General   (General discussion, talk about anything.)

Can I ask a question ?

One of my first jobs was working in a car parts and accessories shop, Motorworld actually, well not actually, it became Motorworld, but I was 19 at the time, and it was still the 1970s

Antifreeze wise, in those days there were two, cheap stuff with methanol in it, but they said that the methanol boiled off over time, and so the antifreeze didn't work, the dearer stuff had ethylene glycol in it, which was supposed to be better, and the antifreeze also stopped your engine rusting into your cooling water (cast iron engines) and that were it, Ford recommended a 50/50 mixture of ethylene glycol based antifreeze, used year round to protect engine down to minus a lot, and to stop the engine rusting.

Even in those days car manufacturers sold coolant, and if you looked on the bottle, it said "contains water and ethylene glycol"

My question is why 'now' is there all this fuss over using the correct type of coolant, I know that engine cooling systems only operate on a fraction of the amount of coolant they had in the 1970s, the idea being that modern alloy engines conduct heat quickly, and so the engine will heat up quicker, it runs hotter, and as a result is more efficient, and the metals used make the engine a lot lighter, but this approach requires for a very efficient engine cooling system, to get the heat out of the engine and into the air via the radiator, so do modern coolants, conduct heat more efficiently, than the old water plus ethylene glycol cooling systems ?