a turbo without an intercooler?

[mntalon_05]

I've seen the possibilities of water injection first hand. A guy in the local corvette club has a z-06 with a vortech supercharger. we were talkin one day and when I asked him what he was runnin to cool his intake charge he said 50/50 water alky mix. that's on a bone stock motor runnin 11psi. now lets think about that a second, 11 psi cooled soley by water/alky injection on a car with 10.9:1 compression on 92 octane fuel with a bottle of octane booster at every fillup. I don't know what he uses for datalogging, but he said on his logs he has between 0 and 5 counts of knock on a warm summer day and his injection setup is boost sensitive. more boost, more water/alky. I'll see if I can get ahold of him at his shop tonight and ask for the brand of his setup, cuz I remember him sayin he bought it all in a kit.

 

[eclipsh]

I think this thread may have saved me the expense of buying an FMIC...

 

[dsm-onster]

see that makes me want to do it even more, i do not know about you guys but how worth while is a stock sidemount anyway.

Any intercooler is better than none even if you have water injection. Inject after the intercooler. Let the intercooler do its work. Then let the water cool the air even further. . . .BUT! the 1G intercooler does not flow very well. So if you reall start to push numbers (with a bigger turbo), you will find it to be a flow restriction.

the other thing i was wondering is were i would put the maft. i like it in blow thru because you get a more accurate air count right before it goes into the throttlebody, but if i were to run it in the pipe ( cant say upper pipe because there would only be one) it might heat the maf too much as the air has not been cooled yet. do you think the maf can handle really high heat? another thing is the maf takes up room were the injector can be placed right after the turbo, i would have to relocate the injectors higher in the piping. the easiest way would be to run the maft in the draw through position, dont you think?

Put the MAFT before the WI nozzle. The H2O will fool the sensor and report more mass air than there really is. AND gm mafs don't take well the water.

this could mean you could run a bigger turbo with a lot faster spool, and more useable powerband. how much faster do you guys think this would make spool up, i know making the piping shorter on my 14b with the frontmount made the turbo spool much faster.

Much faster. With my 16G: I know that when i installed my maft in blow through it increased the spool up significantly; AND when i dropped my stock sidemount and went to a higher flowing frontmount, i got another increase in spool up. having no restriction there at all except a maft will surely increase the spool up of any turbo.

 

[dsm-onster]

I think this thread may have saved me the expense of buying an FMIC...

This is what i've been preaching for years... Why buy a FMIC for twice as much, or try to engineer a budget front mount for the same price. when you can just add WI. As long as you don't outflow your stock sidemount. If you do? get a really big nozzle and drop it before going to a front mount .

EDIT: Besides, to upgrade your WI for a higher flowing turbo just get a bigger nozzle for $10US. You don't have to "buy big; buy once".

 

[91-gsx]

Much faster. With my 16G: I know that when i installed my maft in blow through it increased the spool up significantly; AND when i dropped my stock sidemount and went to a higher flowing frontmount, i got another increase in spool up. having no restriction there at all except a maft will surely increase the spool up of any turbo.

same here, i do not have lag problems, but i know when you get into 60-1 or bigger turbos there is a spool problem for daily drivers, i bet this would make you spool much faster, and without the added pressure drop you could run lets say 16psi non-intercooled on a 50trim without the water kicking in until about 8psi with one nozzle and then you have the other kick in at 16psi, that way you do not get that bog effect. take a look here, i have not heard of this site before, but i found that they sell the really big nozzles for the added amounts of alcohol that you can run http://www.devilsownonline.com/cart/ . they are charging the same amount and they have a boost switch that just clicks onto the boost that you want, unlike the other ones that you have set the boost by using a mitty-vac, and it looks more durable. they have really big injectors for $5!!! those are the injectors i wanted to run the methanol on, damn it i am starting to want methanol again but it would cost way to much to keep running it. another upside to there boost switch is that it goes up to 30psi, as opposed to 25psi, for those of us that run more this is good. they do have a progressive controller, but they are for 2-bar and 3-bar map sensors, are the maf's that we use off of the GM cars 2 or 3 bar?
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[Bestwestranger]

The only problem I can see would be running out of water! That, and I can't seem to find the good washer fluid around here. I keep seeing the environmentaly freindly crap. However, a trip to Ace Hardware scored me some denatured alcohol.

