such a laughable piece of nonsense, I don't know where to start - do you have a precise link to this? Presumably they are talking about tap water, so they have to be saying that every country in Europe has precisely the same water coming out of the tap.

precisely

Don't shoot the messenger
 

I too am incredulous that all European tap water is uber hard while all North American tap water is softer. I don't believe that for a minute.

My real point is that if you use distilled water you should not have to worry about phosphate or phosphate free imho. The whole phosphate controversy is only an issue if one uses tap water.

I do not use tap water in my cooling systems & the cooling systems in all my cars seem to be scale free. Most name brand antifreeze these days is formulated to work with aluminum as far as I understand the marketing promises (we can believe everything marketing says, can't we?). Aluminum is very common in todays engines.

FWIW: When I got my Porsche brand new in 1988 there was a brown crud in the expansion tank/reservoir which I was told was a factory installed stop leak of the walnut-shell dust variety. Over the years I have cleaned that out and never seen it return--so no, it was not oil in the coolant from the infamous oil cooler seal leak.

One more note on antifreeze, I will never use Dex-Cool (also nicknamed Death Cool on the internet) after doing intake manifold gaskets on both a Chevy and a Buick and the head gaskets on the Chevy which Dex-Cool is famous for destroying under the right conditions. The aluminum Chevy intake manifold was pitted around the coolant ports which I suspect was from the Dex-Cool. Google Dex-Cool problems, or Dex-Cool lawsuit etc for fun cold weather reading. Dex-Cool is the extremely common "red" long life antifreeze using OAT (organic acid technology). Other long life antifreezes that use HOAT (hybrid organic acid technology) are not supposed to have the same problems as Dex-Cool. There is much discussion on the web.

When will spring get here? I have 5" of snow now.

@88Silver924S : hope my writing was clear - no shooting of the messenger (at the moment) ;^)

I use coolant pH test strips. If the coolant gets too acidic it will corrode aluminum and the gaskets could fail. Coolant gets more acidic or corrosive with age.

http://www.oreillyauto.com/site/app/newsfeed/detail?article=800684645

Techtips - Testing Your Antifreeze

Also tap water can leave deposits in the radiator and reduce cooling efficiency.