PSA: The hazards of hot coolant · 7:04pm Jul 2nd, 2016
The hazards of working at a shop. . .
Kids, grab on to your favorite beverage now while the Admiral tells you a cautionary tale. Fair warning; this is going to contain some automotive lingo, so just follow along as well as you can.
Yesterday, I was diagnosing a Jeep Grand Cherokee in which none of the power windows worked. I had already determined that two of the wires that passed through the door umbilical were broken, which is actually a common problem on them. I couldn't fix them right where they were broken, because they would just break in the same spot again; the only solution was to pull the wires out, and splice in a long repair section that put the splices away from the part of the wire that flexed.
Well, I got all that done and the power windows still didn't work, so I started doing additional diagnostic work. In the process of doing that, I decided that it would be best not to run down the Jeep's battery by leaving it on without it actually running, so I started it.
I had determined that the driver's door switch (which is actually its own computer, called the DDM or Driver's Door Module) had failed internally, and I went up front to get prices on a new one. I left the Jeep running.
After determining that we couldn't get one aftermarket, I was on the phone to the dealer to get a price on one when I heard the other guy shout from the back and the Jeep shut off (he turned it off, but I didn't know that at the time).
As soon as I got off the phone I went back to see what was going on, and there was the Jeep, steam going everywhere, and coolant spitting out of the overflow bottle on it. My first thought was that the prybar I'd used to hold the hood open had somehow slipped and punctured the radiator or the upper radiator hose, so I went over to look. This was a mistake.
The prybar was still exactly where I'd left it, and I had just turned around when a pocket of steam erupted boiling coolant out of the overflow jug and all over my back and left side.
I immediately tore my work shirt off (and I do mean tore; it was a brand new shirt and it now has no buttons at all) and my t-shirt, grabbed the water hose, and started running cold water over my back. After about ten minutes of that, I drove home and took a cool shower for an hour or so before I got dressed and went back to work.
I'm going to say that that immediate reaction probably kept it from being a really nasty injury and just an unpleasant one (and if I hadn't turned away right before the coolant exploded . . .). As it is, I've got some first-degree burns on my left arm, neck, and temple, and a nice combination of first- and second-degree burns on my back, but it could have been so much worse.
So the moral is that if you've got a car that's overheating, shut it down, and then do nothing. Stay away from it until it's had time to cool down on its own. If it caught me unawares it'll do the same to anyone.
Also I learned that I can tear all the buttons off a brand new work shirt and the uniform guy is going to be so mad at me.
(Also also if any of y'all come up at Bronycon and give me a friendly slap on the back I will not be happy.)
And in case you're wondering why it overheated, the cooling fan was broken. If the customer knew about that, he forgot to tell us.
Probably not. Superheated steam and hot water transfer thermal energy fast enough that it's physically impossible to remove it fast enough before it has done pretty much all the harm it can. You're frankly just lucky that you weren't hit with more.
Yeah, this is nasty stuff. For some absurd reason, water has this strange ability to store more thermal energy, pound by pound, than pretty much any other common liquid you're likely to ever run into, by a factor of two, three or even more. It makes for some amazingly nasty surprises. You could have gotten off so much worse there.
Coolant smoke. Don't breathe this.
That was really nasty, but how was such an engine even managing to reach boiling point when running on idle? given full power is a factor of 20 times greate, youd expect the engine to be an effecive enough radiator. Unless its like that German design and insulated to heat up quicker when starting?
Example, my Unc has his radiator blanked off in his car and we did 60 miles a couple weeks ago, on the hottest day of the year, near 30C, in th UK, and the car didnt trip.
Diesel.
Really glad you didn't get hurt more than you did.
I got lucky myself with a coolant spray when I was having trouble with a marine generator last year. It was overheating so I was doing a test run in a cramped engine compartment to see exactly what it was doing. Turns out the coolant wasn't circulating and just boiling to the point it was spraying out around the cap when it's pressure rating was exceeded. Turned out an impeller in the heat exchanger had disintegrated, on a 3 month old genny I might add. I was supremely lucky not to get burned since I was less than a foot away using the controls on the generator at the time. Later I was speaking to someone at the shop about troubleshooting options. Turns out he'd not paid close attention to a leak like that once and had 3rd degree burns all up one side of his back and side to show for it.
Holy shit.
Stay safe out there Admiral.
Ouch. Still not good, but glad it wasn't worse.
Ouch, at least it wasn't worse
hop you get better son.
and the moral of the story never own a jeep they are pretty much all junk.
I, uhhh... I'll remember that.
4063266 On the plus side the human body is soaking wet too, so that balances out the effects of heat somewhat. It takes more energy heating up living tissue than it'd take for most things.
This is why the proper technique for fighting mummies is to apply fire. They're desiccated so they heat up quickly (the rags burn nice too, making it self-sustaining).
