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MG Midget and Sprite Technical - 4 Life Cheese maker - Midget engine

Hello fellow travellers on the car restoration highway.
Heres one for you.................
I have restored a frogeye Sprite that has only been fired up a couple of times since i finished it.
Whilst awaiting some final parts for my Sprint resto, I decided to crank up the sprite and check that all was well.
This car has had a nut and bolt restoration throughout. It has been upgraded with a 1380 A series midget engine and Rib case gearbox, plus sundry other mechanical mods to brakes, fuel sytem, wheels, etc etc
In the cooling system I have used 4Life coolant, remember, the engine, radiator, waterpump etc have been totally renewed / restored, all cleaned out and bone dry before instllation of the 4Life coolant.
The car ran well as usual but suddenly started to spew out the coolant. I suspected that the thermostat had jammed and on removing the housing this is what I found. :shock:
The waterway / thermostat was compleetely clogged with a cheesy / waxy substance, this was predominatly white but had been tinted by the 4 Life colour. After removing the thermostat and the contaminant, I checked the coolant residing in the top of the radiator and in the head aperture, this was the normal uncontaminated coolant.

Any body have any experience like this or could offer clues to cause or origin???
Thanks
Bob



R C Skerritt

Oil contamination possibly.

I would drain, flush and refill with plain water or water/ 25% antifreeze and see whether there are traces of oil in the water.
Chris at Octarine Services

I have used 4Life for 10 years or more with no issues. It must be something else contaminating the coolant.
Mike Howlett

I have seen this before, somebody mixed 2 different formulas of coolant. It was a lot of work to get this out all waterways! Water transports heat much better than 4Life coolant. Peter Burgess his advice is water and antifreeze. No guarantee if you use something else.
Flip
Flip Brühl

Bob,
my first thought is same as Chris's, oil.

I've used 4-Life for decades in classics, 12 years in my current Midget, and brand new cars (about 20 years ago), through other faults in the cooling system components I've had engines get very hot and a couple of head gasket failures and never seen anything like that.

Water is better for heat but freezes and does not lubricate the coolant system or help to preserve the hoses, Peter particularly dislikes Evans Waterless (which 4-Life isn't).

MGOC Spares has 4-Life produced for them and literally sell it by the barrel load so they would be able to give you advice on it.
Nigel Atkins

I saw something similar a few years ago. It was a Ford Transit Connect 1.8 diesel. They are namely for oil cooler failure, which was what had happened. So I fitted a new cooler (it's in unit with the filter manifold) and left the bloke to flush the oil out of the cooling circuit.
Then he filled with 4life, and it went nasty in about a week.
I don't know if it was because of oil residue or the fact that he told me afterwards that he used dishwasher powder to clean out the coolant circuit. At the time it made sense to me to use dishwasher powder because it's an excellent detergent and it doesn't lather but now I wonder if it reacted with the new coolant, which he hadn't used before.
Personally I see no reason to use 4life, I agree with Peter that water and good quality antifreeze is what these engines were designed for. I know that many modern engines need OAT coolant and I had a spot of trouble with my Diahatsu camper from using ethylene glycol, but the truth is that most people I know who have used 4life have had no advantage from it. If it were really a "fit and forget forever" solution then the expense might be justified but I know lots of people who have been disappointed with it and ended up changing the stuff anyway.
No disrespect intended to those who have had good experiences with it, but I'll continue with the traditional stuff and change it now and then. Which is what I'm about to do with the Volvosaurus next week.
Greybeard

To be honest 4-Life isn't magic, the label has 10 year life but my mate's Toyota is 20 years old and factory filled with (a?) 4-Life, there a plate in the engine bay to say it is used, now as he's only owned the car for the last 10+ years I can't say for certain that it is still on factory fill but I'd risk a small bet it is. I am certain my mate has never replaced the coolant as he's an engineer and believes a 36k-mile service, over however many years or decades, is changing the engine oil - and filter.

The advantage for me has been the detection of leaks - in theory I also don't need to change the coolant every two years - but I've either not had the cars longer enough or it's a British classic so something else breaks in the cooling system before 10 months let alone 10 years.

Wouldn't cleaning include flush clearing of the cleaner as there's always a large amount of residue left from each step of the drain, cleaning and refill operation effecting the next step.

I had a mate clean his radiator with wheel (acid type) cleaner by mistake because he didn't label the container, said it did a very good job of cleaning.
Nigel Atkins

I've used old battery acid to clean a couple of blocks and heads, it did a great job of getting rid of the rust back to bare metal. For the block an old sacrificial water pump and hose was fitted to hold it in and similarly an old thermostat housing and hose for the head. All nearby exposed surfaces were coated with
Vaseline to prevent corrosion. If I was to do it again I might try electrolytic derusting as have had good results with that in the past and the solution is water and sodium carbonate (washing soda) available from the local supermarket.
David Billington

I think my mate was worried in case it cleaned too well and exposed any weaknesses in the rad. I think he said he thought he might have made a mistake when he saw the bubbling at the filler.

I'm not sure what rad cleaner he thought he kept in a 5 lite container unless it was for domestic c/heating cleaning.
Nigel Atkins

I would do a compresion test, and then a litmus test of the coolant
GuyW

Nigel,

I wasn't worried about the CI block and head as IIRC the alloy water pump and thermostat housing would be sacrificial but in the case of the rad I might be worried it could attack the tubes or solder but it would depend on the rad construction and materials. The alloy wheel cleaner I have is I think largely phosphoric acid but you would have to refer to the MSDS for for a basic breakdown, certainly it behaved very much like Jenolite on alloys as I used that to treat mine a few times and it leaves a somewhat protective surface. Some can contain some hydrochloric from what I have read and is more aggressive.
David Billington

Well with my mate he'd only know it was wheel cleaner not what make or sort it was as it would have probably been bought because it was cheap then at some point put in a 5 litre plastic can which he forgot to mark up or it came in the can and the label fell off.

I think he got away with it but as it was in a classic that wasn't often used it didn't matter that much.
Nigel Atkins

Just to be clear, 4Life is water based, unlike Evans coolant.
Mike Howlett

I don't think we have 4life here, is that an oat coolant
is it premixed or come as a concentrate
William Revit

Willy, not OAT, see link or perhaps have a look at a Toyota of say 20 years ago there might be a metal label in the engine bay, well there is on my mate's.

4-Life is made for MGOC Spares

https://www.holden.co.uk/p/4life_advanced_engine_coolant_anti_freeze#



Nigel Atkins

Willy it's premix, an expensive way of buying water !
David Smith

It may be an expensive way of buying water, but it is sure resistant to boiling. They say it doesn't boil until 180 celcius. Certainly in my V8 I have seen the coolant temp above 120C with no sign of boiling. It stays clean and warns of contamination by changing colour. It has been in my V8 for ten years now without changing it at all and is as clear as the day it went in. I like it.

https://4lifecoolant.co.uk/features
Mike Howlett

I actually get what David is saying, but that would make it an expensive way of buying the non-mixed product rather than the water, which it is, if you could buy such, water you can get out of your kitchen sink at home (yet many buy bottled water).

It's all about your belief in the end.
Nigel Atkins

This thread was discussed between 18/09/2019 and 21/09/2019

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