methanol/water injection

I had a turbo F85(Jetfire). Ut had a fairly complicated control system for the ADI system. When fluid ran out, or the system was unable to pressurize the the ADI tank, boost was cut via the wastegate, and, an axillary butterfly downstream of the carb partially closed. So no reason to drive easy, the controls wouldn't let you hurt the engine.

 

Bump for lunch

 

I always have a 9/16 and a 1/2 in my glove box. Dont leave home without 'em

 

Don, I would be interested for our turbo app on the lakester.

 

I'm just curious, but where are you getting this information about the water/meth costing horsepower on a turbo or supercharged engine? We have found power by properly tuning an engine with a snow kit on our Superflow 902

 

On my "non HAMB appropriate" turbocharged vehicle I spray 50/50 meth/distilled water which allows me to run higher boost safely on 93 oct pump gas. Without the spray I would have to run racegas to not incur knock or detonation at those boost levels. Even with a conservative approach not trying to squeeze to the limit, it still gets me close to an additional 100 hp more on pump gas than possible without the meth/water. As mentioned above, if the fluid is low or no or low pressure sensed in the line to the spray nozzles, mine defaults to wastegate boost for safety.

I can see the same idea applying to an NA motor if you build it "hot", say with higher compression ratio normally requiring race gas octane, but with the spray you can run that with pump gas.

 

That's the concept - I'm trying get a plan whoo-hoo

 

Except for the flash heat condition I described, alcohol/water injection costs power. That is a well documented fact that has been proved by many credible sources, and the underlying reasons make sense. If it did improve power or fuel economy manufacturers would be putting water tanks on new cars.

Maybe I didn't make myself clear. As I already said, when fluid injection allows more boost, higher compression, or more ignition advance it can potentially facilitate more power than it costs. Similar idea; say it takes 50 HP to turn a blower, but the blower causes the engine to produce an additional 200 HP. The blower costs power, but it facilitates more power than it takes away.

 

I'm really not catching the point of costing power.
Unless you are stating the obvious here. The same could be said for any accessories or fuel pump or lager bore with increased ring friction or blowers & turbos. Its a misleading blanket statement. If the over all bottom line is greater its not "costing" but increasing power.

Depending on who you are reading, some say the alcohol adds a fuel into the combustion chamber and some say it really doesn't matter. Some really deep chemist and engineering types go into this way beyond my pay grade but certainly make effective arguments on how both , water and alcohol CAN add something to the combustion event.

The bottom line is very simple. Increased pressure above the piston equates to more energy below it. Pretty easy concept to grasp I think. Methanol/ water injection allows pressure in excess of what the conventional limitations dictate. If one were to add a system to an engine within these conventional limitations, the benefits will be minimal at best. Add a system to am engine well beyond the conventional and the benefits are substantial because the power out put now has new limitations.

 

FWIW: All of the Reno air-race unlimited ( P-51's, Sea-Fury - type guys both radial & Merlin-types use ADI. To cool the intake charge...& yes they're spinning the motor @ higher RPM's & "boost ie: manifold pressure than designed. Know that it's a 15-minute race with mostly mechanically controlled mixture & cylinder head temps. Some extra goes across the heat exchangers/oil coolers@ 450MPH.

Lotta work it seems to me.

 

I'll try to explain this one more time.

If you put fluid injection on a properly calibrated existing engine it costs power. As I have already posted twice, that is a well documented fact. And as I have already said, if the fluid injection allows more compression, more boost, or more ignition advance, the overall net gain may be greater than the performance penalty caused by fluid injection. I say may because it's not a given in every case. Say that to produce max power your engine wants an additional 3 degrees of ignition advance, but the fuel being used won't allow it. Adding the additional 3 degrees of advance, then and adding fluid injection to prevent detonation, will likely result in less power than with no fluid injection and the ignition retarded 3 degrees from ideal.

 

water meth is proven to work in certain situations, but but would be pointless to put a system on your grandmothers Buick, research your particular situation

 

Al, did you see this ^^^^

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=774709
^^^^this is the thread about the special built engine.

Yep, adding Adi to a stock engine that does fine without it -without tuning for it is going to hurt and tuning for it may not help anything. Agreed and stated previously by myself, but irrelevant in this particular case ( see above)

Your next statements are what I find confusion with. To me it seems to be commingled with different engine parameters, thoughts and an all inclusive blanket catch all. Could you provide some of this documentation, I've been looking for a book ( see above) If you care to elaborate and possibly really explain it that would be great. Links will work too for that and less work.
Thanks

 

My "newest" car, which I've owned for 27 years is an 87 Turbo Buick. I run 22 lbs of boost and it runs mid 10's. I used to have to use 118 octane fuel to do that. Now with methanol injection, it runs the same times on 93 octane gas. I've had a system from Alkycontrol for 5 years and it works great on the street and strip. I HIGHLY recommend methanol injection for turbo and blown engines! The system only injects methanol or alky when the engine is in boost so the methanol or alky lasts a long time.

 

OK Al-

In this situation I see NO cost in performance.
The performance is the same yet the fuel is much more affordable. 25 point drop in octane.
Were would the cost in performance be ? Its not on the bottom line so its not obvious or visible.

Hypothetically we could run this car on 100 octane, up the boost to past 22 and go faster ( if nothing breaks) wheres the cost in performance here ?