4063400
Sadly, that really only applies to actually catching on fire. You start getting medically significant burns as soon as any part of your body heats up to more than 50 degrees Celsius or so, which is barely hotter than a nice hot bath.
Ouch. Glad to hear that it wasn't worse.
Ouch. Glad you turned around and aren't worse off.
4063266
But from a medical standpoint, isn't it still important to cool down the burned area to reduce the extent of the skin damage? Or is that just palliative? Did I tear off my work shirt and fill up my work boots with water for nothing?
4063278
Fun fact: a lot of e-cigarettes contain the same glycol that your engine coolant does.
4063285
Most modern American cars are designed to reach their efficient engine operating temperature (which is usually about 190F or 85C(ish) as fast as possible, usually within a few minutes of starting. This is for emissions requirements. So most modern American cars are going to overheat within probably ten minutes if they're just idling, and even less than that if the AC is running.
Now, if it's moving and there's any airflow at all over the radiator, they'll cool pretty efficiently, especially in a lot of older cars with big radiators. My old s-10 didn't have a cooling fan, and as long as you were driving it would sit happily at 200F (90C?) but if I got stuck in traffic, I had to run the heater on high to help keep the engine cool (which was not pleasant in July, let me tell you).
Engine heat is so important for efficiency that Priuses have a coolant thermos to keep it hot (due to the on/off cycle of the gasoline engine).
4063655
Palliative, mostly. Cooling reduces the pain and the swelling, but at that point, the damage is already done. The heat is long gone and can cause no further injury. Cooling may have some other medical benefit that I'm not aware of, but in terms of the actual process that causes the burn - heat causing a denaturing of your body's proteins, a chemical breakdown of cell material, disrupting membranes and the like - there's nothing it could actually help with.
So, yeah, kinda didn't do anything except make it hurt less, which is of course a pretty good reason all by itself.
I believe all cigaretted contain glyzerine and glycol. They're common additives.
4063316
Me, too. I've been hit by hot coolant before, but not boiling coolant, and not nearly as much.
That's got to be way worse. At least in the shop I could get away quick; inside a boat's engine compartment there wouldn't be anywhere to go. Out of curiousity, what kind of boat? Most of the ones I'm familiar with on small boats suck up outside water to cool the motor and it goes back out with the exhaust (but then I live in Michigan where all the lakes are freshwater; that type of system might be a really bad idea in salt water).
4063333
If nothing else, I'm never going to make this mistake again.
4063655 Yup, already knew that... I'm waiting until we start seeing idiots trying to use raw glycol in their vapes
4063344
Me, too. Could have been a lot worse than it was.
4063361
Yeah, if I'd got it in the face . . . or been hit by more of it. . . .
4063393
lol yeah.
Although I once got my old Chevy truck to a healthy 285 on the coolant temp gauge (it might have been hotter, but that was as high as the gauge went). That was when i couldn't see past the hood anymore for all the steam.
4063397
See that you do
Although it probably wouldn't be as bad as the time I went to crack my knuckles, forgetting that I'd sprained one of my fingers the day before. Ever since than I haven't cracked my knuckles.
4063400
Well, that's handy to know. Just in case I ever run across a mummy.
4063411
Which I have so far avoided, luckily. I have had my pants on fire before and have been hit with a flaming marshmallow but that's it.
4063469
In the day since it's happened, it's gone from ouchy to itchy.
4063709
It's possible for human body fat to heat up to the point where it ignites.
As you can imagine, this is just about the worst thing ever. It basically makes your body melt like a runny candle.
4063679
Yeah very cramped indeed. This was on a 35' sundancer. I've worked onlarger boats with room to run or duck and cover but yeah no where to hide on this one. Trouble shooting is all the more fun when the only controls for the genny are on it, or in the forward cabin where it's really hard to trouble shoot with single handed.
As to cooling most of the marine engines and generators I've worked with use a combination both a seawater cooling system and more traditional (I think) coolant filled heat exchanger. As to the seawater being a bad idea there is a sacrificial zync anode that is used to take care of the electrolysis issues.
Other systems like A/C and such just use seawater for cooling, but the engines and such still get too hot for water alone to cut it. Biggest engines I ever helped maintaine (just running maint. not full mechanic work 
) were a pair of 1,800hp 16 cylinder Detroit Desiels on a 70' sport fish. The phrase oil change takes on whole new meaning when each engines held 18 gallons of oil 
, but at least that was an engine room with room to maneuver in.
4063663
You mean, theyve finally moved IC design from Newcomon to Watt?
Oh, wait, theyre still cooling the air as it goes in for power charging, instead of going for thermal recycling and efficincy? My bad.
Phew! From the sound of it you got lucky not get something more nasty. Temple is very close from a few other important places.
Take care of yourself!
