With a pressurized system?
I wonder if location in the engine bay has anything to do with failures? That area seems to get rather warm and retain heat. It might be less expensive to wire up some sort of fan to cool that area.
Napa Degas bottle (Balkamp)
- Thread starter Rambro99
- Start date
With a pressurized system?
I wonder if location in the engine bay has anything to do with failures? That area seems to get rather warm and retain heat. It might be less expensive to wire up some sort of fan to cool that area.
joegr
Dedicated LVC Member
Interesting thought.
Jaguar moved the degas bottle on the S-type from the base of the windshield to between the radiator and the engine on their 2nd gen.
I don't know why they did that, and I don't know what the failure rate is of the new bottle in the new location.
Telco
Dedicated LVC Member
Yes. This is how cars used to be in the 1970s and 1980s. They didn't go to the current pressurized reservoir system until the model renewals in the 1990s. The pressure was contained at the radiator cap and the reservoir was an open system. The cap was designed to allow coolant to be drawn in when cold and under a vacuum, or would hold against pressure until it topped the cap rating. Coolant would flow from the bottom of the reservoir to the radiator cap tap depending on the needs of the system. At the top of the bottle was an overflow hose that either sprayed the engine bay (and consequently all over the windshield once the coolant got chopped into vapor in the cooling fan's airstream and came out as steam) with hot coolant if there was a failure, or sprayed it on the road if someone who cared about their car took the time to run an overflow hose to the ground. I don't see any reason why the car couldn't be converted to a nonpressurized reservoir system.
TooManyToys
Well-Known LVC Member
There is a reason these are called degas bottles and not coolant reservoirs.
When we had the top of radiators higher then the motors it was easy to trap air, keep in a high position, or bleed it out to the reservoir bottle. But with the aerodynamics of today the radiators most often are below the head and intake passages. To degas a cooling system you need a dwell tank at the highest point. Even the coolant system design philosophy has changed over the years due to the effectiveness of the degas bottles. If you look at the 6.0/6.4 and up Superduty trucks you can see that it's just more effective to place the bottle towards the cowl and high up.
When we had the top of radiators higher then the motors it was easy to trap air, keep in a high position, or bleed it out to the reservoir bottle. But with the aerodynamics of today the radiators most often are below the head and intake passages. To degas a cooling system you need a dwell tank at the highest point. Even the coolant system design philosophy has changed over the years due to the effectiveness of the degas bottles. If you look at the 6.0/6.4 and up Superduty trucks you can see that it's just more effective to place the bottle towards the cowl and high up.
chocolat1701
Dedicated LVC Member
go with the motorcraft it actually worth it compared to the crap that there is outthere.
Telco
Dedicated LVC Member
Yes, and there are other vehicles that have a similar setup but use a reservoir. They just use a bleed screw with a bleed procedure to get the air out. Once the air's out, there won't be any more sucked in until the cap is opened or unless you let the level in the reservoir get too low. And, as the LS already has a complicated bleeding procedure there shouldn't be an issue.
Now having made the suggestion I feel I should also point out that for my own LS I'd just put the system back like it was from the factory. The only modification I'd do might be to go with one of those aluminum bottles in place of the plastic one if I ever have to change mine.