It’s not just the physical act of draining and refilling. You have to ensure you properly bleed out any air in the system before you “hit the track”.
For people using a daily driver, this means doing that whole procedure not once but twice, assuming they return to a water/glycol mix after the event.
But let’s clarify: race cars do not run antifreeze in their cooling systems and strangely this doesn’t seem to hurt these high performance engines. “Not having antifreeze will hurt my engine” = lack of knowledge (I say that respectfully)
I’m sorry but you do not seem to understand the issue for those of us that would use our street cars. (I understand that different considerations can be made for dedicated race/track cars).
Two issues:
- Glycol helps lubricate the water pump’s bearing seals, which will prolong the life of the pump. This is not opinion, this is fact. While I agree that running straight water for a short duration like an event or two, probably won’t hurt it, this is not something a person should want to do for the entire summer driving season (6-7 months) in their street car.
- Even Redline themselves, the makers of “Water Wetter”, do not recommend running less than 20% glycol in your coolant mix if you have air conditioning and intend to use it. You could freeze the heater core in the absence of any glycol, which would lead to obvious problems. Again, this is irrelevant for “race cars” that probably don’t have A/C anyway, but for guys that would be tracking their street cars this is an important detail. Sure you wouldn’t use A/C during a racing event (duh), but you’d better remember that you can’t use it the entire time you’re running just water.