300 Bricknose/Aeronose Teardown

One of the youtube channels I'm subscribed to does blown engine teardowns... and he found a technically dead 300 to feature this week:

worth watching even if just for the entertainment value.

I like the critique he did on the water sitting in the coolant passage around the cylinders. On my 300, that entire area was rust yellow and I could peel off pieces of the cylinder wall. Still ran even with that.

Mine was also full of rust/scale with equally nasty coolant. It all cleaned up when I had it hot tanked at least.

Interesting...  I've always assume that coolant is supposed to protect the cooling circuit (including engine, pump and rad) against rust and corrosion.

How can there be corroding water in the block?  Wrong coolant mixture?

Water by itself is a poor choice for use in a closed-loop cooling system.  Yes, it cools well but it also corrodes things.

I will never forget the conversation with my father when I was in college.  I was taking Mechanics Of Materials and in it we learned what happens to dissimilar metals in the presence of an electrolyte - like water.  Basically you create a battery and material is taken from one metal and deposited on the other.

Dad said "Our '64 Buick sprang a coolant leak.  And it looks like the heads are aluminum."  After some questions I discovered that he was running straight water in the cooling system, in spite of what the owner's manual said.  Sure enough, when he pulled the head the land around the water passage was gone.

Modern antifreezes have corrosion inhibitors that prevent that from happening - as long as they are active.  But after some time that goes away and the coolant needs to be replaced.  And the owner's manual in the Buick explained that antifreeze was a requirement, but Dad didn't read owner's manuals.  In fact, one of his famous sayings was "When all else fails, dig the instructions out of the trash."  

Gary Lewis wrote

Water by itself is a poor choice for use in a closed-loop cooling system.  Yes, it cools well but it also corrodes things.

I will never forget the conversation with my father when I was in college.  I was taking Mechanics Of Materials and in it we learned what happens to dissimilar metals in the presence of an electrolyte - like water.  Basically you create a battery and material is taken from one metal and deposited on the other.

We use utility water (tap water) in water treatment for closed loop cooling on ozone generators, but it's always with prohibitively expensive materials like 316 stainless or titanium and there's already some weird science stuff going on using high voltage to turn oxygen into ozone so I can't tell ya if that has anything to do with it but I'll let you know if I find a way to mount one on a Ford truck for under $3 million.