Evans waterless coolant

[deaddds]

I bit on the ads promotion in terms of an overall more economical way long term to use this stuff. It's been about a year since I flushed out my 31 Olds and took a long day to get it to the correct almost 100% product in the system. Drained it first including the block, filled the system, ran it to mix it up, drained that out since it still had water in it according to the spectroscope I bought to confirm the degree of water present, boiled the mixture to remove as much water as possible, refilled the system and repeated the last steps several times until I got a 3% reading which was as good as I could get. 5% is supposed to be the max in terms of water content. Great. The car has sat for almost a full year. Took it out yesterday to blow out the cobwebs. I did check the dipstick beforehand, clean oil at the correct level. Did not check for coolant as under the car when I pushed it away from the wall showed zero leaks of any kind and didn't give it any thought anyway. Got about a mile or so to the in laws and the temp gauge was pegged and I could smell hot. Shut it down and then checked the radiator and sure enough, no coolant. I caved and ended up putting in a good gallon plus of water to bring the radiator full. Started the car, temp almost immediately dropped and ran fine with no hot smell. Sooooo, I have to assume since nothing other than oil is in the pan, no funny smoke was coming out the tailpipe, and I know it was parked with the Evans filled, that the stuff ended up evaporating? Is it safe to assume since these old cars are non pressurized and the radiator cap is just that, a cap, that I can expect more of the same from using this product, just as I would with a 50/50 mix? If that's the case it clearly has no real money savings as whether I drive it or it sits, I will lose some degree of the product and at $45 a gallon, it ain't cheap. It is true right that just using water would be a terrible idea in terms of corrosion to the engine and I should go back to the green coolant mix to offset that problem? Any input would be appreciated. Pat

[Graham Man]

I have several friends using it without problems.  It is just 100% propylene glycol and should not evaporate.  Did you run the car after filling the system the first time?  Could it have been trapped air in the system?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propylene_glycol

[deaddds]

Definitely ran the car as I did the work at the house and drove the car back into town at the time with no issues. It's a good 6 miles into town and relative to yesterday's incident, should have gotten just as hot. If I remember right it took over 6 gallons to fill after all the boil offs. If it can't possibly evaporate I'm stumped.

[c49er]

The Evans coolant sure has a strong obnoxious smell if leaking.

[deaddds]

Thinking back I think it was just over 4 gallons as I believe the capacity is 17 quarts and yes, especially boiling it off it stinks bad. The company rep is the one that had me boil it. His point was its boiling point is so much higher, any water in the system will boil first and then repeat the process until it gets within specs so that's what I did.

[deaddds]

I will recheck tomorrow the capacity to be sure I'm accurate. I ordered 4 gallons and the prep fluid from Eastwood which proved to be the pointless addition as the prep didn't really do anything. That's when the rep told me to boil the solution to get within specs. Then I ordered a couple extra gallons as it wasn't to the top of the radiator to get it filled.

[Spinneyhill]

Note that the specific heat of Evans coolant is only about 2/3 or 3/4 of that of water (from memory) so it is not as good as a coolant. Your engine will run hotter, unless your cooling system is in excellent condition and has "redundant" capacity designed in for hard work on very hot days. When you find out it would be useful to know how much hotter it runs?

[jrbartlett]

I think I remember reading similar stories on this forum about cars running hotter with this stuff.

[lump]

I used to do some artwork and ad placement for Evans. As they explained it to me, their stuff can survive hotter conditions than water can. They explained that, when an engine overheats in a specific spot, that spot becomes so hot that a "bubble" of gasses forms around that spot, which then makes the problem worse. They said that the Evans coolant won't do that, so if a spot gets too hot, the coolant will stay in contact with it, providing more effective cooling. They also told me that engines are actually a bit more efficient at higher temperatures than what water can tolerate. IF I understood them correctly, the whole idea of the Evans coolant was to allow the engine to run hotter without experiencing problems. 

 

I'm no engineer...just reporting what I recall them telling me. 

 

PS: I ran Evans coolant in my 4 cylinder Hupmobile for a couple years, with no troubles. But then, this old Hupp has never had a problem with any kind of overheating...even in slow parades on hot days. 

[Spinneyhill]

I think that is called Microboiling. But the other half of the story is that if the system is in good condition - no restrictions with good water pump - there will be enough coolant flowing to wash those vapours away and condense them almost instantaneously.  I believe the idea with Evans is that it boils at ca 250 ºF = 120 ºC (its flash point) so microboiling is less likely.

 

In a hot running engine the oil will reduce in viscosity very slightly more than it would at 10 or 20º lower normal operating temperature. I expect that with a good modern oil that should not be a problem, but heaven forfend if you are misguided enough to use API GA oil.