i have maybe half gallon of coolant in my motor/radiator the rest of the 2 gallon capacitie is water. its gonna get down to 17 degrees tonite here i have thrown a heavy blanket over the engine and shut the hood. should it be ok. i will drain my rad. tomorrow and put 50/50 coolant water in. i just dont want the motor to freeze and crack the block im sure it wont freeze solid at 31 or colder i know theres water jackets in there that let the water expand. Am i just being over paranoid Thanks guys.

 

The blanket on top isnt gonna do anything, the whole bottom of your motor is open. Water freezes at 32*F, straight water, im sure the little amount of coolant you have will keep it from completely freezing.

Its going to be 9 tonight and 15 tmr night here in hillsboro. Thats with out the wind chill lol.

 

Why don't you just run 60/40 or so year round and you wouldn't have to worry about it?

 

well only because i replaced the knock sensor wire about 2 weeks ago and put everything back together had a leak fixed it found another one a couple days later and in the process of all the leaking lost most of my 50/50 mixture of coolant and water and put straight water back in till i had all my leaks fixed. the temp here has dropped 30 degrees in a week and havent got any coolant yet

 

you should be ok if you have a litle coolant in there, but yah, i would add a little when you can. By the way, I got up this morning and It was in fact 5 BELOW ZERO!!! my car hestited for about a few seconds but fired up after a few cranks!! Damn, that's cold!!

 

I would be kinda worried about it myself,,, might go out every three or four hours and start it up and let it warm up,,,, I would rather be safe than sorry,,,,,

 

Better yet, got a garage? Put it in there.

 

^^I would probably do the same and get it changed first thing in the morning, but I am really anal and paranoid about my truck though.

 

x2, i used to freak out alot about my truck when i first bought her.

 

I was at about 10 degrees today, with lows down to like 0 last night.
I'm running about 60-40/70-30 mix.
No issues whatsoever.
It is kind of a pain when your choke is frozen though :*(

 

I got down to 12 last night. It's already about 19, and the temperature is only going to drop for another 6 hours or so.

I've got an empty radiator, but I've still got antifreeze in the engine, so I should be good.

It's been very cold the last couple nights. Got Christmas lights on some of the plants outside with blankets on them, but some of them still didn't make it.

The dogs are getting mad, since their water dish was covered with about 2 inch thick ice this morning when they went out to drink..... and the hose is frozen solid. damn global warming.....

 

yeah i feel ya all on the cold its prob only around 25 degrees out right now here in where i live and thats COLD i mean we have out times where it snows but its normally not that cold but man its been really cold lately.

 

yeah....it's -30 right now
wonder what al gore has to say about these near record cold temps??


"nd the hose is frozen solid. damn global warming..... "

 

Your system capacity is 11.1 quarts, so if you really have a half gallon of antifreeze in there, that's 18% - which works out, oddly enough, to a freeze point of nearly exactly 17 deg F:

https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f116...nt-faq-192781/

When I was in Canada without a block heater and the temps got to -30 F, I pressed a drug store heating pad against the oil pan with a cardboard box and squeaked by that way.

EDIT: Never mind the freeze protection, always use at least 50% antifreeze because corrosion increases below 50% and increases dramatically when antifreeze less than 45%.

A block heater may protect block from freezing, even with insufficient antifreeze (and if ALWAYS plugged in when motor not running), but it will do nothing to protect the thin soft metal of the radiator from freezing and being destroyed.