| Slant Six Forum https://www.slantsix.org/forum/ |
|
| Results of removing Evans coolant. https://www.slantsix.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=55316 |
Page 1 of 1 |
| Author: | Sam Powell [ Fri May 09, 2014 7:29 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Results of removing Evans coolant. |
The operating temperature of the slant went from 215 to 175 with the replacement of Evans with plain water. It was only 10 degrees cooler outside. Coming home from work yesterday the temperature of the engine rose to 215, which normally does not worry me, but there is a 180 thermostat in the housing. I went on-line and read as much as I could find both good and bad about Evans, and decided Evans is OK for the right engines, but not for stock, or near stock slants six cooling systems. I drained the radiator, overflow bottle, and block, filled with plain water and drove about 20 miles to clear out the heater core. I was shocked at how cool the engine now runs, but also how cool the engine compartment was.I drained it again when I returned and put plain water back in it. At some point I will fill it with better water than tap water. I will put corrosion fighting additives in it for now, and drive it this way for awhile, keeping track of mileage and drivability. But so far, I am sold on going back to regular coolant. I may move to a 195 t-stat and check mileage and drivability with that. It seemed to run much better with the cooler temp. I am going to be especially interested in the heat soak tendency when restarting hot. Come Fall I will add antifreeze to protect it from the cold winter freeze. Sam |
|
| Author: | Valleyant [ Fri May 09, 2014 8:37 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Hmmm? |
Sam, I run the evans in my '72 Valiant....for 2 years now. I did notice that it warmed up quicker (defroster/heat) in the winter. Can you point me in the direction of the reference material that swayed you away from it. I am curious now as well. I don't have any problems but I don't monitor temps like you do. My slant Has a 2 barrel/holley and head is milled for 9 to 1 static compression and an aluminum a/c sized radiator otherwise it's mostly stock. I was plagued with detonation problems early on until I got a better understanding of modifying the distributor curve and base timing but I am still limited timing wise and wonder if evans had anything to do with not drawing enough heat away from the combustion chamber area... thank you! |
|
| Author: | SlantSixDan [ Fri May 09, 2014 9:16 pm ] |
| Post subject: | |
http://www.allpar.com/fix/engines/coolant.html Sam's engine is neither "stock" nor "near-stock". It's difficult to argue with whatever successes he might perceive with whatever ideas occur to him to try out, but his assumptions are faulty about what he's seeing and how it might apply in general to other cars. When his induction and engine management system is debugged correctly, his heat soak and other issues will go away, then he won't have to apply band-aids like overcooling the engine. |
|
| Author: | Valleyant [ Fri May 09, 2014 10:16 pm ] |
| Post subject: | |
Thankyou Dan, good to see yah! |
|
| Author: | Sam Powell [ Sat May 10, 2014 5:15 am ] |
| Post subject: | |
Hi Dan, I was pretty sure my post would bring you around. My slant is pretty near stock for all intents and purposes now. It has Dutra Duals, an aluminum radiator, and the electric fan, which I suppose might effect the cooling. It has near stock compression ratio and is strictly NA. I removed the turbo a year ago, and have since tuned it for near stock fuel mixture. The timing is advanced more than stock, but whatever that timing did to cooling was the same with the plain water coolant as well, which produced dramatically lower temps. From my reading I expected a small drop, but not so much. This was temp at the lower water jacket in the block, and not the temp in the head. I must hook up the lap top to read that, and did not take the time to do that. The information that lead me to remove it was the scientific facts about the material itself and Evan's own install instructions. I have to run off to work now, but will write more about what this was later. Sam |
|
| Author: | Sam Powell [ Sat May 10, 2014 3:51 pm ] |
| Post subject: | |
Dan, I am certain you are right that there is something not "right" about this engine combo. It has never run the way I expected, or hoped. Since I am not an automotive engineer, I did not see how I was going to think my way out of whatever box I had created. So, for the last two years my approach to getting this car healthier, and to be more fun was to take advantage of what Mother Mopar put into it in the first place, and go back away from the mods. It seemed best to try and return it to its original design wherever possible, and work from there. Just for the record, I am not the only slant six driver/owner who reports the hot start heat soak issue. When you start it up after a 5-10 minute shut down, it runs lean for awhile. Others have reported the same issue. The first non factory item to go was the turbo. The next thing was to go back to a stock automatic tranny. I have been pleased with both moves. I contemplated the move back to traditional coolant for a long time before making this move. It seemed to me that having the non-traditional Evans coolant in the car might be covering up, or masking some problem, if not actually creating one, so it became appealing to get back to the factory specs. After all, those guys were pretty bright. I talked at length to a scientist who is now retired but has made a good living inventing. Yes, inventing. He holds a number of patents in disparate fields, and lives relatively well off on his residuals from