Fans on the 2002 600

[prov431]

I'm with Zack, us power plant guys gotta stick together.
Personally I'm sold on Water Wetter ;D
........oh yeah, Smoke, you can definitely lose the radiator fan if you'd like. Some of the metal fab'd ones are actually quite heavy, while the plastic ones are light enough not to worry about the weight savings.

[GSXR RACER MIKE]

The main reason I don't buy the Evan's propaganda is the localized boiling theories.  The first reason is that we make motorcycle engines out of aluminum, which has a very high thermal conductivity.  If a local area in an aluminum structure is heated the rest of the structure will rise to that temperture much more rapidly than in, say, cast iron.  Even at the high heat fluxes for a loaded engine, at steady state the thermal gradents in the engine components will be fairly low.  Therefore, a "hot zone" within the coolant passages cannot be significantly hotter than the surrounding surfaces.  Secondly, if the coolant passages were designed properly, there shouldn't be stagnet zones in the coolant flow that would allow local hot spots and localized boiling.  The turbulent coolant flow will induce thermal "mixing" of the coolant minimizing small high temp zones in the coolant which could result in boiling.

     The localized intense heat being produced by the combusting of fuel does not stop heating the metal once the coolant is flowing across the cooling system side of the cylinder wall. If you could take a piece of aluminum the same thickness as a cylinder wall and put it on a burner on a stove at a temperature of say 275* and then theoretically could run a 1/2" thick layer of water over that surface constantly to represent the cooling system, you would have a representation of an unpressurized cooling system. Though the water flowing across the aluminum would cool it somewhat, the metals temperature which is constantly being heated by the burner, would still remain above the boiling point of the water which in turn would develop a steam layer between the metal and the flowing water. If that piece of aluminum was larger than the burner by say twice the size, with water flowing over the entire surface, the further you got away from the heat source, the cooler the metal would be since it is being heated indirectly (and cooled directly), unlike the metal in the center which is directly in contact with the burner. This would show an example of localized heat, similar to the area in a cooling system closest to the combustion chamber. I experience this very situation at work when I weld aluminum that is clamped to the edge of a table. The aluminum that is in contact with the table is definately cooler than the material hanging in the air (the table representing coolant and the air representing steam in this case). I would assume that the longer you can stay in direct contact with the coolant the better the cooling ability, so in this case a higher boiling point would result in more efficient cooling.

Water - the leading choice of primary coolant for nuclear reactors (followed by molten sodium).

     Economics weigh heavily in most any business, including energy production. The shear quantities of coolant needed for cooling a nuclear reactor plays a huge part in the decision to use water. The unending availabilty of river / lake water located near the plant, and the fact that it's free, makes this choice an obvious one. As I look from my house at the nuclear power plant cooling towers just to the West of me I notice the massive cloud of STEAM pouring into the sky, producing it's own clouds, and can't help but feel as though i can't be too far off track on what water does when it contacts metal that is remaining hotter than waters boiling point.

[Zac]

Hey Mike, as an amateur welder with a TIG machine sitting in my garage, now I know who's brain to pick about welding  ;)

I could probably go find my old partial differential equations book and derive a mathamatic model of your proposed experiment...but I don't think so.  :P

As far as the PRIMARY coolant on a nuclear reactor, I sure hope that your local power plant isn't using the nearby water source and evaporating it in the cooling towers.  That would be the SECONDARY coolant that runs the turbines.  The PRIMARY coolant lood is a closed circuit, hence they can use anything they want, such as molten sodium (go price pure sodium at your local industrial supply oulet).  The primary coolant tends to become radioactive with use.  :o

And for the record, I run Water Wetter in my distilled water, mostly for the corrosion inhibitors.  

Now the interesting question would be what are the motogp teams running.  They have enough insturmentaion on there engines to actually tell what works.

-z.

[GSXR RACER MIKE]

     Zac, I enjoyed this debate quite a bit. It's cool when people can discuss a subject and express their views intelligently without getting rude.

     Have a good one! :)

[Zac]

I might be stubborn but at least not rude.  Us engineering geeks gotta have our fun somehow.

Now I won't get you started on straight rate versus progressive springs... :P

-z.

[GSXR RACER MIKE]

I might be stubborn but at least not rude.

Now I won't get you started on straight rate versus progressive springs... :P

     I look at it like this, if I have been taught or learned that something is a certain way and somebody else says it's different than what I believe to be correct, then I will defend what I believe until adaquetely proven otherwise (preferably not in a rude way).

     My stubborness on the suspension issue was based on what I learned from Paul Thede (President of Race Tech suspension), though for the most part that was mostly knowledge of the mechanics of suspension, not as much the set-up at the track. The set-up knowledge I have is more from what I have learned over the last 8 years. Dave has an incredible amount of knowledge about suspension set-up, knows how to develop people's skills, and is able to run in front himself. I will definately be open to whatever he will be teaching about racing at the VRS University at BHF on May 6, and will do what he instructs me to do with faith in his abilities (though I will be using modified stock suspension with straight rate springs and Race Tech Gold Valves ;D  ;) )