Hypothetical again , back to 118 octane and Two turbos with more boost ( baring nothing breaks or built it accordingly) we're going faster where's the cost in performance?

Cost in performance when running alcohol water injection-
What line in the equation does it fall on ?
Where does it show up ?
What does it look like ?

Gsx, thanks for posting that

 

Bionk

 

Al, is this cost that you are referring to the
Displaced oxygen caused by the water occupied space ?

 

I have a lot of books on combat piston engine aircraft engines.The engineers designing the highly supercharged engines used to say
" If engine mechanical strength and durability isn't a factor,if detonation is keep under control ,there's no limit to boost and HP"
A bit tongue in cheek but true...

 

I don't have the time to read through the whole thread at the moment cause I'm at work so I'll come back later to do it.
But I do have a Snow performance set up on my 52 Chevy truck and it works great.
NA 355 with 12.1 slugs, daily driven when we don't have snow.
It's pretty wild how well it works and I even noticed a small gain in power.

Tony

 

If you are going to run your car hard on a regular basis this wouldn't really matter much, but a side benefit of water/alcohol injection is that it pretty much eliminates carbon buildup on your valves and combustion chamber.

 

I wonder how many of you guys who are calling an injection system "smoke and mirrors" have ever had one?
I had one on my '71 Camaro with 427 BBC for the last 10 yrs. until I sold the car two weeks ago, and it worked flawlessly. So well that I could run regular grade gasoline all the time, and never any issues. The system I had was an electronic box that sensed engine vacuum and injected the mixture when it got to 4 inches of vacuum.
The instructions with the kit said to use windshield washer fluid if you didn't want to make up the mix, and that's all I ever ran in mine was premixeed washer fluid.
I bought two of these kits back in 2003 at a closeout sale, and ended up selling one to a buddy after I put mine on. Wish I had kept it now, as the new systems are much more expensive.

 

I have a magazine article by David Vizard where he explains how and why water meth injection works. It is dealing with boosted engines but, in it he states that he has ran a NA engine up to 15:1 compression with it on low quality fuel. He is a lot smarter than me so I intend to use it on my blown BBC

 

Any chance you could post or email that ?
Maybe the issue info so I can find it?

 

31Vicky with a hemi,
You have asked me to footnote things I have seen and tests I have read over many years. For the most part I can't do that.

Much of what you are posting does not contradict what I have said. I am runnming out of ways to make the same points. Carefully read and consider what I have posted. If that doesn't make sense to you I don't know what else I can say.

The idea of a super high compression engine with fluid injection would probably result in a nret gain, bity I have no first hand experience or direct knowledge or experience as to whether that would actually happen, or how much the gains might be.

 

Fair enough

 

BULLSHIT! And I can post magazine articles from the time that talk about using it for detonation supression, but I cannot recall reading a SINGLE article that ever suggested that water injection would increase compression But then, I never considered the National Inquirer as a valid source of tech info...

 

There's some good info here and I certainly do appreciate that, I would like more discussion based on practical experience or sharing of links to the published info and testing results.
But its quite apparent there's more parroting and inter web regurgitation that needed. Info is being stated as empirical and SO well documented but not being shared. Renders it useless really.

Still looking for a book as mentioned in the first post

 

Based on what you are saying, if Don Garlits told you something about running nitro in a Chrysler Hemi you would consider it BS if he didn't give you a link to click on or something in writing that backs up what he said?

David Vizard was mentioned. He is a sharp guy who is very conscientious about passing along accurate information. And absolutely nothing against him at all, I know for a fact he doesn't know everything, and that over time some of his perceptions have evolved.

There is a lot of good info on the internet and even more misinformation. You can only learn so much from surfing the web. To know more requires the interest and dedication to read engineering text books and technical papers, being where things are being tried and done, hanging around with people who are smarter and/or know more than you, and experimenting yourself. Then, it's up to you to assemble all those puzzle pieces into some insightful. What you end up with will be yours, not something you read on the internet, or what someone told you. Then you can make helpful posts on internet forums and have people question what you know to be fact.

 

How the hell do you come up with this shit ?

31Vicky with a hemi,
You have asked me to footnote things I have seen and tests I have read over many years. For the most part I can't do that.which means I can't back up one fucking sillybull ( pun) of what I posted

Much of what you are posting does not contradict what I have said. I am runnming out of ways to make the same points. Carefully read and consider what I have posted. If that doesn't make sense to you I don't know what else I can say. which means I've spewed the bullshit, you figure it out, don't matter I can't explain it , I'm just a fucking parrot

The idea of a super high compression engine with fluid injection would probably result in a nret gain, bity I have no first hand experience or direct knowledge or experience as to whether that would actually happen, or how much the gains might be. which means I really don't know shit about it

I didn't single you out but I am now ass hat.

If big daddy told me something , I'd take it for what it is. If I told one person what he said , and heard it again 20 people later it would certainly be fucking bullshit by then.

Yea I need a book , see the first post ? Huh ? Did you fucking read it yet ? Obviously you must have read it captain obvious , you read it on the internet in my first post and will now parrot that back to me.
I don't see any meat on any of your 2000 some odd posts.
Back it up, put some meat on here or STFU already.

 

Do a search on google books will come up with several books where it is mentioned but no books dedicated to it.

http://books.google.com/books?id=T_...=onepage&q="water/methanol injection"&f=false