Water cooling system tanks

[d4cnc]

... with regards to fittings... should I be looking for aluminium fittings too? As they appear to be hiding from me at present.. what does everyone else do?

Do you just go with nickel plated / chrome plated brass fittings and make sure your coolant has some anti corrosion additives?
Or plastic ones perhaps?

[cropwell]

I presume you can just use glycol based car antifreeze as a corrosion inhibitor for aluminium systems. I hope so as I have got the best part of 5L left over from the days when you changed coolant every year.

[Clive S]

... with regards to fittings... should I be looking for aluminium fittings too? As they appear to be hiding from me at present.. what does everyone else do?

Do you just go with nickel plated / chrome plated brass fittings and make sure your coolant has some anti corrosion additives?
Or plastic ones perhaps?

You can use either brass. chrome or plastic and has been said a little antifreeze if it has a chance of freezing

[cropwell]

I was given a 120mm radiator from a computer cooler which had a seized pump. The liquid inside the sealed system seemed to be pure ethylene glycol. Glycol has a better heat transfer than water (they used to use it for cooling Spitfire engines) and as I have 4L of undiluted antifreeze, I was thinking of using that, if it isn't too viscous for the pump to handle. The radiator has rubber hoses fitted, and I have plenty of 8mm pipe and pneumatic push-in fittings. It'll be a long time before I get to fitting the cooling system to my machine, which is at the plans done and steel bought stage. Now I just need my wife to stop finding me jobs to do, so I can get on with the build in peace.

Cheers,

Rob