4063655
I've always heard to run burns under cold water and I've assumed that the skin might be able to stay at a destructive temperature for a few seconds -- whether this is true or not, it at the very least helps with the pain of the burn
also, if you don't have burn cream, get some vitamin e oil (or break open a few capsules of vitamin e) -- my mother swears by the stuff and doesn't bother with burn cream. We just run it under cold water/put an ice cube on it, cover it with vitamin e, and slap a band aid on it
4063703
yep I did that to a ford 300 / 6 one time to try and blow it as it was a oil hog. lol it fixed it I sold it to a buddy who ran it for 3 more years.
At the lab where I work, we have several large autoclaves... Basically huge pressure cookers, about 5 or 6 feet deep, about 3 feet tall, and a little over 2 feet wide. We use them to sterilize sample incubation media in plastic jugs. Each jug holds 3 liters, and we can load 48 jugs, leaving space between for steam to flow between. Sterilization temp is 122-124 C, at 17 PSI. The door is like a bank vault, with a big wheel that drives locking bolts into a steel frame.
Even when the pressure exhausts, after a sterilization cycle is completed, the temp is still at 99-100 C, and the unit starts a 10 minute cool down timer...
We have a stubborn idiot that NEVER waits. Dude has been lucky so far. He's managed to avoid the exploding jugs. When they blow the lids, the contents will hit the concrete ceiling... We have at least two ceiling stains, cause those samples had dye. How he hasn't been burned is beyond me. Worse, my other coworker in my area, HAS been burned, once by spill, and another time by a jug exploding while still inside a smaller autoclave. The large autoclaves have carts that roll inside, but the small ones, you have to manually load and unload. Got her arm and shoulder. She healed up fine, but yeah...
No respect there. Just waiting for the bad one to happen. If i hear a hiss or a whistle, I duck my ass outta there FAST!
4063677
Well, I guess that's at least a useful benefit.
I did know that; isn't that believed to be the cause of some human spontaneous combustion cases?
4063771
We replaced the radiator on a stationary Detroit Diesel genny once (it was owned by a contractor and mounted to a flatbed, although it wasn't supposed to be). Most of the cars we work on hold maybe three gallons of coolant, tops; this sucker we just kept pouring more and more in and it still wanted even more. I think it wound up taking sixteen gallons or so.
Haven't got a lot of experience with powerboats over about 20' and the biggest marine engine I've worked on was a 4cyl Mercruiser in an open ski boat. My parents have a little Yanmar in their sailboat, which can make the boat go and I think can also be used as a generator.
4063773
Well, the newest engines have turbos, intercoolers, and GDI which allows them to shape the flame front and use tumbler valves to keep a wall of inert gasses between the cylinder wall and the combustion event, increasing efficiency. It's all actually quite ingenious how they're doing it--there's been a pretty dramatic increase in fuel efficiency over the last few years.
4063787
Don't I know it. That was one of the places that got hit indirect, so not too bad.
4063941
Spontaneous combustion doesn't actually happen. We are talking about hundreds of degrees here; more than it would take to cause the average frying pan fire in your kitchen, because human fat has so much water content. At that point, you would have been screaming in agony for minutes. It's basically why our bodies ever even burn at all, though, so if you come in contact with a particularly hot fire over an extended timespan, that's basically what you get. Like an oil lamp, but you're both the oil and the lamp.
4063796
cool, not cold. Likewise, for frostbite, you want warm, not hot.
Unfortunately, we're beyond band-aid territory here. Gauze pads the size of a sheet of typing paper is where we're at.
I'm always wary about leaving a car running while parked. I've seen too many of them overheat like this.
4063884
Once some of those older engines got worn out you couldn't blow them 'cause they got so sloppy there was nothing you could do to make it worse, and they didn't have enough power to self-destruct. That particular engine's been run well over a reasonable coolant temperature, run without oil, and been on fire, and she's still going.
4063902
Yeah, that's the kind of person you want to stay away from, because he's an accident waiting to happen. Hopefully when it does, it'll only get him.
4063956
I should have been more clear in my wording. The cases which some believe are spontaneous human combustion were likely the person burning to death much more slowly (and unable to do anything about it) after being set aflame by something and at a low enough temperature that they didn't set fire to much of anything else around them.
4063962
It shouldn't happen if the car is in good working order. This Jeep was not.
4063973
Smouldering fires like that are something I can't really see happen to anyone who wasn't already dead, personally. I accidentally set one of my hands on fire once - covered it in alcohol and then got a spark on it. Don't worry, no serious injury occurred, it was more of a scare. That kind of heat and pain is the sort thing you react to, though. I honestly don't think anyone could set one of their limbs on fire like that and then not do something about it, if only scream like hell. Imagine a 150 pound bag filled with grease. That's the kind of thing that takes hours to burn.
