Besides trying to destroy everything, does water have any other effects?
I ran mine with water for awhile, nor real issues besides steam and water
spewing from every flaw in my coolant reservoir.
From that I can assume our system is not made to with stand the steam expansion pressure.
I replaced my reservoir and added the proper $280 a quart coolant.
But I am still losing some coolant, no wet carpet, no steam on windows.
So I believe it is under the hood.
Besides the tank, what is the next most common culprit for coolant leaks?

ps ps ps. Could the residual water left in the system be evaporating away causing my coolant level to lower?

 

Found my leak, water pump pulley shaft.

 

Definitely don't keep using water by itself. That said, as long as it was just a short time and the car was never allowed to overheat, you're probably in the clear.

Do flush it and put a 50/50 mix in there going forward, though. If you used distilled water, you can get away with a couple drain-fills rather than a complete flush.

 

innzane, running straight water in your coolant system is not necessarily bad, but I wouldn't recommend it all year long (atleast where we live). One of the big things that adding the anti-freeze to the water is exactly what the name says, doesn't allow it to freeze. When properly mixed, you should be good down to -40F at a minimum to prevent ice forming in the block of the car. Where, straight water would result in ice at anything below 32F. Ice in the block is bad because ice is physically bigger than water. So, inside the engine block where you can trap the water, when it expands, it is going to have to go somewhere and it does that by pushing on the block and eventually causing the block to fail, resulting in something breaking on the block. At that point, the engine becomes totally worthless.

In the summer months, running straight water is not that big of an issue. You can technically do it for months on end. The downside is that anti-freeze also contains an anti-rust/preservative. So, it is preventing the water from essentially rusting your block away. Is it going to destroy the block over a summer. By no means. But, if you ran it for years and years, you would find that when you swapped out the water, it would have a very rusty look to it and there would be a lot of "sludge" (aka, rust particles) in the bottom of the radiator. This can act like sand paper and result in quicker failure of your water pump and other surfaces that the coolant comes in contact with.

The other benefit of anti-freeze is that it can have a higher heat capacity than water. So, it can be more effective in removing heat as a volume of anti-freeze can hold more heat than the same volume of water. So, the surfaces of the coolant channels can remain cooler and therefore the overall engine can be cooled better. This is where there is some argument as to whether green is better than orange is better than red is better than ...... While one may be able to hold more heat, another can protect against corrosion better, etc.

So, what is the best coolant, that would depend on what you are ultimately looking to protect your car from.

 

Huh?

 

The dealer adding it cost.

I did not do it long, it was too scary. The metal plugs I tapped in to replace the broke plastic ones in the tank never leaked, that is a solid repair confirmed. But it was pushing water out from 2 spots in the tank one time, I think they are pressure relief spots.
I was paranoid that having the water in the sealed system was causing to much thermal expansion, it sure seemed like it.

 

All liquids expand at more or less the same rate. Engine coolaning systems have a pressure relief cap that maintains the operating pressure at around 15 lbs/sq. in. This is a good thing as the pressure raises the boiling point of the coolant.

 

Innzane, the system in our cars is actually designed around having it slightly pressurized. Here is the thought behind it: As you place pressure on water, its boiling point will rise by a certain amount and therefore the water has to get warmer before it will boil. So, in reality, you can run the engine a little harder and get parts of the coolant system up to say 220F and still not have boiling in the engine block. Remember, the coolant temp gauge only sees the average coolant temp, not the hottest spots temp.

NASCAR uses this concept a lot. You will hear them talking about running the engines up in the 240-250F range on tracks like Daytona and other super speedways. They don't really hurt the engines because the system is running up around 15 psi and this is enough to allow the engines to get up to around 260F without boiling. So, you will have water all throughout the engine removing heat. You have issues when you have a steam blanket at some point as steam is a very good insulator and that spot and have a dramatically high temp.

I use this concept a work. Granted, we are running water up in the 650F range that is still in the liquid state while in a different part of the plant, we have water boiling at 90F. Gotta love nuclear power and how it pushes things to its limits.