Aircraft can get away with air-cooled engines – your car depends on quality coolant

This WWII B-17 landing at Chicago Executive Airport has four air-cooled engines. The cars on the road below, however, must have quality coolant and cooling systems.

Some piston-engine aircraft are air cooled. The engines have oil to reduce friction within but no coolant. That’s not a problem for the aircraft as aircraft don’t get caught in stop-and-go traffic while flying. The air is constantly rushing in and around the engine. Even the propeller helps to pull the air through. As the air goes by it carries much of the heat with it.

Your car, on the other hand, can’t get away with an air-cooled engine. Your car engine is water cooled. A car engine produces a lot of heat. Even though your engine has oil to reduce heat-inducing friction, the moving parts moving rapidly against each other produce tremendous amounts of heat. Without the coolant, an engine will rapidly overheat and the parts could fuse together.

When you stop at a red light, go through the drive-up window of a diner or you’re caught in construction traffic, the only air running across the engine is the air drawn by a small fan. Without an effective cooling system you’re bound to overheat your engine with potentially catastrophic results.

The importance of a cooling system in a car is matched by the importance of good quality coolant. This is truer today than in years gone by.

“Many of today’s car engines are made up with a mix of parts constructed with aluminum, iron or composites,” said Denny Norton, owner of Ringwood based Performance Unlimited. “When you have different metals in contact like that they can create electrolysis. Where the aluminum is touching the metal, the metal corrodes and the aluminum eventually falls apart.”

Engineers understand the effects of electrolysis and design engines that will withstand those effects. Such engines rely on high-quality, extended-life coolant to retard that process. On the other hand, lesser quality coolant can actually promote corrosion.

Long before the parts inside your engine fall apart, they create corrosive particles that are carried away in the coolant. Those particles are apt to collect in narrow passages within the cooling system, such as in the radiator or heater core. As particles of corrosion build up they can eventually block arteries in the system. Even if they don’t, they’ll reduce the flow of coolant.

When a radiator’s efficiency is reduced an engine will run hotter. It won’t last as long before wear and tear takes its toll. Likewise, the heater core will do a lesser job of heating the interior of the car, a crucial factor with winter a couple months ahead.

Yes, winter is coming. That doesn’t, however, reduce the importance of coolant in your engine. That friction will continue to produce heat inside the engine on the coldest of days and nights. The coolant’s ability to maintain its liquid state when the car isn’t running is a factor in the winter and another reason to ensure your coolant/antifreeze is up to the task.

Call Performance Unlimited at 815-728-0343 to have your coolant and cooling system checked. Through Nov. 31, Performance Unlimited is offering a “Free Cooling System Checkup,” as well as a “Free Charging System Checkup.” Between the two, you’ll be well on your way to winterizing your car for the season ahead.