But it is legal everywhere else? Mongo, I understand rules are rules, but why is WERA the last lone hold out on the Engine Ice thing?
Not allowed up here in Canada either. Does the AMA still allow it? I thought I read somewhere that a buddies, cousins, sisters friend heard it wasn't anymore.
I believe the latter is the larger concern. Straight distilled water on the track is slick enough to put you on your head if you're charging in assuming the track will be dry... It just cleans up a lot easier.
Distilled water will steal metal from your radiator and engine to replace all those neat things, elements, to try to get back to it's natural state. Water Wetter is good tho.
NESBA advanced did't allow Engine Ice either in the advanced group. Not sure if N2 kept that rule, but I suspect that they did. Liquid Performance is another option to Water Wetter, but like WW it provides no freeze protection.
I don't get why the other orgs allow something that is that slippery and much more likely to get on the track surface than oil. Oil is a necessity in a motorcycle. Glycol based coolants are most definitely not. FWIW - we did allow it. We wasted time cleaning it up, we red flagged endurance races to clean it up. All things that wouldn't have happened with water and the number of additives we do allow. Luckily we never had a rider crash in it but I saw no reason to wait for that to happen. I know it sucks having to drain for the winter and cold events and the like but all of that effort is worth it to avoid crashes.
i read an article recently that supports that Brian. They stated you are better off running bottled drinking water but not distilled for the reason you are saying.. the distilled water, not having any minerals, will search for something as a chemical reaction. The available aluminum is what it takes, and you can end up with bad radiators and the like if you are not running anti-corrosion additives.
Makes sense. I'd rather have to clean excess minerals out of a radiator on occasion than lose part of the radiator to a chemical reaction.
water in its natural state contains dissolved minerals and ions, when it is stripped of all that it actually becomes more agressive in leaching that from its surroundings, in an engine it takes aluminum, over time and with the constant agitation from flowing the aluminum is constantly stripped of its protective oxide coat by DI water slowy dissolving the metal, not a big deal in the engine block but the radiator is far far thinner and thus will fail sooner.
whatever you do do not use distilled water with the royal purple purple ice stuff for whatever reason it turns quite caustic, i put it in my streetbike and within a couple months it cost me a radiator, when i pulled it all apart to replace there were chunks of a white powdery substance in my cooling system I assume it was aluminum oxide. when i took the radiator to a shop they told me it wasnt repairable the whole thing had been dissolved from the inside.
Interesting, wouldn't have expected that but they even say on their site to not use distilled or de-ionized if doing a straight mix.
