade names such as Prestone 
and Zarex; someone smarter than I will recall whether or not it is ethyl 
glycol, but some Austrian con men poured the stuff into vats of cheap white 
wine several years ago to make the brew seem sweeter and thereby bilk some 
people out of money -- naturally, people were killed and sickened) is 
supposed to limit the wtaer's prpensity to dissolve the car... so, moving on 
--

Some places have hard water and some have soft water.  I suppose then you are 
into the realm of the subjective.  Here, the Great Authority calls the water 
rather softer than hard, but to me it s just this side of ice, or possibly 
granite -- at least compared to the baby-soft stuff I knew in other parts of 
the country.

Here's my own test: say your Alfa was painted a dark color and you sprayed it 
off with the hose to clear away some dust.  If the water then evaporated 
leaving a clean looking car behind, I would say that is soft water.  If, like 
here, the water evaporates leaving behind thousands of roundish white mineral 
stains that make the surface of the car look like the surface of the moon, 
and about 25% of the water seems to be dissolved solids, then I would call 
that hard.  If you need to replace all the pipes in your house every so often 
because they develop arteriosclerosis, I would say you live in a hard water 
area.  If it does that to the house, do you want to risk the same happening 
in your Alfa?

Moral: I have had good resulting with a very standard 50-50 mix of Prestone 
and distilled water and I have also seen an aluminum pot boiling tap water 
spring a leak on the stove.

YMMV

Charlie
LA, CA, USA

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