(OT) Car coolant question

[clare]

Without coolant the guage will in all likelihood never go up - or the light come on. Bothe measure COOLANT temperature, not engine temperature. No coolant, no indication.

[clare]

A bit of PVC and a pair of elbows works fine. Don't even need to glue it together - just a wrap of tape to hold it together. Put the pipe in the lower hose, fill from top of pipe, pop the top hose on, and start it up.

That said -

My daughter's '82 Colt 200 blew the rad one cold and nasty night about

10 miles from home. I went out with 2 gallons of water and tried to fill the rad. Water ran out as fast as I could pour it in. I gave my daughter the keys to my car and told her to follow me. I started the colt, took it up to 100kph and shut it off, letting it coast. When it got down to about 30 or 40 I turned on the ignition, popped the clutch, and took it up to 100 again, then coasted it down. Took 3 or 4 cycles to get it home to my driveway - where we put in a new rad the next day. No harm done to the engine

[clare]

Are you a mechanic??? I am. 30 seconds will not hurt ANYTHING. Period. The thermal mass is highe enough to take a minute of no or light load running without harm

- even on a lightweight aluminum engine. - in most cases significantly longer.

The Ccadillac Northstar can be driven 50 miles with absolutely no coolant, without harm - and it is a FRAGILE engine. They do it by rotating shutdown of cyls and reducing power output.

I would not run a dry engine for 5 minutes - but I have posted a solution that works very well and is totally safe for a 5 minute run.

- short circuit pipe..

[Doug]

The problem with some here is that they take everything so literally. He probably just said 5 minutes to be conservative.

[Doug]

I don't know but my hunch is you are correct. That said since this newsgroup seems indecisive about exact amount of time (understandable IMO), I think he is well advised not to take a chance because I think?? he has more to lose than to gain. Of course ultimately he will make that decision.

[Doug]

First, I am not a mechanic but I question the 5 minutes. I don't know the outside temps his engine will be started but my experience shows my engine reaching operating temps in less than 5 minutes. If this is correct, then his engine will get pretty hot for a minute or so with no liquid. As I said I'm no mechanic or mechanical engineer but this sounds on the verge of dangerous to me. I sure hope he gets confirmation on what you said, if he thinks you are correct.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Then the solution is simple. Have your daughter go to Homeowner's place and follow him as he moves the car.

[Doug]

I just read your post you were referring to I think and in that post, you did refer to running it with liquid ... therefore not dry. In that case I agree if it's not much more than 5 minutes.

[trader4]

I'm sure all the deep knowledge you've demonstrated about the actual topic will be of great comfort to him on his 5 minute journey.

[The Daring Dufas]

I remember Cadillac advertizing from some time back that their engine control system would allow the vehicle to run in limp home mode without coolant in the engine's cooling system. Of course I recall top fuel dragsters run without a cooling system at all but they rebuild the engine after every run or two. ^_^

TDD

[gregz]

I watched a show where the builder of some vehicle decided to not use radiator. Ran full out for probably less than a minute before it went south.

Greg

[Doug]

Yeah ok. Now I understand why some put you in their kill file.

[Stormin Mormon]

Be interesting to see if he's got us both killfiled.

If so, I can go back to watching my gerbils have sex.

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

.

I don't know. But just for grins, this killfiled poster will bring up something no one else has apparently thought about.

[clare]

And they fill the coolant passages with solid heat absorbing material.

[hrhofmann]

Connect the two open hose ends together after filling as much water as possible, use several wraps of duct tape to hold them together. Then go for it, just keep an eye on the temp gauge that it doesn't go up much past the midrange and you're fine.

[homeowner]

What the heck would a "solid heat absorbing material" be?

Cadillac has a special V8 engine that shuts off 4 cylinders for the limp home mode. I just read about that recently. I forget what they call the engine, but it seems they are very costly and hard to repair.

What I wish is that all the fuel injected vehicles would have a second fuel pump to get people home. So many of those in-tank pumps fail leaving the driver stranded. That happened to me about 7 years ago, it was a bitter cold night, around 20 below zero. I was out in the country about 6 miles from home and nearly froze to death. That was before I owned a cellphone. I probably would have frozen but halfway home I found a barn filled with cattle, and it was fairly warm in there. I stayed in the barn till I was warm, then walked the rest of the way home, barely making it. After that was when I got a pre-paid cellphone just for emergencies.

The older cars were more likely to limp a person home than these new ones. Those fuel pumps seem to be a major flaw on the newer cars too. When they die, it's all over. Start walking! The old mechanical fuel pumps usually gave a warning and would still limp a person home most of the time, not to mention they could be changed on the shoulder of a road in a half hour or less. What they call "progress" these days is not always true.

By the way, I dont know much about dragsters, but I've been to many demolition derbys and am amazed how long most of those engines run with no coolant after a radiator is blown. Of course they are all headed to the scrap yard anyhow once the show is over.

[The Daring Dufas]

Cadillac Northstar Engine. ^_^

TDD

[homeowner]

Yes, this is correct. The sensor goes right into the coolant. The last time I changed a sensor, I had to drain the coolant first, or it would have spilled all over the place.

[homeowner]

That's the Cadillac engine I mentioned in another post.

This whole thing does have me asking how it is that air cooled engines survive as long as they do? Particularly the larger ones on garden tractors, skid steers, etc? Yea, I know they have cooling fins, but hey, people use them all the time when the outdoor summer temperature is in the 90s, and the air is still. Often they are just sitting at idle. How can they be getting cooled properly? Yet they seem to last a long time in most cases. Those find cant be doing much when there is no air movement, and usually no fan either....

Are they built from stronger metals than a car engine?

[Erik]

Air cooled engines are very hot running in comparison to liquid cooled engines. They also have to be built to much looser tolerances.

Small air cooled engines like lawn mowers & garden tractors do in fact have cooling fans... they're integral with the flywheel assembly. They also almost always employ baffles to force cooling air penetration deep through the fins. They're always run quite rich to further assist in cooling as well. (All that unburned fuel carries amazing amounts of heat away through the exhaust; however this takes a big toll on efficiency and emissions).[1]

Air cooled aircraft engines also use baffles for the same reason, and larger ones include 'cowl flaps' to afford some temperature control... and to mitigate decent overcooling (or 'shock cooling' as they call it). As the fuel/air mixture is pilot adjustable, these engines are always run dead rich on the ground and in climb configuration to assist in cooling, and manually leaned once in cruise to increase efficiency.

Air cooled motorcycles take a beating... they usually have no fan/s or baffles and can/will really overheat if left idle for long periods, or ridden slowly downwind long distances with little/no airspeed. Don't know for sure, but I'm reasonably sure they're normally jetted rich for the above reasons. (Have heard modern fuel injected motorcycle computers have some temperature regulation ability through air/fuel mixture control.)

Erik

[1] This is a major reason you see few (or no) air cooled engines on newer cars... it's extremely difficult to make them emission compliant.)