The Key Components to Your Car Coolant System

The modern car is powered primarily by internal combustion engines. This is a fancy way of saying controlled explosions. These explosions in the cylinder heads produce power, but also tons of heat. The coolant system in your car is tasked with dealing with that heat.

The car engine is a surprisingly blunt instrument. Gas and fuel are pushed into a chamber and then a spark is introduced. The resulting small explosion pushes a piston down and that rotates a shaft thus converting the downwards power into rotating energy. This is eventually delivered to the wheels to propel the vehicle. The process also produces massive amounts of heat. The heat is such that it would easily melt most of the internal parts of the engine in only a few minutes.

The coolant system on any car is designed to deal with the heat issue. In liquid coolant systems, this is accomplished by running a mix of water and ethylene glycol through the engine. The mixture sucks up the heat and transfers it out of the engine where it is cooled and then circulated for another trip through the engine. The coolant system works amazingly well, but is only as good as its components.

The radiator is obvious a key component in a liquid cooled car. The blazing hot coolant comes out of the top of the engine block and into the top of the radiator. It is then circulated through thin channels that maximize the exposure to the air running through the radiator. These little channels are known as cooling fins. This cools the liquid incredibly fast. The cooled fluid eventually works its way to the bottom of the radiator where it is transferred via hose back into the engine block.

For the coolant to work, it has to be circulated. This is where the water pump comes in. Different cars have different designs, but the pump usually is low on the engine and pumps the coolant from the cool exit of the radiator into the engine block. This reduces wear and tear on the water pump. As you can imagine, the water pump needs to be running optimally. If yours starts to go bad, replace it immediately to avoid problems with the engine overheating.

The final key component is the thermostat. The thermostat is, ironically, designed to heat up the engine. Your engine works optimally within a certain temperature range. This means running to hot OR too cold can be bad for it. The thermostat helps warm up a car by reducing the flow of coolant when the engine is cold. This allows the engine to heat up quicker since there is less coolant to remove the heat. As the engine warms up, the thermostat notes the increase in coolant temperature and opens up the flow of coolant to maintain the optimal temperature.

What about the fan? Well, the fan is about as simple as it gets. When the radiator is not getting enough wind, the fan comes on to create it. Most modern fans are electric and tied into the thermostat.

The coolant system of your car is the classic example of the Keep It Simple Stupid design theory. It is simple, but works incredibly well. Just make sure to check up on your coolant levels every so often.