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Why water injection is the best mod I've done in years...

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tons.

See if you are having bad knock and the injection takes care of it for you, you will be gaining nearly 20deg of timing advance. Thats HUGE!

Or if you don't have knock but are only running 14 psi and now you can take it to 18 psi and still have no knock, you will gain 4 psi boost pressure. And THATS huge too.

Even if you keep the same boost and have 0 knock before and after, having colder/denser air in your engine WILL make more power.

Plus it cleans your combustion chambers.
 
You keep boost at factory levels or just above becuse of knock. If we didnt have knock we'd all be running our turbos at whatever the max lvl was they could hold. You don't feel the boost being turned up now because knock retards timing and can make the car feel slower. Add this, log it and you should see pretty big improvements. So far not one person has said "water injection sux, it didn't help me with anything" so take our word for it. Cheap precautionary mod :)
 
Bohrn said:
tons.

See if you are having bad knock and the injection takes care of it for you, you will be gaining nearly 20deg of timing advance. Thats HUGE!

Or if you don't have knock but are only running 14 psi and now you can take it to 18 psi and still have no knock, you will gain 4 psi boost pressure. And THATS huge too.

Even if you keep the same boost and have 0 knock before and after, having colder/denser air in your engine WILL make more power.

Plus it cleans your combustion chambers.

I agree with everything you said, except for the statement that simply adding WI (keeping same timing and boost) will make more power because of colder/denser air. The dyno plots I have seen demonstrate that in this case, you see a very small drop in power. It is true that it is cooling the air by way of evaporation, but water also expands an enormous amount in volume when transitioning from liquid to vapor. I assume that this is the reason that simply adding WI costs a small amount of power, but this is just my guess. I don't think anyone can say conclusively what the specific reason is.

With that said, I still recommend WI even at stock boost & tune. Your sidemount IC will most definitely heat soak without much effort, and so WI will be helping with that minor detonation to give you back your timing. Given the fact that most folks have open element air filters sucking in extremely hot engine bay air, you have that much more heat coming into the system.

Plus, as you said, it also gives you a nice safety margin, and is an excellent deterrent of carbon buildup and grime. :)
HTH!
-Adrian
 
alot of times when people first setup thier water injection, they experience bogging and loss of power.

This can be attributed to 2 main causes. First off, they need to lean the engine out to compensate for the added fuel of the alcohol going in.

But mainly it is caused by the water either coming on too soon or the nozzle is too big.

Once you set it up properly, most people will see gains even on stock veh.
 
Bohrn said:
alot of times when people first setup thier water injection, they experience bogging and loss of power.

This can be attributed to 2 main causes. First off, they need to lean the engine out to compensate for the added fuel of the alcohol going in.

But mainly it is caused by the water either coming on too soon or the nozzle is too big.

Once you set it up properly, most people will see gains even on stock veh.
Wait, you used two different setups here, one is alcohol the other is water. I use alcohol and had bogging, it wasn't because the alcohol was making it too rich and I was using a turbo buick kit. It was because the pump would come on, hit full psi and spray way way too much alcohol at once for our type of cars (the a/f mixture would not spike though, I also tried to take fuel out and even turn pump speed on my alcohol down both did not work). The solution was simple, I bought a new controller from smcenterprises.com, it controlled the spray differently, by boost. I didn't change my nozzle. Now the spray levels are controlled by boost, at 7psi the pump comes on at a low speed increasing as boost does. By 15-17psi of boost the pump is at full speed. In my opinion this is a better setup, and controls everything nicely. With it I was able to run a 12.60 with pump gas on a small 16g.

It could have been that the alcohol was creating an effect like running too rich, but none of my monitoring tools told me this.
 
no, our O2 sensors are not made for alky :)

also the Buick one probably has a huge nozzle. That variable controller slows the pump down considerably at low speed. This gives you effectively a smaller nozzle when its on its low speed operation. This sounds like a great idea actually, I might look into this. Thanx ;)
 
Bohrn said:
no, our O2 sensors are not made for alky :)

also the Buick one probably has a huge nozzle. That variable controller slows the pump down considerably at low speed. This gives you effectively a smaller nozzle when its on its low speed operation. This sounds like a great idea actually, I might look into this. Thanx ;)
No problem. I do not have a stock o2 sensor any more also, so not sure if it would still be affected. The Buick nozzle is huge and probably too big for a dsm, as I bought this before they developed their WRX/import kit. But, the bigger nozzle is great because eventually when it does hit that full pump speed I am getting a good amount of alcohol. And the new controller has eliminated all bogging issues, I am very happy.
 
If you didn't have a variable speed controller for your WI pump, couldn't you compensate for the bogging by having the pump activate at a higher boost level, say 15PSI? You'd likely already be at WOT by then.
 
yep. The way I see it, you can do it a few ways. You could run a large nozzle and have it come on at a higher rpm. You could run a smaller nozzle and have it come on earlier. You could have 2 small nozzles come on just after bogging would happen. Or you could have a 2 stage system where one small nozzle comes on early, and a second one that comes on later on. Each car is different, so its hard to say what each one will need.

I run one smallish nozzle that comes on at a fairly low boost pressure and it appears to be quite good. I am going to put in 2 even smaller nozzles(for about 10% total more flow) and remove the single I have now. It will not be a dual stage system, just more flow without having a huge nozzle that will have less atomization.
 
