Right on Edward!
I got six years out of my last 48 month battery and never used anything
but tap water in it.
You don't really want to know what is in your tap water ........
everything of importance can be damaged by it.
All of that distilled water stuff started back in the pre-twenties when
batteries went bad all the time from well water that contained calcium,
iron, sulphur and other bad minerals and even lead and potassium.
Besides if you got a Westy the chemicals all boil off the water in the
storage tank in about two weeks, no more chlorine just the algae,
bacteria and calcium remain to clog your sink faucet.
For a simple test: Fill a clear glass mason jar with tap water, put a lid
on it, put it out in the sun and let it sit for about three days.
The chlorine burns off, the algae grows, the stink grows and the calcium
settles to the bottom, not a pretty sight.
If you'll drink it after seeing the results of this simple test you are
Bart Simpson.

Stan Wilder

On Sun, 17 Feb 2002 19:03:38 -0800 Edward Nutter
<eanutter@POSTOFFICE.PACBELL.NET> writes:
> Balderdash.
>
> Neither Bently nor any VW dealor or independent service shop in the
> 15
> years that I owned my 85 GL ever mentioned a requirement for
> deionized
> water.  Using distilled is nice since it's clean and not hard, and
> is
> often produced by deionization, but it is NOT required.
>
> William,
>
> Don't believe everything you read on this list. If someone with the
> credentials of Steve Not A Jeep Denis or Boston Bob want to
> contradict
> me I'll take it.  But my BS detector really went off on this one.
>
> Ed
>
> Rico Sapolich wrote:
>
> >In a message dated 2/17/02 12:49:43 PM, developtrust@HOME.COM
> writes:
> >
> ><< What is the rationale for distilled water. >>
> >
> >The cooling system requires deionized water.  Although I would
> think that
> >distilled water is also deionized, I slept through too many
> analytical
> >chemistry classes to have any meaningful knowledge of the matter.
> I imagine
> >that deionized H2O allows the additive components of the antifreeze
> to
> >function as was intended by the chemists' formulation.
> >
> >Also, deionized H2O is offered by antifreeze manufacturers at
> inflated prices.
> >
> >Rich
> >
>
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