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Waterless Coolant Improves Engine Life, Boosts MPG 10 Percent

 
13,542 views Jan 5, 2012
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Evans Waterless Coolant

Evans Waterless Coolant

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Engine coolant isn't something you often think about when considering the running costs of your car. Beyond regularly filling up the gas tank and changing the oil every so often, that other liquid doesn't really get a look in.

If we told you that a special waterless coolant would improve your fuel efficiency ten percent, extend your engine's life and never need changing, you might take a little more notice. What you may not know is that it's been around for years.

How long? Well, professional talk-show host, denim enthusiast and uber-gearhead Jay Leno has been using Evans Waterless Coolant for 16 years now in some of his vintage automobiles.

Benefits

What are the benefits of waterless coolant? Well, coolant is so named because it allows your engine to run at its high operating temperatures without damage, and does the same over winter, where anti-freeze stops ice from forming in the system and cracking components.

The trouble is, water-based coolants can cause corrosion in metals, increasing wear and tear on components and encouraging corroded deposits to flush through the system, potentially causing damage.

Waterless coolant doesn't corrode parts - as it doesn't contain water. It also boils at a much higher temperature, so your cooling system doesn't need to be pressurized, reducing risk of boiling over.

A beneficial side-effect of this is that with your engine able to safely handle higher temperatures - while still being effectively cooled - your cooling fan doesn't need to start as often.

Your cooling fan draws its electric power from the battery, which is kept charged using the alternator. This draws power from the engine - and therefore uses more fuel. Evans Cooling claims that thanks to the higher temperatures, the fan comes on less frequently, resulting in less alternator load, and you could see fuel economy improvements of as much as ten percent.

Since the coolant also never needs changing, potentially hazardous waste following repeated coolant flushes is reduced.

As you can see in the Jay Leno's Garage video, Jay has been using the coolant for several years in several vehicles, and his testimony holds up with Evans Cooling's own claims. The coolant is also popular among the trucking community.

At between $40-50 per gallon it's not cheap, but the longer you drive the better value it becomes. There aren't many things you'll never need to change in your car, but coolant could now be one of them.

Even if you don't quite achieve 10 percent in fuel savings, your environmental conscience will be clean...

+++++++++++

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Comments (18)

  1. fb_1001015277 avatar John Briggs Posted: 1/5/2012 1:25pm PST

    "Your cooling fan is driven using a belt off the crank" So that sounds like a traditional rear wheel drive engine (not transverse mounted).

    "your cooling fan doesn't need to start as often." Does that fan turn on and off? I know it does for a transverse mounted engine, but that is electrically driven not from a belt off the crank.

    I thought traditional engines ran the fan all the time.
     
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  2. fb_61206378 avatar Antony Ingram Posted: 1/6/2012 1:53am PST

    Hi John, sorry, yes, that was an oversight. Many cooling fans are of course electrically powered now, and run off a thermostat, though of course this does draw current from the car and puts load on the alternator. I'll amend the article - my only excuse was that it had been a long day!
     
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  3. fb_1001015277 avatar John Briggs Posted: 1/6/2012 4:06am PST

    That's alright thought the problem was "between my ears" as usual .
    I got a scanguage II MPG meter for Christmas. I wonder if it is sensitive enough to measure the MPG implications of the electrical fan turning on and off in my car. I'll have to devise some sort of test.
     
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  4. fb_61206378 avatar Antony Ingram Posted: 1/6/2012 1:03pm PST

    It'd be interesting to hear your Scangauge results, John.
     
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  5. kidmarc avatar kid marc Posted: 1/6/2012 10:28am PST

    Well, well, people are catching up to waterless cooling; including Jay Leno.

    On the other hand, why is it necessary to amend the article? The statements "... Your cooling fan is driven using a belt off the crank... your cooling fan doesn't need to start as often." by Mike Tourville of Evans Cooling Systems are correct. So why make the change?
     
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  6. fb_61206378 avatar Antony Ingram Posted: 1/6/2012 1:07pm PST

    I changed it to reflect the more common solution. Driving the fanbelt off the crank isn't particularly common these days, most cars use electric fans controlled by thermostat, including those with north-south engines. As John pointed out, crank-driven ones tend to run all the time so there's no way the different coolant would affect MPG via the fan.
     
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  7. kidmarc avatar kid marc Posted: 1/6/2012 6:28pm PST

    I see...

    From reading John's post, he doesn't or didn't know about "traditional engine"/"crank-driven..." fans. [Read his post again] Modern axially mounted motors/engines had switched from direct drive to clutch engagement, aka a fan clutch. [They have this for a/c compressors and alternators, you know.] They cycle on and off depending on the setup. [i.e. speed, temp, or both] This is what Mr. Tourville referenced.

