I've heard several people mention using distilled water to mix with coolant versus tap water.
I want to talk more about this. I agree that hard, mineral saturated water is bad for your cooling system. It can settle out, block small openings and generally gunk stuff up.
But I assert that distilled water is TOO clean. I think you need some level of minerals so that a thin layer of deposit is laid on the walls of passages or you will get pitting and eventual failures where the flow is very turbulant.
I guy I worked with years ago repaired boiler heating systems. He found that this was the case for those hot water systems; you NEED some calcium in there to avoid pitting the pipes.
So my solution (with my relatively soft Chicago Lake Michigan water) is to drain, fill totally with tap water, run up to normal temp, repeat twice (to flush the gunk out), dump pure coolant into the tank (quantity=capacity/2), then top off with distilled water. Because some of my second round flush tap water is still in there, I figure my ratios are about 50% coolant, 30% tap water, 20% distilled.
Never had a cooling system failure.
I want to talk more about this. I agree that hard, mineral saturated water is bad for your cooling system. It can settle out, block small openings and generally gunk stuff up.
But I assert that distilled water is TOO clean. I think you need some level of minerals so that a thin layer of deposit is laid on the walls of passages or you will get pitting and eventual failures where the flow is very turbulant.
I guy I worked with years ago repaired boiler heating systems. He found that this was the case for those hot water systems; you NEED some calcium in there to avoid pitting the pipes.
So my solution (with my relatively soft Chicago Lake Michigan water) is to drain, fill totally with tap water, run up to normal temp, repeat twice (to flush the gunk out), dump pure coolant into the tank (quantity=capacity/2), then top off with distilled water. Because some of my second round flush tap water is still in there, I figure my ratios are about 50% coolant, 30% tap water, 20% distilled.
Never had a cooling system failure.