WildWarrior

I guess I will just say that the promotion to run pure meth vs water injection is a liability for any company including ours as it is flamible.The mixture that we all recommend with more parts of water than meth is of coarse non flammable.
With that being said the main stream water injection companies are also quite vague as to how you go a bought tuning their systems as well.

And I quote :increase timing in 2 degree increments until the first hint of detonation-then back off 2 degrees.

In our world that would more than likely mean send back to shop and replace pistons and maybe more.

This is one of the reasons that we had to spend the time and effort dialing in our own system ,and as it works with water we see no reason to put out the fire!

The methanol has BTU's. There is energy in it as compared to water. Water converts to steam and absorbs heat, which works great, but you do get a bigger yield out of a fuel that burns cooler. Also note that we are not mixing two different liquids with two different specific gravity's. They are being mixed as an atomized spray in the intake airflow, and then homogenizing together in the combustion chamber.
We ran Methanol only for many years in our blown race cars with 16 nozzle injection and methanol is easier on parts than gasoline.
As methanol does not have the lubricating effects that gasoline has we add a top end lube to our mix for this application. Keep in mind that water is not a good lubricant either.

Unitek

http://www.snowperformance.net/

Their kits are the best bar none. I ran one on my hot air Vortech Supercharged Mustang.

Basics:

306 cube SBF
TFS TW heads (ported)
TFS Track heat intake (ported)
500/510 218/226 112 LS
Vortech T Trim @ 14 psi
Through a stick shift

Pump Gas 93 octane made:
533 RWHP 499 TWTQ 18* total timing under WOT

Pump Gas 93 + stage 2 meth injection (single large nozzle)
632 RWHP 566 RWTQ ( pulled fuel via injector added 14* of total timing)

you can calculate flywheel HP numbers by mulitplying by a modest 13% drivetrain loss

This stuff works. a can of racing methanol from torco is about 28 dollars. I ran a 50/50 mix of methanol and distilled water.

Unitek

Why do their kits seem small ? Im in the process of building an aluminum blocked 360 cubic inch SBF with big boost. I plan on running between 25 and 30 psi of boost with one of their twin nozzle kits and pump gas. They claim with the upgraded pump and large nozzles, it can support well over 1200 hp while using pump gas.

Honestly, I really dont see why people dont use this technology more in marine applications.

In gasoline engines, as with any intercooler, this suppresses detonation so more power producing boost and timing can be utilized. Water, with its high latent heat of vaporization cools the intake charge and combustion. Methanol cools the charge and combustion but also acts like an extremely high octane fuel (some researchers claim as high as 120 octane) as well as adding more oxygen to combustion.

bcarpman

There seems to be some confusion:

First you have to distinguish between Methanol as a fuel, and methanol to cool the charge. Methanol used as a supplementary charge cooler will not significantly increase the octane of the resultant mixure. There is just not enough if it being injected. However increased Octane and the knock resistance provided by the cooler charge are about the same thing anyway.

100% water is by far the best charge cooler. It's simply a function of specific heat of vaporization. Water takes over 2200 kJ per kG to evaporate while Methanol takes only 1100 kJ per kG. That's really the only function of such systems. Trying to "add energy" through the use of Methanol is futile and better accomplished in other ways.

Methanol was classicaly added to prevent freezing or to prevent fouling of the water from sitting for long periods of time. Other than that, the only reason methanol is used is because "methanol injection" sounds way cooler than "water injection"

The reason water injection systems have never gotten popular are many:

-They only help if you need additional charge cooling (provide no real function for NA applications). In fact, they will actually take away a small amount of power even if optomally tuned if they are not really needed (just as increased octane will)

-You have to carefully monitor the tank. Without some sort of warning system, your engine is a heap of shrapnal very quickly if the water runs out

-If not used often, any debre can clog the nozzels resulting in more shrapnal

-The control system needs to be more complicated than most want to deal with. Too little at one rpm and "boom" goes the engine, and too much at one rpm, the the water puts out the charge just like a super rich mixture would. The band of operation is pretty tight and really needs tighter control than a simple variable speed pump can provide.

This last one is probably the biggest reason you don't see water injection more often. Most racers just had a hard time getting anything out of it. What they'd gain down low, they'd lose up top or vis versa.

I rigged a system once using an extra fuel injector with lubricated water. Since the fuel injector was proportional to fuel (controled by the same computer) it should have worked really well. But I never got it to stop clogging the injector if it sat unused for any length of time.

kaama377

Edlebrock made a water injection system. I had one on my 1981 38' flat deck scarab With the Banks twin turbo setup. It was a pretty nice system. It had a diamond plate tank on the bulkhead with two windshield wiper water pumps mounted under it and the control boxes mounted next to it. (little red box near bottom of tank)The control boxes controlled the pressure by rpm or manifold pressure. The tank was kept full through a hose that was tapped into the water intake inboard of the sea strainers. The hose also had an inline paper carterage filter like you would use to filter drinking water to keep the water entering the tank clean. The feed hoses tapped into the flame arrestors since it was a draw through turbo system. On the dash (top corners)it had a guage with an on off switch and five lights that would vary depending on the level of water flow that the control boxes determined was needed. I can't verrify any hard numbers but it seemed to work very well.

WildWarrior

If you cut and paste the below video link you can check out some footage of our 93 octane Methanol injected test rig in action.

565CIs with high helix 14-71s 3 circuit Dominator's,Rudy Dryden grind Comp cams hydraulic rollers with our very own Ice Injection System
1.24 ratio dry sumps and 36p 17" cleavers.
We ran up to 16lbs on 93 pump gas safely engine wise before we settled on 13lbs + we could go higher however our test rig and drives don't do well with that much power it's a hand full to drive and we destroyed several gear sets in our #6s. The injection really allows us to make hp on pump gas.!


http://www.youtube.com/v/_JrlY46kRjs

JRider

iTrader: (1)

Can water injection take the place of an intercooler? I have a 575sci and do not have room under my hatch for an intercooler, however I do have room for water tank/s. Would results be comparable? Does the fuel curve need to be recalibrated?

WildWarrior

The answer is yes for your situation as well as the SC600 and 800 SC,s already running low to moderate non inner cooled boost.
You can add a few more lbs of boost safely at the same time have a cooler inlet temp than inner cooled only.
But to see real power you will need to add a few lbs of boost as well as a new fuel curve.

JRider

iTrader: (1)

Adding boost is definately in my plans. I need to decide between spinning the hell out of the weiand 256 or upgrading to a TBS 871.

I only freshwater boat...would it be at all practical to seastrain and then filter lake water for injection?

bob

WildWarrior, what kind of power increases did you see by adding the injection?