Mister system

[Iceni John]

Use 1/2" pex in a square around the size of the face of Radiators. One down the center. drill 4 holes on the uprights evenly spaced and 2 on the top and bottom cross pieces. One small piece hooked to the top of the square by inserting a tee. then the short piece from each side connected to one tee, from that tee back to a shutoff solenoid 12 volt with and on/ off switch at the dash. from the solenoid the pipe hooks into another tee just outside the pump for the regular water supply system from the fresh tank. I do have a calcium filter in there also as well as a second water pump that will only come on when that switch is flipped with its own pressure switch on the pump. That way it keeps the regular system separate from the mister system. After I drill the holes just a little smaller than the .012 misters I bought on amazon I just screwed them into the pex pipe and it works well. At first I just used the hole instead of the misters but it just steam cleaned the engine and didn't drop the heat and it emptied the water tank pretty fast 45 gallons. So the misters are just enough to cool it down if needed. But we really don't have an over heat problem just did it in case its needed ever.

I'm also using 1/2" pipe, in my case Sch.80 PVC into which I put some 10-24 UNC holes for the nozzles.   Even with PTFE thread compound some of the nozzles were leaking, so I bought some fatter O-rings (they're 5/32" x 9/32" x 1/16") for them and slightly chamfered the holes in the pipes for the O-rings to partially sit inside.   No more leaks!   The nozzles' tiny original O-rings are a metric size (4mm x 6mm x 1mm) that has no inch-size equivalent, and they will seal only against a flat surface, not against a round pipe.

John

[eagle19952]

On a misting system high pressure is the key or you are just spraying water. At the restaurants our systems are a 1000 psi if not the customers would need rain coats.At least go with a 150 psi you can buy the Aquatec 8800 pump in 12/24 volts ($125.00) even 150 psi with the right nozzles would save a lot of water and do a better misting job IMO

Vegtable departments (grocery) are 1400 psi IIRC.. (if I recall correctly )

[Bill Gerrie]

The 24 volt Home Depot valves work on 12 volts.

[luvrbus]

Lol buy yourself a Eagle and forget about a misting system 

[chessie4905]

Rust, dropbox, engine in wrong way, extra wheels, costly suspension to repair, belts, wasn't made by GM....or MCI, also you like them....😉

[eagle19952]

Rust, dropbox, engine in wrong way, extra wheels, costly suspension to repair, belts, wasn't made by GM....or MCI, also you like them....😉

Frame doesn't crack, direct drive, air bags don't leak,no air frame plenum that is structural, rides like a Mercedes handles like a Lamborghini. Doesn't have a Cummins engine

[chessie4905]

49's don't have air frame plenums. VS2's have overdrive. Easy access to most engine items. Air bags cheap to replace vs. Torsilastics. Better styling. 4905's ride nice and handle well with front and rear sway bars std. I hate Mercedes.😄

[eagle19952]

I hate Mercedes.😄

I would not own one. But they are nice to drive. 

I will say his though, I prefer Lincoln over Cadillac.

[luvrbus]

I really do like the baggage bays on a 4905 if you can keep the doors on,rust and all Eagle was a great bus,the drop boxes didn't give many problems most of those were self made  by owners

[Dave5Cs]

I'm also using 1/2" pipe, in my case Sch.80 PVC into which I put some 10-24 UNC holes for the nozzles.   Even with PTFE thread compound some of the nozzles were leaking, so I bought some fatter O-rings (they're 5/32" x 9/32" x 1/16") for them and slightly chamfered the holes in the pipes for the O-rings to partially sit inside.   No more leaks!   The nozzles' tiny original O-rings are a metric size (4mm x 6mm x 1mm) that has no inch-size equivalent, and they will seal only against a flat surface, not against a round pipe.

John

John don't have any leaks with mine. May be the PVC pipe. I used Pex around a big patio I did too with no leaks. The first one I did with PVC and it did have a few leaks just brushed on some Teflon first before installing into pipe and it did the trick.

[Lin]

Bill, I think that this is the one I used:

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Rain-Bird-1-in-In-Line-Irrigation-Valve-CP100/100197371

It's 24v.  I do not know if it will also work with 12v or if they have others that are 12v.

[windtrader]

OK, finally took the bait on this one. There are electric fans already on the radiators that so far have worked enough to keep the engine coolant within limits. So, how much benefit do radiator misters offer?


Going back to basics of engine cooling, engineering references define several key factors in engine cooling with a radiator.


1) Coolant flow, 2) airflow, 3) radiator efficiency.


Increasing coolant flow could be done by changing the size of the water pump pulley. Increasing airflow can be done by changing the pulley on the fan gear box (MCI). These would not cost much. Increasing radiator efficiency is costly due to minimum of recoring radiator or or building one with larger cores.


