coolant system

[worthidlj]

het guys,
as part of my uni's formula student team we are doing some mods to it, one being the coolant system. the problem is we are manufacturing a new header tank and am wondering how much of the coolant it should hold (there will be approx 2.5 litres of water/coolant in the system)?
any feedback will be welcome.

cheers,
worthidlj

[CombeMarshal]

I Think My car holds about 5 litres total and about 1/2 a litre of that in the header tank, But I'm not convinced that it is that important to get an exact size

[stevieturbo]

I think its only really there to allow room for expansion of the existing coolant, rather than dumping any expansion out, as older cooling systems did in the past, which ended up with lost coolant.

[Sam_68]

stevieturbo said:

I think its only really there to allow room for expansion of the existing coolant, rather than dumping any expansion out, as older cooling systems did in the past, which ended up with lost coolant.

So size will depend on the volume of coolant in your cooling system.

On a racing car, where you are obviously trying to minimise size & weight, I'd suggest that you would need to start by calculating how much the volume of coolant in the system would expand between flat cold and bloody hot, plus a margin for error, plus enough volume in air above it to be compressed as the coolant expands, without blowing out of the pressure cap (remembering that you can specify different PSI ratings for the pressure cap).

[mongoose]

CombeMarshal said:

I Think My car holds about 5 litres total and about 1/2 a litre of that in the header tank, But I'm not convinced that it is that important to get an exact size

As little as i know about it,i'd have to agree with that.My griffs' system is 12 litres,yet theres no more than an inch in the bottom of the expansion tank,which is probably a cupfull.I always thought that as long as a tank has some in when cold,it just has to have the capacity to hold all the coolant at full expansion/maximum volume.

[worthidlj]

cheers guys; it gives me a slightly better idea of wot i need.
im still trying to learn these things so thanks for any help.

[pdmotors]

I have to agree with sam68. If you don't do your maths properly and you decide to race, you could be in hot water so to speak

[worthidlj]

yeah thats kind of wot i was thinking. at the moment i dont know how to do it myself but i should be able to get someone else on the team to do it instead.

[Mattyboy101]

I don't think you need a cooling system at all.



(And i'm not saying that because I am doing the same job for another team!! )