Coolant Infomation (you may not know)

[teenmal]

ChellandAndy, further to Haydn's excellent posts.

The pH of any anti-freeze should always be above pH 7.
Anything above pH 7 is alkaline, and anything below
pH 7 is acidic. Pure distilled water is pH 7.

The additives in anti-freeze are there to maintain the
strength of the solution into the alkaline region, but
the strength will deteriorate over time until the pH
value goes below 7 and is acidic.

A new flush and fill of glycol anti-freeze should be
around pH 8 whereas long life anti-freeze can be as
high as pH 9 or more.

Test strips are a reliable way of testing the pH
value. When dipped in a cold solution they will change
colour; and a colour scale is usually supplied with
the strips to indicate the pH value. You can also use
an expensive pH meter to test the value.

It's important to test the pH at least once a year to
ensure that the solution does not become acidic and
corrosive, some garages ignore this and only test the
specific gravity of the anti-freeze solution.

A good range for test strips is pH 5.00 to pH 9.00
These can be bought from most motor factors such as
Halfords. Medical and health test strips do the same
job. Price is around eight pounds per 100 strips.

You need to expose the full length of the strip in the
solution within the expansion tank which may not be
practical or reliable. It would be better to use a large
syringe to extract the solution from the tank or drain
a tumbler full from the bottom of the radiator. Under
no circumstances should you use a mouth syphon as
the solution is a POISON.

And the Antidote is WHISKY...