I need to know if it's totally useless or not.
See, for two years now, I've used NICKEL fittings (black painted nickel Bitspower compressions, nickel plated Koolance QDC's) with COPPER rads and blocks, all running under 100% pure distilled water and a 9.99999% pure silver kill coil. Not a single tarnish, cloudy tube, blackened copper block, or flaking fitting to report.
It's also worth mentioning that I didn't jump like a lemming off the "lol rinse ur rads w/ vinegar feels good man" cliff that I see almost everyone going for these days. Then they wonder why their water goes turquoise and their copper goes soot black.... But that's besides the point.
Anyway, my point is I've had great success running my loop the way I do with silver and distilled water. Now, I've purchased 8 new Koolance QD3 series quick disconnects (all black painted) and I've come to the realisation that there is effectively more nickel in my loop than copper (given the fact that all my Bitspower fittings are nickel covered in black paint which may or may not degrade over time.)
I think I've been doing too much reading or something because now it seems like $19 for a 700ml bottle of 98% distilled with some sort of ethylene glycol in it is a reasonable thing to spend my money on. Deep down I know it's actually not- it's Koolance hawking their own brand name stuff on people who don't know better under threat of a void warranty; I also know that there is not enough silver in a kill coil in 3 litres of water to actually wreck anything in my current system before like 2028, and above all, since I've run all these metals together the way I have for years without any singular issue whatsoever, you'd think I'd be smart enough to discount the Koolance coolants as snake oil and move on with my life, but no.
Given all this sense I can speak with myself, there's still a little nagging voice somewhere in there that's asking "But what if you're just lucky this time? What if your new parts will push the chemistry of your loop out of balance and within a year all these parts will be written off all because you didn't heed Koolance's recommended coolant suggestion?!"
So I honestly don't know what to do. It seems I can lose really hard both ways. I'll either end up kicking myself for "trying to fix what isn't broken" by switching to an expensive coolant which may or may not cause my parts to gunk up and corrode itself, despite assurances otherwise, or I get a bunch of "told you so" responses when I decide to stick to what I know and my new parts cause my loop to go crazy and rust up like the Titanic because nickel and silver apparently do that to each other.
![wackosmiley.gif]( "wackosmiley.gif")
It's just that I think it's rare that a WC loop actually provides an adequate environment for that to happen. Flaking, IMO, is going to happen because the manufacturers don't plate their parts properly. It has little to do with chemistry and more to do with mechanical force, where the water literally erodes the thin layer of plating off the leading edges of a barb. I just don't know what to make of it all anymore. I want to enjoy my hobby not spend all my time worrying about minutiae.
What do you guys think of all this?
See, for two years now, I've used NICKEL fittings (black painted nickel Bitspower compressions, nickel plated Koolance QDC's) with COPPER rads and blocks, all running under 100% pure distilled water and a 9.99999% pure silver kill coil. Not a single tarnish, cloudy tube, blackened copper block, or flaking fitting to report.
It's also worth mentioning that I didn't jump like a lemming off the "lol rinse ur rads w/ vinegar feels good man" cliff that I see almost everyone going for these days. Then they wonder why their water goes turquoise and their copper goes soot black.... But that's besides the point.
Anyway, my point is I've had great success running my loop the way I do with silver and distilled water. Now, I've purchased 8 new Koolance QD3 series quick disconnects (all black painted) and I've come to the realisation that there is effectively more nickel in my loop than copper (given the fact that all my Bitspower fittings are nickel covered in black paint which may or may not degrade over time.)
I think I've been doing too much reading or something because now it seems like $19 for a 700ml bottle of 98% distilled with some sort of ethylene glycol in it is a reasonable thing to spend my money on. Deep down I know it's actually not- it's Koolance hawking their own brand name stuff on people who don't know better under threat of a void warranty; I also know that there is not enough silver in a kill coil in 3 litres of water to actually wreck anything in my current system before like 2028, and above all, since I've run all these metals together the way I have for years without any singular issue whatsoever, you'd think I'd be smart enough to discount the Koolance coolants as snake oil and move on with my life, but no.
Given all this sense I can speak with myself, there's still a little nagging voice somewhere in there that's asking "But what if you're just lucky this time? What if your new parts will push the chemistry of your loop out of balance and within a year all these parts will be written off all because you didn't heed Koolance's recommended coolant suggestion?!"
So I honestly don't know what to do. It seems I can lose really hard both ways. I'll either end up kicking myself for "trying to fix what isn't broken" by switching to an expensive coolant which may or may not cause my parts to gunk up and corrode itself, despite assurances otherwise, or I get a bunch of "told you so" responses when I decide to stick to what I know and my new parts cause my loop to go crazy and rust up like the Titanic because nickel and silver apparently do that to each other.
What do you guys think of all this?
