Coolant Freeze Point For You Cold Weather Guys...

[harrydunn]

Drained 1/2-gallon out of the lower radiator hose (gave up on the petcock!) and refilled both radiator and overflow tank with 50/50. Got me down to roughly +12 degrees (from +20). Seems like I'm on the right track. A couple more of these and I should have a good freeze point for Missouri winters. I was hoping I could adjust things by just tinkering with the overflow tank mix but it was going to be a slow process I could tell. We're dipping down to about 11 degrees this Thursday night so I wanted to speed things up a bit (not cold by some of your standards I know ).

 

[corsair23]

I was hoping I could adjust things by just tinkering with the overflow tank mix but it was going to be a slow process I could tell. We're dipping down to about 11 degrees this Thursday night so I wanted to speed things up a bit (not cold by some of your standards I know ).

Yes, a slow process indeed - I'm not sure how long it takes for what is in the overflow bottle to fully mix with the rest of system so good call on speeding up the process in advance of the cold weather

It is in the single digits around here so if this system is on its way to you, get ready for the COLD!!!

 

[harrydunn]

It is in the single digits around here so if this system is on its way to you, get ready for the COLD!!!

Just make sure it's cold and snowy in Winter Park for my February ski trip!

Your method is a good one and would work fine but I don't think mother nature is going to be patient enough with me. I drained another quart out tonight into a milk jug. I wanted to get a sense of what kind of mixture I was dealing with so I added about 1/2-quart distilled water to it, stirred it up, and barely got one ball floating so it was definitely light on the coolant from the initial fill last week. Filled the radiator back up with one quart of straight coolant and am now seeing about -15 to -20 degrees for a freeze point so I'm going to call that good if it stays in that range. It's usually garaged so I should be fine during the coldest parts of the day.