Mixing Aluminum and Copper
 

Hey, I've been running a mixed Al and Cu system for about a week now, (new setup from my old aluminum only) and I understand that as a result one will corrode, and one will be plated, and that people recommend water wetter to suppress it. My questions are: 1) Which will corrode, and which will be plated? The copper water block, or the aluminum radiator? And also, is there any readily available alternative to water wetter available? I'm trying to save by not having to buy it online. Thanks.

You will probably find water wetter at your local performance auto store. Other than this you could use a mix of 1:20 glycol antifreeze or I heard of mobil 1 having a anti-corrosion product just for the interaction between the two metals.

Only point is that water wetter will improve your thermals while these other two products will only make the transfer worse, this is why water wetter is so well recommended.

Some people will tell you that WW alone will prevent corrosion, while others will say that in their case antifreeze was required.

IIRC, the Al part will corrode, I've never heatrd of plating the other though. I thought basically particles of Cu dissolve in the water and end up on the Al and in doing so corrode it. There are articles out there that detail this nicely if you want more information.

Your call. You can probably get away with just WW, but on the other hand antifreeze is fairly conductive in and of it self, so adding say 15% to water will have a fairly marginal effect on perfromance.