Froozen Antifreeze

Quick little story.
The last couple days here it's been 0 degrees and below. Cars been starting up pretty good amazingly. The last 2 days though it's been freezing. Car won't move very good, took forever for heat to kick in, and sounded weird. Figured it was just cold.

So this morning I get to work at 10:30. It was -2 with a wind chill of -25 and lower. I cut a piece of cardboard to put in front of the radiator bc I was hoping that would help out some. No heat on the way to work again so I was desperate. So I slide it in and look at my coolant tank and see that it's half filled and I tapped it. It didnt move. The antifreeze was froozen. Grr... No wonder I had no heat.

I work next to a WalGreens, so I went there to buy some coolant, but they only had 50/50 :( . I filled it up as much as possible and heat is working fine now. I'm thinking it's low as hell now since the tank probably overflowed and instead of being sucked back in, just went out the overflow leaving me with no antifreeze. Grr it was so cold. Heat is great now.

Froozen Antifreeze... ironic?

Actually, antifreeze by itself will freeze just as easily as water will, as retarded as that sounds. A 50/50 mix is the best mix for it, it gives it almost the lowest freezing point out of any mix IIRC. An 80/20 mix will freeze at like -10 I think, but then again I learned that in HS so it may be a little off. My point being is that plain ANTIfreeze will freeze just like water.

David, you'd better hope that the block didn't freeze either, otherwise you'll have a MAJOR problem on your hands. What the hell kind of mix are you running in that car? If it's not 50/50, completely drain it and put in a 50/50 mix. I live in ND and it gets freeeeeeeeeezing up here (-27 on Friday) and I've never had my coolant freeze, ever. Something is obviously wrong.

Damn this insane cold. Gonna get down to -15 tonight. Global warming? hah...

Being as I'm always second guessing myself and dont' want to infest this place with bad information, I did some searching just to back-up my "highschool" statements. Whoever invented anti-freeze is a god damn retard, because the main ingredient in anti-freeze (ethylene glycol) freezes at 8 ABOVE zero (Farenheit), that's crazy. They should have named it "Anti-freeze when mixed with water."

Here's a little chart I found about the mixing ratios. 50/50 is a pretty safe ratio, (better would be 55%, but no one has the time to figure that out) 60% anti-freeze/40% water is about the maximum you want to go, because anything stronger than that, the freezing point starts to climb back up.

http://img73.imageshack.us/img73/262/antifreezechartbr6.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Ha ha. Four days of cold (which wasnt outlandish at all when I was a kid) doesnt negate the fact that the entire rest of the winter has been freakishly warm...

Its pretty cold here too, around -15 tonight. Its supposed to start looking up tomorrow they said on the news though, maybe I will be able to go to all my classes this week.

Also, yeah, 50/50 is pretty much the optimum mixture. I think actually like 57 coolant/ 43 water is optimum or something like that, but you dont gain hardly anything going down that far. I dont know what was going on here, but it sounds to me like it got cold and as it froze it expanded into the over flow tank, then the over flow tank didnt get heated enough and left the rest of the system in need of coolant. I doubt anything serious is going on except that you need some new coolant. If it had frozen, it would have blown a freeze plug or if it cracked the block, it wouldnt have made it far at all. See if you cant leave it in a friends, neighbors, or parents heated garage overnight, drain the coolant, and put some good shit in.

EDIT: Damn you Garrett!

Booyah!! Beat ya too it, biotch! :p

That's a damn good graph.

Here was the situation. Remember when I replaced my thermostat awhile back? I had got everything back together and the gasket on the housing decided it wanted to be replaced. Coolant flushed and replaced and everything. It was steaming out of there just a little bit when I first put it back together.

So I got a new gasket and some gasket sealer stuff and did it. The gasket sealer said not to torque to specs. So I layer it on good with the new gasket. When I started the car, it was fine for a while. I walk walked away to let the coolant get in there and when I came back, coolant was spraying from the housing all over my header, driveway, and engine. So I torqued it up good, sealed it on the outside also, and no leaks since.

I totally forgot though when I did this (since it was a warm fall) that I didn't go to the auto store and get more coolant. I just added water thinking I would do it later. Thus creating the problem. Yeah, the coolant was green, but it was more water than 50/50.

I'm going to drain and do it right, but it's 0 right now with wind chill of -35 at times. I had to go to school in this. 3 pairs of pants, 2 sweatshirts, heavy ass jacket, 3 pairs of socks, and all the fixens. I did just start the car up though and it's fine. Heat kicked in pretty quick and no oil or nothing under the car. I'm in good shape I think.

this morning it was -12 with a -40 windchill