1,5 week ago my cousin was cuting metal scrap with oxyacetylene torch.
Acetylene connector slipped...
In liquid form sprayed his right arm...
Catched fire from hot sparks...
He of course closed valve on tank in panic first - adrenaline.
Hand and fingers, arm, elbow, upper arm - nice variety of 1st and 2nd degree burns.
His skin looks probably as nice as your back now.
I'm glad you're okay. Thank God it wasn't worse.
As a kid I had an accident with boiling water and got 2nd degree burns all over my stomach and chest.
It was awful.
I do not envy you. I hope you heal quickly and that you can sleep ok.
4064006 Most spontaneous fire victims seem to have been smokers prone to blackout drinking. Spilled alcohol might be the accellerant, dropped lit cigarette the flame, and drunken stupor both the depressive and numbing the pain.
4064481
Well, on the assumption that some of the initial flame reached their faces, in which case the blast of flame and hot air will make the airways close up and cause quick unconsciousness and/or death, this sounds reasonable enough. Nothing that really deserves to be called spontaneous, for sure, but a scenario that I can imagine happening.
4063709
An important caveat: make sure the mummy is hostile first. Or at the very least ambulatory.
I miss being allowed into museums.
4064498 the only real difference is that spontaneous victime somehow manage to destroy themselves without destroying the room, elsewhere the fire investigators would categorize it as another case of someone smoking in bed, which used to be a common enough fate to be a cliche. The whole bed goes up, big enoigh fire that the whole room goes. Spontaneous fire victims seem to generally be found in sitting positions, probably providing a narrow, vertical tube sufficient for wicking. They passed out in a chair, lounge or recliner.
There should be a detectable decline in spontaneous fire victims, parallel with declines in smoking in bed victims, as smoking in the population declines.
4064530
I'm personally sceptical about the existence of the entire thing on basic principle. Fires that are capable of reducing an entire person to ashes really aren't good at not leaving any traces on anything else, from burned underground to sooty ceilings. I always thought the "this is a really weird murder case and we just can't figure out how" reasoning had a lot more ground to stand on.
I suppose we'll see, though.
4064539 Oh, they seem to leave pretty nice scorch and blackening messes in their vicinity, it just doesn't always destroy the room.. And the file photos used to push the paranormal answer are almost always framed downwards, so you can't see anything above the fire site; kills the mystique when you can see all the smoke damage and such. Not saying that some spontaneous fire victims weren't murder victims - it's just as easy to pour out the rest of the bottle on 'em and flick a lit cigarethe on them while they're passed out, but the same is true of the smoving in bed victims. Hell, they made a movie about it back in the day.
Along time ago, circa 1990, my dad placed his old nissan on idle to see how it was running. And then, for some reason, he opened the radiator cap, the cap flew off and he was sprayed in the face , neck and chest with hot coolant. Fortunatelly it was at home, and he ran inside and got under the shower. My mom went to him and began applying egg yolk and sliced tomato to keep the burning down. Luckily he only got some blisters and no scars.
edit: I've burned my right hand twice with a iron and gotten welding flashburns on my eyes.
That really sucks, glad you didn't get too injured by it. The customer was probably to stupid to know, though, unless they were in long lines at idle, they might have. Now when you later ask... if they did know, pay some guy down the street to come and kick the guy in the crotch on the way out.
Argh. I'm glad you got missed by most of it.
The creepiest part of boiling water injuries, is that they apparently don't kill quickly--or even necessarily knock you unconscious. I just finished reading the book "Death in Yellowstone" last week. The opening sentence is, "IT IS A MYSTERY WHY ANYONE would dive headfirst into a Yellowstone hot spring merely to save a dog, but that is precisely what happened on July 20, 1981." The hot spring was about 202°F (Yellowstone is high elevation, so the boiling point is depressed.) Apparently the guy was conscious and talking with third-degree burns on 100% of his body until the next day when he died at a hospital in Salt Lake City.
I hereby dub thee Baron Gaberdine for accidentally attempting to duplicate the accident he had in The One Who Got Away.
On the plus side, if you wind up with a scar, you can call it a cutie mark
(sorry, couldn't help it)
dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/37540750/_ponies/gilda%20trixie%20i%20know%20that%20feel%20bro.jpg
Well, actually I've never been burned that bad. But needless to say, I've had my fair share. The most recent being a nice 2nd degree burn caused by a shoplight (of all things) that apparently was going supernova, and it decided to fall into the crook of my elbow. Yes, that's right. A 2nd degree burn, not even from the bulb itself, but from the back of the cage. FML.
Unless you count the many tiny spatter burns I got today from welding mufflers on a Vovlo and an old handicap Caravan. I like welding, but feeling mildly itchy the next day always sucks.
Also, that has to suck, especially being a week away from the con(s). Get yourself a shitload of aloe vera.