~ The Red LIne Water Wetter I use (it was recently on special in a Moss
~ Flyer) comes in a clear plastic, ribbed bottle and is a red fluid. It's
~ so nice looking you want to drink it. Keep it away from kids!
~
~ You MIX is with your regular EG coolant to improve the heat shedding
~ abilities and, I believe, the "bonding" of the coolant to the metal
~ surfaces.
~
~ Can anyone else who uses it think of a better way to put it ? It has
~ helped my cooling on the Spitfire by 7 - 10 degrees, and thus helped with
~ my highway oil pressure.
RedLine Water Wetter is well known in racing circles. To begin with,
the corner workers like it because it's not as slippery as glycol, so
when they have to go out and push a car with a blown engine or a
ruptured radiator after a shunt, their feet don't slide as much.
(Neither do other cars that come on the crash site, BTW.) For racing
applications, it's recommended to mix WW with plain H2O; for street
apps, you can mix it with glycol. (I'm planning, for reference to
use some of the new propylene glycol, if only because I learned that
15 ml -- about a mouthful -- of ethylene glycol would kill my littlest
daughter if she drank it. I also have cats who are just dumb enough
to taste the stuff if it spills out onto the ground when I drain the
radiator...)
How WW works: it's a surfactant, meaning it changes the surface tension
of water. The result in this case is that as water boils, the bubbles
that form on the walls of the cooling passages are smaller; this results
in more water-to-iron contact, which in turn results in better cooling.
Not magic, just good science.
I've used it, and it gives improved cooling on the MGB both on the
street and the track. Note that there are two kinds of WW; the red
liquid does not contain lubricants for your water pump, so you need
to run at least a small amount of glycol or at least water-pump
lubricant in the coolant. There's also a dry form in pink crystals,
which does contain lubricant; this is recommended for use in straight
water for maximum cooling effect.
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