    Depending on the manufacturer, engineer, and or mechanic, they are highly favored due to reliability.
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  8. fb_1001015277 avatar John Briggs Posted: 1/7/2012 4:15am PST

    @kid marc,
    Thanks for the explanation. It makes sense to me now. I did not know about modern fan clutches, but just read the wikipedia entry on them.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_clutch
    It is very cool that there are both mechanical-only and electro-mechanical fan clutches.

    So I tend to agree with you that the original article was fine and it was just my ignorance of fan clutches that caused the problem.
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  9. colt45103 avatar Mike Beerman Posted: 3/8/2012 5:19am PST

    No traditional loginitudinal mounted engines (rear drive cars) typically have a thermostatic clutch on the fan that only engages when the under hood temperature reaches a specific point. That is why you can freely spin the fan on a longitudinally mounted engine when it is not running.
     
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  10. bobmcl avatar Robert Hauger Posted: 1/7/2012 6:53am PST

    How do I adjust my mechanical or electrical fan turn on temps? And what pressure cap would be safe for my engine? Those issues where not addressed.
     
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  11. fb_1001015277 avatar John Briggs Posted: 1/7/2012 6:54am PST

    OK, I am confused again.
    The waterless coolant can handle higher temperatures, say 250°F, rather than say 180°F for standard coolant. This would allow the fan to turn on less often and save energy.

    However, don't I need to change the fan thermal switch from 180°F to 250°F to get that benefit? Seems like something the OEM would need to do rather than a shade-tree mechanic.
     
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  12. fb_581871834 avatar Keith Totherow Posted: 1/7/2012 7:27am PST

    Only one item, Jay said this would be the most expensive drink he could buy. He must know some pretty lenient bartenders then, because the last time I checked (1992) drinks only had 1.5 oz. of alcohol in them, and cost several dollars apiece. To buy a gallon of booze (128 oz.) for $40 would be quite a bargain. You'd have to buy 85.33 drinks to get one gallon of alcohol which would run you $256 at only $3 apiece. I suppose one might find a cheap bourbon at $8 a fifth in the liquor store.
     
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  13. fb_1001015277 avatar John Briggs Posted: 1/7/2012 8:12am PST

    Perhaps Jay was "trying" to be funny.
     
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  14. fb_581871834 avatar Keith Totherow Posted: 1/7/2012 3:20pm PST

    I like Jay. I guess we are lucky to have him. Most millionaires are not as accessible.
    He sure loves his cars!
     
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  15. EdJoganic avatar Ed Joganic Posted: 3/16/2012 9:23pm PDT

    It doesn't sound like a good idea to try to change the operating temperature of the engine. Mechanical clearances are set for a certain design temperature. When you heat the system up clearances disappear and wear increases - like ring gaps and bearing clearances. Heat it too much and the engine seizes. Regardless of cooling temperature the engine will still produce the exact same waste heat dependant on load. The heat has to be dissipated by the same radiator with the same rpm dependant coolant flow rate. I don't see much room for energy savings unless - the specific heat of the coolant (it's heat carrying capacity) is greater. That would make it a more efficient coolant. The effect would be to carry more heat in a smaller vol.of coolant.
     
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  16. fb_1394911574 avatar Ben Buckner Posted: 4/26/2012 5:25pm PDT

    Yeah, letting the engine run hotter is a really, really bad idea. You could get that just by tweaking the radiator fan thermostat, if you dared to try it. I don't think this stuff could possibly be raising the running temp, or it would be killing engines left and right. Anything it's getting has to be in increasing the cooling efficiency.
     
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  17. fb_1394911574 avatar Ben Buckner Posted: 4/26/2012 5:18pm PDT

    If the MPG improvement is real, it might be also due to the viscosity and density of the coolant. The fan only runs intermittently, but the coolant pump runs all the time and often under fairly suboptimal conditions. A less dense, less viscous coolant would require less power to circulate. Radiator fans typically draw around 40 A, which comes out to less than 1 HP - there's no way that eliminating an intermittent sub-horsepower load could possibly improve fuel efficiency by 10% on a typical vehicle. On the other hand, I've found references that indicate the coolant pump typically draws about 300 W, so between the fan and coolant pump, you're probably just around 1.5 HP. If it works, it's probably getting most benefit at low speed and idle.
     
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  18. Evansguy avatar John Light Posted: 5/21/2012 6:50pm PDT

    Hi,
    I'll start by stating out front that I work at Evans Cooling Systems, but I'm not trying to sell you something. I would like the chance to clarify a few things that should help out here. The MPG savings are available in commercial diesel trucks. The Class 8 trucks control their fan with the engine's computer allowing us to change the parameters. At 50 HP to run the fan, the fuel savings are good. The best results are on trucks that work hard at a standstill, like trash trucks (8-9%). OTR trucks get about 3% MPG savings. Allowing the coolant temperature rise by 20 degrees or so isn't stressful to the engine because the coolant isn't boiling. It can be a challenge to get the H2O out, so it's not for everyone.
     
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