coolant additive??
FTE Leadership Emeritus
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 7,298
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From: Southern California
coolant additive??
I think what you are reffering to is called FW-16, which is the Ford part number for the coolant additive. It's availabe at your dealer.
If you do a search in the diesel forum, you should find some threads on the topic of 'cavitation' and the requirement for this specific additive.
If you do a search in the diesel forum, you should find some threads on the topic of 'cavitation' and the requirement for this specific additive.
Senior User
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 109
Likes: 0
coolant additive??
All diesel manufacturers, to my knowledge, recommend a cooling system additive to prevent cavitation erosion of the cyl walls/liners. Cavitation erosion is what happens when a couple of things happen;
1) Steam bubbles in the coolant implode against the outside of the cyl. This action picks away at the iron surface creating holes in the iron, eventually enough so that the coolant will ultimately end up penetrating the cyl wall. It doesn't happen overnight, but at this time, I have a John Deere 6 cyl in for an overhaul because of CE, and this engine is a 92 with only 5000 hours. It filled the cyl with anti-freeze at bottom of intake stroke. When engine wouldn't turn over, they towed it, the cyl hydrauliced, and the trapped fluid pushed the head gasket out from between the head and block. Lucky. Could have bent the rod and destroyed a lot more.
2) The sliding action of the piston inside the liner has been shown to swirl the antifreeze on the outside of the cyl/liner, creating more bubbles which implode against the liner surface, and you see where this is going. What these additives are doing are reducing the surface tension of the coolant so it is less likely to form bubbles, which seems to be the primary cause of the erosion. The new "water wetters" we are seeing on the market now are basically doing the same thing. Preventing bubbles, preventing steam pockets, resulting in an engine that runs a more stable temp. This is my understanding of the situation of the problem, its causes, and what the theories of prevention amount to. I'm sure this will generate more controversy, so There it is in a rather large nutshell, and we'll see what else is generated.
1) Steam bubbles in the coolant implode against the outside of the cyl. This action picks away at the iron surface creating holes in the iron, eventually enough so that the coolant will ultimately end up penetrating the cyl wall. It doesn't happen overnight, but at this time, I have a John Deere 6 cyl in for an overhaul because of CE, and this engine is a 92 with only 5000 hours. It filled the cyl with anti-freeze at bottom of intake stroke. When engine wouldn't turn over, they towed it, the cyl hydrauliced, and the trapped fluid pushed the head gasket out from between the head and block. Lucky. Could have bent the rod and destroyed a lot more.
2) The sliding action of the piston inside the liner has been shown to swirl the antifreeze on the outside of the cyl/liner, creating more bubbles which implode against the liner surface, and you see where this is going. What these additives are doing are reducing the surface tension of the coolant so it is less likely to form bubbles, which seems to be the primary cause of the erosion. The new "water wetters" we are seeing on the market now are basically doing the same thing. Preventing bubbles, preventing steam pockets, resulting in an engine that runs a more stable temp. This is my understanding of the situation of the problem, its causes, and what the theories of prevention amount to. I'm sure this will generate more controversy, so There it is in a rather large nutshell, and we'll see what else is generated.
