I thought the purpose was to "increase heat transfer" which his testing, while not ideal, showed? Adding the wetters increased the delta in to out of his heat exchanger showing more heat removed.
No, the increased delta T shows an increased delta T. Nothing more. You don't get to correlate delta T to heat removal without doing additional homework.
He didn't hold enough things constant, so his heater core testing (the only functionally relevant test of the three) was invalid. He had no hypothesis, so he didn't know what he was testing. He just did some stuff and saw a result and all his viewers think it points to a conclusion. It's the same as practically all PF videos. Booster packs. Motor oil. Smoke alarms. Chainsaws. Paint brushes.
All he did was take the delta across the "radiator." Even if the airflow was held constant, he didn't control (or even report) the ambient room air temperature/humidity. The room could've cooled resulting in more heat drawn from the liquid.
The concoctions could've also had different specific heats. Correlating heat rejection to delta T only works if the specific heat is held constant.
To do that test correctly he'd need to say - the hypothesis is that water wetters decrease interface resistance at the water/metal interface in the radiator, increasing heat rejection. Therefore,
Variables - various coolant/water/additive mixutres.
Constants:
1) For a given water pump speed and thermostat position (correlates to radiator flow rate, so hold flow constant)
2) For a given engine outlet temperature (so hold that constant too.) So we need a big/immovable heat source at constant temperature and really good heat transfer INTO the fluid.
3) For a given air velocity across radiator (so hold air velocity, temperature, and humidity constant)
Therefore, we want to see highest heat rejection from radiator. So we either need specific heat * delta T for the coolant, or we need to measure delta T (rise) for the air.
Devils advocate, the coolant solutions that saw the greatest delta T across his radiator could've done so because they had lower specific heat, and NOTHING to do with surface wetting chemistry. Also could've been because the room was cooler. (Newtonian heat transfer - rate of transfer is proportionate to difference.) Specific enthalpy of air changes due to temperature, humidity, and pressure. He failed to account for any of this.
I would've gotten away with those sorts of oversights in my 7th grade science fair project. I didn't get away with them in my "engineering of experiments" classes.
See, poorly conducted experiments can be very compelling marketing. Motor oil forum, I expect more of you. This place is enough of a braintrust to recognize any of this. Back to the wear scar testing I guess, or perhaps another debate about LED headlights from amazon. Or maybe a good thick vs thin discussion.
@2:41 - LSJr"...It definitely wants a thicker oil." LSJr's Buddy, "sure, it needs more protection, right?" Comeon LSJr, if I gotta call out the nonsense on coolant additive testing, you gotta call out the nonsense on thickie speaks.