![]() ![]() If your car is older than four years old, a switch is not likely to yield any extra coolant life as you'd still need to drain and swap your coolant every two years. If your car came with a traditional green or red coolant, you can't switch to long-life orange coolant without a fair amount of preparation. Color isn't always a certain indicator of the kind of coolant in your car as it sometimes varies, but we’ll use those common colors for shorthand here. Longer-life coolant such as Dex-Cool is often dyed orange, and it offers about a year of extra use before it needs to be swapped out. Green dye is used in most brands, although Toyota uses red. Most antifreeze is made with a base chemical called ethylene glycol. ![]() So, the boiling point of a 50/50 mix of antifreeze and water in a properly functioning system is about 265 degrees or higher, giving your engine a bit more leeway before the coolant overheats. This increases the boiling point of the coolant by about 40 degrees. Pressurizing the cooling system also raises the coolant's boiling point, so the radiator cap (which is sometimes located on the engine or the coolant reservoir) has a pressure valve to raise the pressure in the cooling system by around 15 psi. In this case, however, the heated air is blown into the passenger compartment. This thermostat may be located just before coolant leaves the engine to flow into the upper radiator hose or at the inlet to the water pump, the latter of which is the preferred location on most newer cars.Ĭoolant also flows through hoses that run into and out of the heater, which gives off its heat to the surrounding air like a miniature radiator. The coolant also heats a temperature-sensitive valve called a thermostat that opens at around 195 degrees Fahrenheit to allow the coolant to flow through the radiator. When the engine is cold, coolant circulates only within the engine, so the engine heat can warm it up faster. ![]() The cooled coolant then gets pumped out of the radiator through the lower radiator hose and back into the engine, where the cycle starts all over again. Fins attached to the metal radiator tubes draw heat away from the coolant and dissipate it into the air drawn through the radiator by fans and the forward motion of the car. These tubes are typically aluminum on newer cars, which is one of the reasons why choosing the right coolant is important. The water pump then moves that heated coolant through the upper radiator hose and into the radiator, which is a heat exchanger filled with metal tubes. The coolant mixture heats up as it circulates through the engine. Simply put, a water pump circulates a mixture of antifreeze and water between your car’s engine and radiator. ![]()
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