![]() Freeze plugs are usually aluminum or brass plugs pressed into holes in the water jacked of your engine block. The engine in your vehicle also has a secondary line of defense against freeze damage, freeze plugs. ![]() In the case of the water jacket in your engine block, this is more than enough pressure to cause it to crack destroying your engine. When water freezes, it can exert well over 10,000 lbs per square inch of pressure on the container it is in. ![]() What happens when the water freezes in your car? The best solution to this problem is the add antifreeze to water lower the temperature at which it will freeze. The cooling system in your car is susceptible to the same problem if it were to contain pure water. This increase in volume causes many problems around the world today, like frost heaves in the road and broken water pipes in your house. When water freezes and turns from a liquid to a solid it actually expands, or increases in volume. The difficultly with operating a water-cooling system in your vehicle is that most vehicles at some point will be operated in a climate that has temperatures below freezing. This reality makes it essential to any water cooled motor to ensure the system is operating properly or it could easily render the vehicle inoperable. If an engine is designed to be water-cooled it is designed to have higher operating temperatures, higher compression ratios and produce much more heat. Many cars also have other cooling devices associated with the cooling system like a transmission cooler or oil cooler.Īll of these cooling components help the engine in your car run smoothly and more efficiently. In modern cars, cooling systems have gotten even more complicated to include your radiator, the engine block, a heater core and the hoses and lines connecting them all together. Air cooled engines were used to some extent in older vehicles like the Volkswagen Beetle and the Porsche 911, but today are mainly used in motorcycles to reduce weight and complexity. Adding a water cooling system allows for the excess heat to be removed and the engine to safely operate with a higher compression ratio. These higher temperatures if not properly controlled can cause damage to the engine components like the piston rings and valves. The difficulty is that a higher compression ratio will produce higher combustion and exhaust temperatures. The efficiency of an internal combustion engine is proportional to the compression ratio, meaning the higher the compression ratio the more efficient the motor will be. One major advancement in the efficiency of the internal combustion engine was the water cooling system. As vehicles have gotten more and more advanced both consumers and environmentalists have required them to get increasingly more efficient, produce more power, use less gas and produce less harmful emissions products.
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