>>>(Maybe Bill Watson would be interested in
>>>commenting on and/or investigating your claims.)
Wow. Nothing like seeing your name in an e-mail. This is the best group I ve been involved with over the years, because most groups throw out more opinions than data and end out arguing over unsupported points. This KLR group is really quite good at the tech stuff, most all posts are providing good information. And I think Eric s e-mail was spot-on.
That said, let s go through the water wetter question. WW is essentially a surface tension reducer which reduces the boundary layer in the fluid-to-metal interfaces, and includes some anti-rust / anti-corrosion ingredients as well. As pointed out by others, it s already in ethylene glycol we buy at the local store. I ve done lots of cooling system testing, on a number of cars before the KLR went through similar scrutiny over the last few years. And when I did a number of back-to-back tests on a small block V8 with a 50/50 mix of ethylene glycol and distilled water, the addition of water wetter made no difference at all. In fact, the temps went up a degree but let s face it, that was within the repeatability of that set of tests so I still call it a zero improvement if you add it to ethylene glycol mixtures.
I found in those tests, as well as in the KLR tests, that the biggest single thing we can do is change from 50/50 to higher concentrations of water as Eric points out. It s easy to get turned around in the thinking process the bottom line is that water is the best fluid for dumping heat from the cooling system. The only reason ethylene glycol is added is that it has a lower freezing point, and a higher boiling point. (Keep in mind that majority of the higher boiling point we see is due to the 17 psi cap on our radiators this raises the boiling point of pure water as well). Still, this doesn t fully solve the corrosion and rust and surface tension issues, so a third thing is added to coolant to solve these. We ll call this third set C/R/ST based on what it does in the last sentence.
So. When you buy Prestone for instance, you re getting the ethylene glycol and the C/R/ST, and then you add the distilled water when you fill. If you don t live in a cold area and the freezing issue is not important to you, then you can skip the ethylene glycol, but you re indirectly losing the C/R/ST so if you use 100% distilled water, you need the C/R/ST. One option is Water Wetter. A cheaper option is the milky white stuff sold by Prestone as an Anti-Rust additive. (Even if you do live in a cold area in the winter, you can run this stuff in the summer. C'mon, the KLR only takes ~40 oz of coolant, and can be drained and filled in less than 10 minutes.)
Since I don t have enough experience with any long-term damage this causes (it might cause none; I just don t know), I ve been using an 80/20 mix of Zerex Super Racing Coolant ) available at NAPA as a Valvoline product) and distilled water. The Zerex also has the C/R/ST already. Based on the KLR tests I quote a 14 degree reduction in the steady state coolant temps by running this over 50/50 Ethylene Glycol and Distilled Water.
Finally, I need to clarify one other subject; the confusion over whether the KLR is overcooled (running too cold because the thermostat is set too low) or undercooled (running too hot because the radiator / cooling system is undersized). Guess what, it s both!
The goal of course is to have a bike that runs the same temp all year, and I ll opine that 195 degrees F is the vicinity of that goal temperature. So the design issue for Kawasaki is to put on a large enough radiator that the bike won t run above this temp in the dead of summer, and to put in a hot enough thermostat so it will stay UP AT this temperature in the cold of winter. Sadly, I think the KLR is upside down here. The radiator is so small that the bike runs 220, 230, even 240 in the summer (the red zone starts at 270 F on the factory gauge!) yet all winter when the air going over the radiator is cold enough to hold engine temps down, the factory choice of a 160 degree thermostat has the bike running cold all winter. This is why some people see it as undercooled, and some as overcooled. In my view the proper solution is a hotter thermostat to solve the overcooling problem. To solve the undercooling problem, short of fabricating a larger radiator, I run
the 80/20 mix, the Pat-man mod and a UFO low fender all Summer. My bike runs 195-200 almost all year now.
And yes, per the e-mails coming in, I ll be working with Eagle Mike this year to produce the t-stat kits by this winter.
Separate posting coming on cooling system test results from last year for those who haven t seen it.
Hope this helps,
Bill Watson
Phoenix, AZ
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