 

[aero_sallee]

another upside to there boost switch is that it goes up to 30psi, as opposed to 25psi, for those of us that run more this is good. they do have a progressive controller, but they are for 2-bar and 3-bar map sensors, are the maf's that we use off of the GM cars 2 or 3 bar?
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The MAF that we use has nothing to do with a MAP sensor. MAF does not read pressure, only mass flow. If the kit doesn't have a MAP sensor with it, then you will have to add one.

 

[kicker91laser]

I think that you would be better of going with a drawthrough maft setup.

 

[polarmoment]

I think this thread may have saved me the expense of buying an FMIC...

any setup will make more power with a better intercooler, regardless of whether WI is involved or not.

he merely asked if he could run above stock boost with WI only. the answer is yes. it'll probably even work pretty well- easily better than with a stock sidemount alone, but the OPTIMAL setup would also include an intercooler.

 

[GSX_RCR]

I wouldn't run a 14b without any sort of intercooler. Not even 6psi or so. I can't imagine what the intake temps are before the WI kicks in? And remember, heat = knock. Knock = pulled timing. Pulled timing = runs like crap. Even if the WI was set to spray at a certain temperature/boost pressure, you'll need to keep a huge reservoir on hand just to keep up with the demands of daily driving, unless you like filling up every other day?

My point is: A FMIC is a big investment, yes. But after that, you're done! No refilling the reservoir. No running out of cooling capacity "when you need it". Imagine cruising and a car pulls up at a light. You check your water tank and it's empty, now you only have 5-6psi to play with, if that. Also, what if the pump fails or the nozzles get clogged? There's just more things that can go wrong.

Keep it simple and stick with the tried and true path. There are plenty of "inexpensive" FMIC kits out there now, otherwise comb the classifieds. I built my entire FMIC setup for less than $400, using a Spearco core. Took me 2 months of waiting and finding the right deal, but it's worth it.

 

[91-gsx]

any setup will make more power with a better intercooler, regardless of whether WI is involved or not.

after reading on the forums and talking to the people at coolingmist, they said that WI is always going to cool better than any intercooler. the way i see it is if you could remove the restrcitive fmic, even though they are designed with the least restriction possible, they are still a pretty big restriction. and you could also remove the long piping and less chance of boost leaks, and you can have a very quick spooling turbo due to the lack of area to fill, and with that you can run a really big turbo.

I wouldn't run a 14b without any sort of intercooler. Not even 6psi or so. I can't imagine what the intake temps are before the WI kicks in? And remember, heat = knock. Knock = pulled timing. Pulled timing = runs like crap. Even if the WI was set to spray at a certain temperature/boost pressure, you'll need to keep a huge reservoir on hand just to keep up with the demands of daily driving, unless you like filling up every other day?

if you start spraying at 6psi, you will not heat soak the piping at all, at that boost level there very little heat generated, there are cars running way more boost with smaller turbos and no intercoolers. example: the colt mentioned in this thread earlier, 12 psi with a smaller turbo and just a tube going from the turbo to the throttle body. and you actually do not need much water to cool the boost down at anything under 15-18psi on an efficient turbo like the 14b. once you go out of that efficiency range you can get a second injector to help the first one out and crank up the boost. now i believe 15-18psi is more then enough for daily driving demands. actually 6psi, which could be were you want the kit to first kick in, is more then enough for acceration, well atleast for me. even if you fill up every week or so, its free, as long as you put an inline filter, you can run tap water. a lot of people do this, if you dont want to do this the go pick up a gallon of distilled water for $0.50-$1.00.

My point is: A FMIC is a big investment, yes. But after that, you're done! No refilling the reservoir. No running out of cooling capacity "when you need it". Imagine cruising and a car pulls up at a light. You check your water tank and it's empty, now you only have 5-6psi to play with, if that. Also, what if the pump fails or the nozzles get clogged? There's just more things that can go wrong.

you are right with the fact that there are more things that could go wrong, but for the majority things do not. and plus, you can pay more and get the clogged nozzle detectors, ss lines for less wear, and an indicator for the reservoir to tell if you are out of water. it can be done, and for less then a fmic. hey i like fmic because they are tried and have proved themselves, but if we all stuck to that way of thought then water injection, fmic's, and turbos in general would never have been made because n/a engines were tried and proven right? i have a spearco fmic, and for the whole hing piping and all i paid about $150 because somebody was selling this intercooler for $80 but it now on ebay one night. so i am not trying to save money, i am into trying new things, and if they work then great, but if they dont, it wont stop me from having another idea.
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