Bohrn said:
no, our O2 sensors are not made for alky :)

also the Buick one probably has a huge nozzle. That variable controller slows the pump down considerably at low speed. This gives you effectively a smaller nozzle when its on its low speed operation. This sounds like a great idea actually, I might look into this. Thanx ;)

Just as a side note - O2 sensors shouldn't care about what types of fuel you're using.
They compare the density of oxygen inside the exhaust to the density of oxygen outside of the exhaust. So if you add some swiss cheese to the cylinder, and and in burning it eats up some oxygen, that should cause your A/F to increase some amount. Swiss cheese is not very flamable, so it may not be a measurable amount :)

OTOH, non-stoich O2 readings are affected significantly by changes in temperature, so who knows if that played a factor.

Pretty interesting though.

WRT controllers, the two ways I have considered are:
(1)Simply by a second pressure switch, and a solenoid. Currently I run without a solenoid, so this method would leave the low boost nozzle(s) to come on with the pump, and the high boost nozzle(s) to come on when the solenoid kicks on from the second pressure switch
(2)JoeO made a slick (and simple) little circuit for a couple of bucks, that acts like 3 pressure switches for a few bucks. It is a simple comparator circuit, running against a pressure sensor. DSMs (at least 1g, don't know about 2g) do not come with a pressure sensor, so it is not as directly simple :(

I would probably just go with the cheapo mcmaster solenoid (part 7877K55). They are only rated to 120*F, so I would not stick it in the engine bay. This is not an issue for me, since I typically want each turn-on point (i.e. low or high boost) to power at least two nozzles, so the solenoid simple turns a water circuit on or off. E.g. put the solenoid by the pump, and then the tube the solenoid supplies water to later on "T"'s out to two nozzles.

HTH!
Adrian
 
I love this! :thumb:

So many people have the same concept but executed in different ways. And the best part is we are all willing to talk about it openly.

Great stuff.
 
ahains said:
Just as a side note - O2 sensors shouldn't care about what types of fuel you're using.
Maybe they shouldn't, but they do. If you run leaded gas, you'll ruin your O2 sensor before too long. The new Denso O2 sensors are supposed to be better about this, but I haven't tried one personally yet.
 
doug said:
Maybe they shouldn't, but they do. If you run leaded gas, you'll ruin your O2 sensor before too long. The new Denso O2 sensors are supposed to be better about this, but I haven't tried one personally yet.
Actually, that isn't the case. Our stock o2 sensor is a very strong unit and can take a lot of abuse from running leaded gas, more so than my Turbo Trans Am. They will go eventually but not as soon as your post seems to say.
 
Has any one considered using a fuel pump and fuel injectors to inject water/alcohol instead of some of these aftermarket kits ? I was thinking i could do this using my Aem Ems to have the water inject under boost . This way i could have the perfect amount injected at all times . I am also going to try this without a intercooler . can anyone think of any downfalls to doing this ? The only one i can think of is corrosion in the pump/injectors cause of using the water instead of gas. I am not sure if the injectors are made from stainless steel inside or not ? anyone have any insight .....
 
fuel pump won't cut it. Local guy tried and the insides of the pump rusted to shit.

As for fuel injectors, they would require a much fancier setup. Water injectors only require a drill/tap of the intercooler piping and run the water line. Thats it. Fuel injectors require a rail and machined holes on both ends, supply and return and electrical.
 
I already have a custom made fuel rail set up that would work great ..... do you know what brand fuel pump was used ....
 
trick engine said:
Has any one considered using a fuel pump and fuel injectors to inject water/alcohol instead of some of these aftermarket kits ? I was thinking i could do this using my Aem Ems to have the water inject under boost . This way i could have the perfect amount injected at all times . I am also going to try this without a intercooler . can anyone think of any downfalls to doing this ? The only one i can think of is corrosion in the pump/injectors cause of using the water instead of gas. I am not sure if the injectors are made from stainless steel inside or not ? anyone have any insight .....
If you already have an intercooler, it would be alot safer to use the w/i to implement the intercooler, at least if an injector clogged, you would still have the intercooler to cool the charge air some. If you only run w/i, you have to totally depend on it to protect from detonation.
 
My car is set up to run a air to water intercooler with a turbonetics t66 ball bearing turbo but before i go and spend 1k on the intercooler . i would like to see what water injection could do for me .
 
what would save your engine if you're at WOT and the WI pump faulters. are there any saftey measures that can be taken for this type of scenario.
 
I am running the aem ems which could be set to lower boost, pull timing,add more fuel, etc if the water injection failed.
 
Hail the mighty AEM EMS, but what about the guys that have been posting here without the AEM who are running these WI kits?
 
heavypedalmuzic said:
Hail the mighty AEM EMS, but what about the guys that have been posting here without the AEM who are running these WI kits?

The stock ECU is fully capable of pulling timing. Water Injection stops > knock starts > knock sensor tells ECU > ECU pulls timing - all within a split second. Most of these WI setups are simply adding a margin of safety, so if it fails (or your water tank runs dry) it isn't like it is going to cause instant engine failure.

I don't know about running a WI system without an intercooler at all though, that seems more risky. I don't think most aftermarket WI systems are designed to replace an intercooler, but rather to enhance it. The stock ECU would still try to pull timing even in this scenario.

There are electronic safeguards available for those who worry about such matters. There are sensors that detect pressure loss and can trigger other systems for a controlled shutdown.

For most people out there, a standard setup with the stock ECU will work great with no additional safeguards needed.

And for anybody out there who has raised boost but hasn't installed a water injection system yet ... why not? It should be your next mod! I would put this mod on my top 3 bang-for-the-buck mods list!

1) Exhaust
2) Boost Controller
3) Water Injection

You're looking at a low 14 second car EASY with those 3 mods on an otherwise stock car with stock side mount. THEN start doing all the other mods. In fact, you could even do water injection FIRST and see more consistent power (less timing pull) on a completely stock car. It really works!

Jonathan
 
The problem arises when you start runing straight methonal and realying on it for 20% or more of you fuel.
 
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