Antifreeze Testing

[kiwi]

Cleaning any muck out of the system will allow the inhibitor that comes with the antifreeze to stay active for longer.

And any crud that gets in the way of hot water getting to automatic choke devices will delay the choke operation and enrich the mixture when you don't need it. If the hot water to the choke gets completely blocked you'll have permanent choke on which will cost bucketloads in fuel and will fail its MOT.

you know I forgot about the autochoke, I was thinking about the heater tap gates getting clogged up myself.

[electrokid]

you know I forgot about the autochoke, I was thinking about the heater tap gates getting clogged up myself.

I don't know the pipe runs on the petrol BX but heater and choke circuits often share pipework so if the heater matrix is getting clogged up then the autochoke is probably suffering as well. I once spent most of a day flushing out a badly bunged up heater matrix - just to get the autochoke working !

[Way2go]

gives room to water down if you spring a leak.

Don't you believe it! titanic The hose that just went on mine was the hose that connects to the pipe on the back of the engine. It only failed with a pin hole and that was enough to blow out a fair old volume of water in a short distance.
Luckily this happened just going round the supermarket car park so I was aware of the problem (steam as it washed the exhaust manifold ) before any low-water complications.

In the south of England, protection to -18C (33%) is plenty good enough and I always keep a container of pre-diluted ready for run-of-the-mill top ups anyway. Maybe the north & NZ temperatures warrant higher temperature protection though.