Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

I know this has been covered before but I am still unsure about this product. An engineer pal told me that this would actually make the car run slightly hotter, which is not the desired effect! Has anybody used this in their cars with any worthwhile difference? My cooling system is working fine but I am nervous of long traffic jams. Thanks members

a d price wrote:I know this has been covered before but I am still unsure about this product. An engineer pal told me that this would actually make the car run slightly hotter, which is not the desired effect! Has anybody used this in their cars with any worthwhile difference? My cooling system is working fine but I am nervous of long traffic jams. Thanks members

Just ask yourself,

"Why don't the major car makers use it?"

Too much "black magic" surrounding the stuff for me & my Elan & my 2013 BMW 118d work well with the cooling systems filled with water plus 40% anti-freeze.

You will find that this subject has been discussed at some length on here before.
The posters split themselves into groups of miracle & non-miracle believers.

I'm sure that herewith the discussion will re-ignite to some extent

Hi

It depends upon the specific heat of the coolant, water is 4.2j/kg.K.
Glycol based antfreeze has a lower specific heat and therefore cannot transfer as much heat, up to around 25% reduction is common dependent upon antfreeze and content mixed with water.
If the waterless coolant has a higher specific heat it would cool the engine more effectively than water. If it less than 4.2j/kg.k it will not. However, it might be better than common antfreeze mixtures.
Ask the question what the specific heat is, if they cannot provide an answer don't buy.
If they do advise specific heat please post and it can be compared with other alternatives.

Cheers Gray

My understanding is the main advantage of Evans is that it won't boil/evaporate at some point a little above 100C.

The main advantage is with modern cars which cars that runs at 110C (*) and relay on pressure to prevent the coolant boiling. If there is a leak on these types of cars, the pressure drops and the coolant boils due to reduced pressure. The result are the cars over heat very quickly, with evans the coolant wouldn't boil so the car would overheat more slowly.

The downside it it is not quite a efficient as water for heat transfer, so your system will run slightly hotter.

* e.g. BMW M62TU engines, mines been very close to the red for the expansion bottle leaking under high pressure.

A friend nearby has used it in his 7 & for the past several years in his Europa. After my restoration I decided to use it in my Elan which is an S4 SE UK spec with Strombergs & the narrow radiator. I found that even last fall when the air temp was only around 23C that with the car idling the water temp gauge would climb above 100 & up towards 105. I should mention that I reworked the rad cap so that it did not pressurize the system.
I was unhappy with the high coolant temp so I decided to try it this year with just plain water. The coolant temp I would say has dropped on average 10 to 15C. It only climbed over 100C when I was in 30C weather & idling at the border for 1/2 an hour. I am of course now running a pressure rad cap.
In conclusion, if you are having cooling problems do not use it, if you don't have a cooling problem, then it has the advantage of not needing the cooling system to be pressurized, due to it's much higher boiling point. It is also quite expensive.

Evan's website says that it will run a little hotter.

Spend the money on a good fan and it will run cooler

Car manufactures don't use it because of the cost.

stevebroad wrote:Car manufactures don't use it because of the cost.

Precisely Steve & their cars run quite happily with water & anti-freeze.
Some modern cars can cope quite easily with 120?C & a system pressure of up to 2 bar at the coolant filler cap so I ask myself how do these people justify their product.

Cheers
John

My Elan has had Evans in now for nearly a year and runs a little hotter. Previously around 70 degrees now at 73 which I would have thought near perfect. At a recent sprint with lots of waiting in turn for the start the temperature never went over 80 degrees (S3 Coupe with wide radiator). Another competitor with full race MGBGT said he would never use anything but Evans as all his overheating troubles have disappeared since using it. Yes, more expensive than tap water (but less than the price of a decent meal) but hopefully it will not need changing while I own the car.

