anti freeze alternative

[Phokaioglaukos]

What happens when oil is dropped in the turn: VIDEO LINK

Another view of the incident: HERE

[fve]

ninjabones wrote

Not to throw the GT3 guys under the bus, but I can't remember a club race or DE when at least one run session over the weekend wasn't affected by a GT3 spewing coolant (without mentioning any names, one particular car leaked coolant on track on at least 4 different occasions last season alone).

There is a well documented defect in the GT3 coolant system (glued fittings and crappy engineering on the collant manifold). Here's a thread from rennlist with more than 90 posts with an attempt to create a registry of GT3 owners who have experienced coolant system failures mostly while on track, and many of which were catastrophic failures. All of the guys that I know that own GT3s have had it happen (perhaps Terry, Kenny, or Graham can chime in on their experiences). I think we've just been lucky that none have (yet) resulted in serious injury.

...

Perhaps even changing our tech form is warranted to include a line item about what type of coolant is in the car and a written "recommendation" that water be used in stead of antifreeze while on track. Also would provide an opportunity during tech for the inspector to discuss the issue with the owner.

I don't frequent the forums, so just ran across this thread.

FWIW, I have not had a coolant failure in my car (I am one of the GT3-guilty). Perhaps it will happen.

I have considered changing over to water, but have not done so since i was concerned about water pump failure, corrosion, etc, etc. There are pros and cons to everything.

I am curious about this Evans stuff: how slippery is it. Seems to be used in some racing applications but has many of the positive properties of AF.

As far as the tech form idea, that is a very sensible.

fve blu gt3

[Phokaioglaukos]

GT3s--as has been noted, several GT3s in the club (including the one I owned) have experienced failures of coolant lines, generally of the bonded manifolds that sit atop the engine. Excellence magazine published an extensive analysis in the February 2011 issue with removing and welding the failing joints as a top candidate for repair and prevention.

Banning Coolant--the June 2011 Excellence tech forum column notes that using water or water and WaterWetter is not that much of an improvement over antifreeze. Citing a WaterWetter white paper (HERE), the authors note that water on dry pavement cuts the dynamic friction coefficient of tire rubber on pavement by about half. Using WaterWetter is no worse and using common anti-freeze is just 5-15% worse. Their conclusion is that banning coolant at the track does not reduce the risk all that much. The fix is to take measures to avoid coolant/water losses.

Air Cooled Cars--please remember that these cars are more accurately described as oil cooled cars and that there are oil lines, often of rubber, that run the length of the car. They can leak, too, and should be inspected and replaced regularly. Oil on the track is slippery.

 

[fve]

I got the article regarding the coolant manifold from Chris (thank you!) and it was an interesting read. I had been following some threads on the various forums and was aware that it was an issue. there is a whole thread on rennlist (as mentioned by Glen) about it, but if you go through all 8 pages of posts there are only a handful of documented failures and a whole lot of general bitching/moaning on the part of most participants.

As far as i can tell this is an idiosyncratic (but potentially devastating) failure. The approach that has been advocated is TIG welding the fittings on the the manifold. It sounds good, but is it really a bullet-proof approach or will other problems arise. Before i commit to this i want to give the cars with this "repair" some time and see how they hold up. Regardless, i am considering it and may wind up doing it this winter.

for what it is worth, that article indicated that racing teams were unaware of this failure even though cup cars have the same gorilla-glued manifold piece. And, failures can occur on any of the old "GT1" engines with the ad hoc water cooling added to a basically oil-cooled design, including turbos and GT2's. lots of food for thought.

frank

[emayer]

Thanks for the info!

No doubt, preventative maintenance seems to be the soundest approach. I'm not at the point however that it makes sense to go through the effort and cost of having the fittings welded.

One aspect that the graph does not point out is the fact that water, water/wetter evaporates quickly whereas antifreeze lingers on the track surface quite a bit. There is no evidence to support this, but it may be another point of discussion in considering reducing overall risk.

[Phokaioglaukos]

It may well be that water or water and WaterWetter will evaporate more quickly than antifreeze will, but it's the unexpected coating of one's rear tires or coming upon a spill before the debris flag is waving that there is the most danger. It may take longer to clean up the antifreeze, but it seems to me that there is not much to prefer water to antifreeze when it comes to causing an incident.

[Brian Minkin]

I have had the unfortunate experience of coming up on both water/water wetter dumped on the track and coolant. Although slippery I was able to control braking and turn the car in the water/water wetter spill. Not saying it was a walk through the park but I did manage it. The two times I have driven into a coolant spill I spun and there was nothing I could do to save it except go both feet in. So from personal experience I would say that 5 to 15% makes a difference.