this. . His approach is always to go back to basics when trying to solve a problem. That is what he kept talking about as we were discussing the coolant issue. So I went looking for some hard data to examine. That was not too easy to find. There are lots of words, but much of it generalities, such as "You can cut Fuel costs by as much as 10%."One problem is that there is so much out there to read. I went on line and found numerous positive reviews of Evans coolant, and only a few negative ones. As you know, you can prove anything you want by selecting the data you chose to focus on, especially when looking on the internet. In the end, in some cases it comes down to who you want to believe, and what you want to believe. Many of the positive reviews included the Evans logo, so it seems there is a bias in much of what is there. Several web sites stated that water has a superior heat transfer to the material in Evans. Since I found contradictory claims there, I more or less ignored this, wanting better, and more objective data. In the end this issue was not the deciding factor. I found one negative review in a Chevy forum that examined data from a late model Corvette where they tested Evans. In this particular case they claimed that Evans coolant raised the temperature of the cylinder head by 140 degrees. This really got my attention as it seemed to corroborate my experience. They talked in this review about the high viscosity of Evans over water, and blamed the higher head temp on the fact that it is harder to push Evans through the same spaces water will flow through. So while Evans may, in fact, come in far better contact with the metal than water, in some cases you can move enough higher volume of water past the that metal to absorb as much or more heat. This high viscosity notion was reinforced by Evans own published instructions on installing their coolant. They recommend installing a high volume water pump, their own high flow thermostat, or simply removing the thermostat entirely, and installing a higher flowing radiator. This certainly suggests that with the stock coolant flow, there may not be enough coolant flowing over the metal to absorb the heat we need to dissipate. I do not have a high volume water pump, and not do I wish to remove the thermostat. I do not know if the slant flows better than the average internal combustion engine, but I do know traditional coolant was what the designers were working with. In addition to the suggested changes to the stock cooling system they warned over and over again in their manual about not handling Evans coolant around a hot engine because of the extreme flammability of the material. They also said a spark from an electric fan starting could ignite it. One web site stated, (and I do not know if this is true) that some tracks prohibit its use. Now I know we are all driving your basic bomb around with a gas tank full of gasoline, but why add to the danger? On the positive side, there is the corrosion protection, and lifetime nature of Evans. These are good things. However I spend money on my Dart as a hobby, and do not mind changing out fluids on a more regular basis. If I were running a truck fleet, it might make excellent economic sense to go with Evans. There is also the reduced pressure on the entire cooling system. This is a definite plus. So there were three reasons to try water over the Evans coolant. 1. Test the thesis that a stock slant and block will not flow enough coolant for Evans to do its job; 2. Eliminate at least one fire hazard under the hood. 3. Get back to a stock configuration in the cooling system. In the end, it seemed like a reasonable thing to try. So far so good. If I find any negative side to this I will let you know, but for now, the engine runs cooler, and that is what I was hoping for. This is not just a guess. I have actual gauges to read for all engine conditions, including water jacket temps as well as AF ratio, vacuum, and oil pressure. When the lap top is hooked up I can read actual timing, head temps and injector opening times. Now Dan, if you have any helpful ideas about what is REALLY wrong with my slant, and how to improve it, I am very open to suggestions. What part of the engine management system do you think is out of whack? AF ratios are all within acceptable ranges, and timing is similar to what Ted claims he is running in his slant. I have tried paying people who could not figure it out. For now it seems to run "OK". But it does not, and never has run as well as my stock '72 Duster 225. I AM in the process of planning another engine build and hope to take a better path this time. In thinking back over the build of this engine, the only place I cannot be absolutely certain of correct set up regards cam and timing. I think it is 2 degrees retarded from straight up. But that was years ago now. Sam |
|
| Author: | xjarhead [ Sat May 10, 2014 4:49 pm ] |
| Post subject: | |
If I remember correctly retarted timing can cause it to run hotter. Is it a practice to retard cam timing on turbo motors? Dave |
|
| Author: | Sam Powell [ Sat May 10, 2014 7:02 pm ] |
| Post subject: | |
I do not honestly know. If I remember this correctly it was advice given on this forum to increase low end torque. I do not think a couple of degrees would make that much difference. However, the question stands as to whether I did this correctly. I remember putting the the 2 degree offset bushing in. It certainly does have excellent low end torque. Thanks for thinking about this. Thanks also for reading the novel I wrote. I did get a little long winded, and that was the short version.  Sam |
|
| Page 1 of 1 | All times are UTC-07:00 |
| Powered by phpBB® Forum Software © phpBB Limited https://www.phpbb.com/ |
|