I have had this kit now for two track seasons, and have been very happy with it. Because of recent posts on water and alcohol injection kits I have decided to post a review of the kit, and a guide with pictures on the installation of this kit. Further more this kit can be found at
www.smcenterprises.com and information of alcohol and it's benefits can also be found by search the internet.
I bought this kit in December of 02 and put it on shortly after. The install was very easy to follow and all parts were given to me with kit. Tools that you will need will include a drill with 3/8s drill bit and various wrenches. You may also need more tools if you plan to mount the alcohol container, I placed my tank in a position where I could only use zip ties to secure it, I have never had problems with this method either. The kit also comes with velcro to mount the in car controller. This works fine, except during hot days the velcro will sometimes release, I have decided to build a custom bracket but do not have it finished or any pictures.
First thing I did was to decide where I was going to mount my kit. I chose to put it directly under my intake for the turbo. There was a perfect amount of room. I used nylon ties to secure the tank to the frame of the car, if you look there are plenty of strong places to mount the bottle in this location. The alcohol container also must remain level so that the pump is able to work correctly. Remember that once filled with alcohol the container will become relatively heavy, so be sure to secure it tightly. The container for the Buick cars does have areas where you could bolt it to a radiator support, but this was for those applications on Buicks, it would be easy though to create a custom bracket to hold the bottle on a DSM if you can find a space to put it.
After I installed the bottle, I began to mount the alcohol controller. It is an in car controller, and comes with velcro to mount it where ever you want. I decided to mount mine under the steering column where I have my turbo timer. Any location will work as long as you can run the wires to it. I ran the power cable from the bottle to the inside of the car via the steering column boot. The wires were slightly thicker then the opening, so I had to use a knife (box cutter) to open the hole slightly to fit the thick wires. Once the wires were inside the car, I attached them to the controller, there are a total of 4 wires and a vacuum line. I attached the hot wire to a 20 amp fuse used for the cigarette lighter on the fuse block inside the car. You must use a source that turns on with the car. For the ground wire I simply used a screw from the molding that was located near the controller. I put the ground wire on the inside where it would touch a ground and not on the outside where it would only touch the screw and plastic molding.
Then after those installations, I installed the sprayer nozzle on the throttle body elbow. It required me to drill with a 3/8's bit a hole into the throttle body elbow. I decided to drill and place the nozzle on the side of the tb elbow near the battery. I took the tb elbow off in order to drill, and afterwards cleaned it up very well so that no metal pieces remained. I then attached the nozzle. There is a fitting inside the elbow and a wrench must be placed on the nozzle outside the elbow and inside in order to tighten. At the time I installed a 30" long alcohol supply line that was included in the kit. Updated kits for the wrx/imports supply shorter lines, I decided to order a shorter line later down the road and received one that was around 26" long.
After I had completed all the instructions, I checked all connections and turned the car on to run a test. To test the kit you can push a button located on the controller, it activates the spray without needing boost. This manual injection should only be used to test. When this is pressed the car will stumble and the spray on light will illuminate. You can also check the pressure gauge on the tank, this will only move if the alcohol is being sprayed. After installation I took the car out for a drive. At first the spray on light would flicker, but it was not spraying because the tank pressure gauge read 0. I later found I had a loose connection which fixed this problem.
Now, to tune is pretty simple. Turn the alcohol controller to a pump speed, I chose 10 which is the max, I was trying to get as much out of my small 16g with pump gas as I could. Now, at the time I did not have the progressive controller, but as soon as it was developed I bought this from Steve. This controller and subsequent new ones regulate the amount of alcohol being sprayed. At first my car would have trouble bogging from too much alcohol being sprayed. With the progressive controller this was eliminated. I set the progressive controller to come on at low boost, this is about 7 psi, and it will steadily increase to full spray by around 15-17psi. On the newer controller you can actually pick a certain psi which you would like to have the spray come on at, and which psi you would like to have it reach full pump speed. To tune I simply set the pump to speed 10 and made a few WOT pulls in 3rd gear and looked at my logs. My O2's were very high at 19 psi which I was running with 93 octane pump gas before, so I turned the boost up a pound at a time and did a pull and log each time I increased boost. I finally settled on 21psi. My timing had increased over just using pump gas by several degrees and I was seeing my timing holding in the low 20 degree range at 21 psi with pump and alcohol, it would sometimes hit as much as 24* of timing. If you are still seeing high O2's however at your determined boost level, you can either take fuel out, or turn the pump speed down to lessen the amount of alcohol injected. SMC runs about 24 psi on their WRX with their kit and pump, Buschur has also used this kit on his Evo, and put down 400hp with it and pump gas.
As a review, I absolutely love the kit. It not only has the benefits of suppressing knock and preventing detonation, but it has been proven to help clean inside the motor i.e. valves, seals and so forth. I am able to run a good amount of boost on the street with regular pump gas. It took me a full year to work out all the bugs I was experiencing with bogging and so forth. But in 2004 when I went back to the track with my system and new progressive controller I was able to run a 12.60 on pump gas and alcohol on the small 16g. I will be able to improve that et this year when I add a bigger exhaust and so forth. I do not only use this with pump gas however, I also use it with race gas. When I run my car on 110 leaded I use the alcohol kit to cool the intake charge, as well as prevent knock and detonation.
As for the alcohol that I use, I tend to stick with what SMC recommends which is denatured alcohol. It is mixed with methanol and is very strong. I also add one ounce of Uplon to every gallon of alcohol as per the instructions, this keeps the pump lubricated. Also, it is important never to expose the pump, like running out of alcohol because it is very dangerous to the pump. During winter it is important to keep the pump lubricated so that it does not get damaged. Basically you can add more Uplon to the mix or what I chose to do is dump the alcohol out of the tank, into an empty container, and fill the tank with a gallon of wd-40. In spring, I dump the wd-40 out and refill the tank with alcohol.
Prices: the alcohol that I use is around 9 dollars a gallon at Home Depot, this is for the denatured. I also bought a quart of Uplon to lubricate, a small bottle of this does come with the kit however. As for the kit itself, the prices can vary between 399 dollars to 499 dollars depending on the options, as the progressive controller and so forth, it is also 10 dollars for shipping. Some of the kits i.e. the WRX and Buick kit now include a stealth tank that replaces the stock windshield fluid reservoir, I am not sure if a similar kit will be developed for the DSM market.
