<MISC> Red Line Water Wetter

[pbiernac@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

In BMW Digest v09.n135 Peter Biernacki <pbiernac@domain.elided>
wrote:

> ... RedLine's Water Wetter product 
> ... According to the product's literature adding Water Wetter to a 
> mixture of 50%/50% antifreeze & water will result in temperature 
> reduction of about 8 degrees F.  

Not exactly.

In a normally operating cooling system the thermostat controls the
coolant temperature by passing more or less of the flow through the 
radiator for cooling.  As long as the radiator is able to remove
heat at the rate it's added by the engine, the temperature stays
fairly constant.  Water Wetter will not change that.

If the engine adds heat faster than the radiator can remove it, the 
thermostat opens fully and becomes irrelevant, and the temperature 
rises.  In this overheated condition Water Wetter can reduce the 
temperature by improving the efficiency of heat transfer between 
coolant and metal.  This may help, but it doesn't solve the inadequacy 
of the cooling system.

By the same reasoning using a cooler thermostat does not make an
overheated engine run cooler; it merely makes the thermostat become
ineffective sooner.

Curt Ingraham
'72 2002tii
Oakland, California

P.S. Red Line is one of the few companies which has not adopted the 
cliche of a name formed by removing the space between two words and 
keeping a capital letter in the middle.

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