Much of the discussions around added cooling revolve around the mister systems and not much about experimenting with 1 or 2.


Lastly, I found some reference stating pure water is the most efficient coolant, better than standard 50/50. There are suggestions to going to higher water mix or even pure with with antioxidant additives.


For those doing misters, you might try a 50/50 water to alcohol mix as that provides better evaporation.

[Iceni John]

OK, finally took the bait on this one. There are electric fans already on the radiators that so far have worked enough to keep the engine coolant within limits. So, how much benefit do radiator misters offer?


Going back to basics of engine cooling, engineering references define several key factors in engine cooling with a radiator.


1) Coolant flow, 2) airflow, 3) radiator efficiency.


Increasing coolant flow could be done by changing the size of the water pump pulley. Increasing airflow can be done by changing the pulley on the fan gear box (MCI). These would not cost much. Increasing radiator efficiency is costly due to minimum of recoring radiator or or building one with larger cores.


Much of the discussions around added cooling revolve around the mister systems and not much about experimenting with 1 or 2.


Lastly, I found some reference stating pure water is the most efficient coolant, better than standard 50/50. There are suggestions to going to higher water mix or even pure with with antioxidant additives.


For those doing misters, you might try a 50/50 water to alcohol mix as that provides better evaporation.

The old Arrowhead Radiator website used to have a list of fourteen things that would improve cooling of high-performance engines (not diesels specifically), but sadly that webpage no longer exists.   There was a section devoted to coolant flow rates through the radiator, and from what I vaguely remember it said that it made no difference whether it flowed slowly or quickly  -  if slowly, the coolant lost more heat but there was less coolant doing so in any given time period, and if quickly there was more coolant flowing through the radiator but it lost less heat in the process, in other words the overall heat loss to all the coolant wasn't different.   I guess that makes sense?

Airflow definitely does make a difference, maybe more than anything else.   One priority when I rebuilt my entire cooling system a year or two ago was to maximize airflow through the radiator, so I sealed every gap or hole that air could leak through between the core and the fan, I used a high-performance 9-blade fan instead of the heavy old 6-blade fan, the fan now rotates the opposite direction than before to improve airflow out the shroud, I made a duct in the shroud's lip that should control fan blade turbulence better, and I replaced the hydraulic pump, fan motor and speed control solenoid valve to eliminate any internal leakages that would prevent the fan motor from turning as fast as possible.   Now at fast idle there's a strong airflow through the radiator, more so than ever before, so I can imagine that airflow at 2100 RPM engine speed (about 1800 RPM fan speed) would be considerable.

To improve radiator efficiency I now have about 10% larger surface area, 27% more tubes per row, the tubes are now dimpled, and the fin count is much higher than before.   It still has 6 rows like before because I cannot fit a thicker core onto my tanks, and some folk think that any rows more than six don't contribute much if any additional cooling because the air is so heated by the time it's passed through six rows that it won't cool additional rows much more.

I know that radiator misters are a BandAid at best, but I've now done all I can to improve the cooling system itself.   At this point, even a few degrees cooler temperatures when climbing hills in hot weather is worthwhile, so my new mister system (even though it's cost me almost a hundred dollars per degree!) is worth having.   If I need still more cooling, then I'll put in a second radiator on the other side that will take coolant from the 1" outlet on the driver-side thermostat housing that presently supplies the heaters and defroster  -  just turning them on lowers temperatures by a few degrees, so a proper radiator should do more than that.

I'm going to slowly start increasing the water content of my coolant specifically to improve its efficiency.   In sunny SoCal I don't need much freeze protection, and as long as I maintain the correct pH and additives strength it should be OK to do so without risk to the engine.   I'm thinking I can go to at least 55% water, maybe up to 60%, without problems.   We'll see.   I like the idea of adding alcohol to the mister water  -  that's something else to look into!

John       

[Dave5Cs]

Hi Don like I said It was just to have it in case. Used it once to see if it worked and it did the second time with the misters. But we really don't have the problem. Redundancy is a good thing. I clean the radiators after a long haul with the same stuff I clean Ac condensers with. Spray it in and rinse it out. Blue cool Non- acidic.
Now for you putting a smaller pulley on your water pump on your 2 stroke. Good luck with that one.

[Iceni John]

If it takes 970 BTU to evaporate one pound of water, my quick calculation is that my mister system will absorb about 40,000 BTU per hour, or about 666 BTU per minute.  (5 gallons of water lasts about one hour:  that's about 41 lbs of water, times 970 is about 40,000.)   A 6V92 at full whack is putting about 12,000 BTU per minute into the coolant, so my mister system is responsible for about 5% of its overall cooling.   It seems to be lowering coolant temperatures by about 5 degrees.   Does this sound correct?

John