How many heads have you seen like that!!? Mostly ricers, but it all comes down to proper maintenance. I can't believe how many people think it's OK to put tap water into their motors! City water in Oz is so full of salts that it attacks the alloy immediately. And folks just don't drain, flush and refill with coolant regularly enough. No excuse for that.
A couple of years back I wrote an article for the Discoveryauto site in WA (I'm their webmaster) and some of the stuff in it may be of interest to you guys. I know it's for Range Rover motors, but they are all-alloy and it's even more critical to look after their cooling systems. Anyway, the link is:
http://www.discoveryauto.com.au/page4.htm
A few years back "Choice" magazine did a test of coolants and found that they were not the same. Tests were also done by one of the TV channels' "Let's Expose The Ba**ard!" teams and they had similar results, in fact, one of the brands actually did more damage than tap water! It would be interesting to revisit those articles.
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