Just doing some reading up on Evan's to see if its Elan Friendly (hence bringing this thread from the depths )

We have used it for a few years now in our 450hp RX7 trackday car and even though it does run slightly hotter (our experience it was 5 degree's hotter then 30% Antifreeze) we have had good experience with it, believe it or not our oil temp dropped nearly 10 degree's and the EGT was lower too and we where told this was due to there being no vapour bubbles forming around the Hot area's of the engine.

Bit of a down side though we have found it quite allot harder to bleed the system well, i'm not sure why but i would guess that has some thing to do with the Pressure in the system when the water coolant expands.

Coincidentally, just yesterday I was speaking to a pal with a Healey who, believing all the hype went the Evans route. With the flushing and everything the cost was close to an incredible ?200 and his engine now runs hotter. He`s not pleased.
I could never understand why a liquid having a higher boiling point is an advantage, at least if your coolant boils you know to switch the engine off.
Jim

Anything that puts up the running temperature on my narrow rad S4 is likely to have my blood pressure rising in synchrony but that's the result of years of assuming I'm only a hairs breadth from a cloud of steam induced disaster. For the purposes of this discussion, if I changed to the Evans coolant presumably I could relax? The engine might run hotter but so what. It's not going to boil (is it?).

What does it matter if the engine runs a bit hotter? That's not a statement, it's a question. Does it matter if I'm running at 100C rather than my normal 85C and it goes up another 20C in traffic? Is it just a matter of unlearning decades of gauge hysteria or are there other sleeping mechanical perils that running on the far side of boiling point will prod with a stick?

The thing is it does suit some cars better than others, i'm sure if you have a Rad that is only just cutting it with Water its going to have a nightmare with Evans, as i say our race car has a rad that is four times the size of the Elan's and the combination works very well for us but i'm not as daft as to put it in a car without reading the feedback first because i know its not as Thermo Efficient as water so your rad has to have enough surface area to cool well. Also as i have already said the Evans does not bleed well at all, you tend to get really bad air locks if you don't pressure bleed it.

It does have plenty of advantages, for example i spotted my Water seal had failed on the race car before it did any damage because the Coolant system had pressure in it, that is the same for Blown head gaskets or cracked heads etc. It also doesn't separate like Antifreeze, when i took my Elan engine to bits there was half an inch of Antifreeze sludge in the block (where the anticorrosion additive breaks down and drops to the bottom) Water Coolant is all well and good if you keep on top of it but if you don't change it every 3-5 years it will start to eat away at alloy heads etc (I have a Elan head i can show you with 40,000 miles on it that was serviced by Lotus all its life with the most Hideous Corrosion, this head had been dry stored since 1982 with no coolant in the engine so that damage was in 10 years)

69S4 wrote:What does it matter if the engine runs a bit hotter? That's not a statement, it's a question. Does it matter if I'm running at 100C rather than my normal 85C and it goes up another 20C in traffic? Is it just a matter of unlearning decades of gauge hysteria or are there other sleeping mechanical perils that running on the far side of boiling point will prod with a stick?

From my personal experience Evans is a bit odd stuff, yes it runs hotter but doesn't fluctuate like water usually does, for example our Race car sits about 90 degree's in Traffic but pull away and cruise at 60mph and that drops to 86 degrees, take it to a Track and hammer it to within an Inch of its Life and the data logger says it never goes over 87 degree's, the temps seem very stable compared to friends with similar set ups that see between 80 and 100 degree's. But all that said i have no experience of Evans in a Lotus with a very small Radiator (may well be out of the Rad's efficiency)

Also one thing to take into account is sludge, allot of old cars have seriously reduced efficiency due to deposits in the Coolant Jacket of the block, granted the extra efficiency of Water may well mask the problem and when you add Evans you can't stop it getting hot as its not shifting enough heat?? or as i have already said it may well have air in the Head which will also not help but all cars are not Equal.

What does it matter if the engine runs a bit hotter? That's not a statement, it's a question. Does it matter if I'm running at 100C rather than my normal 85C and it goes up another 20C in traffic?

It`s no problem, just that instead of white steam you`ll see blue smoke.
Jim