Date:         Fri, 7 May 2010 13:40:45 -0700
Reply-To:     Robert Fisher <garciasghostvw@GMAIL.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Robert Fisher <garciasghostvw@GMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Re: Antifreeze WAS: stainless steel coolant pipes
In-Reply-To:  <4BE424F4.6060208@comcast.net>
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--snip--  
Add  maniacal laughter here as topic now morphs into long discussion about distilled water.....
--snip--

Well I don't know what the water's like where you are (Virginia? Kentucky?- I don't remember...) but I grew up in east TN and I never saw water there like we have here. There/then you could set out a glass of water and when it finally evaporated there wouldn't be anything noticeable in it unless maybe a bug landed in it.

Someday if I'm really bored and decide I give a whoop I ought to post some pics of the same thing using the water here, and maybe some pics of used swamp cooler pads. There's a good reason that two of the main boron extraction sites are within an hour of here (including Boron, CA itself). You don't get dust storms back east that obscure everything from 20 feet out, and you don't have to worry about breathing arsenic dust that's blowing down out of a lake bed that somebody drained so that a*holes in a city three hours away can waste it watering their damn lawns.

The point is, you don't want that crap in your engine. I've seen radiators less than ten years old that looked like somebody put a metal case on a limestone block. My stepdad had a Cadillac in which the corrosion ate through the engine block from a water passage. 

Yeah that means there were other problems with the coolant system that weren't caught or dealt with, but it's easy and common enough to have happen. Distilled water is cheap, and chances are you were in Walmart or a supermarket anyway, so why not? Why put potentially damaging crap into the system when there's no need at all for it?

Cya,
Robert