Steve, your $.02, as always, is worth more than you know. Thanks for posting.

 

Nope...But it sure feels quicker...and I can't prove it because I can't afford to spend my Mini time/cash at the dyno...Life's too short...I rather yell "Hoooo YEAH!!!!" on the road

 

Just to answer the A/F ration thing - yes it does! It makes it richer.

I ran solid 12.6 at wot from 4500-7200, now with the meth it is 11.9.

 

All,

Had missed this thread and coming on a little late in it's evolution.

I too have been running my homemade WI system for two years now. I use a 120 PSI water pump mounted in the boot pushing tap water into a Cooling Mist injector nozzle with a electric solenoid valve. Set my system to inject at 7 PSI boost. Ran an "A" vs "B" comparison on the dyno with the injector nozzle positioned before the IC and after the IC. With the injector before the IC there is about 10 HP gain in power at peak RPM's and with the injector after the IC, there was no discernable power gain.

I am happy with my WI system because I detect less pinging on hot days under heavy load, and because of the dyno results. Wouldn't be without it for my heavy track usage pattern.

John Petrich in Seattle

 

John,

Do you have a Cabrio or did you add those supports in

 

Hi John...you're the guy who started me on my setup...maybe I should keep my pre IC injector on all the time

 

CHAMP style only in the smaller cans.

There you go. You are 1 of the bigger wide band suporters & here is another good reason to have 1. There is more power to be had if the AF looks that much richer. The EGT is lower so there's more headroom to make MORE POWER.

Petrich 10 hp on tap water is a big gain. I like the use of a high presure pump. What are you using for a regulator? Holley make an adjustable reg & a high presure pump for fuel which work well for this application.

With WI there is a dynamic that needs to be explained in depth to be fully optimized. Burning water is not new, it still works & has gotten better but it's still not a practice that has gained wide use. The limit of how much water mix you can have on board for most is the deal breaker. With NOS it's not such a big deal you only need as much as you have bottle. With an SC car you run out too fast.
Here's a mouth full, I don't think you need as much as you think you need, true or false?

 

Partsman,
Abosolutely it changes the AFR. For 2 main reasons. Water doesn't burn, and it takes the place of some air, so it does create a rich reading. Normally we see about .3-.5AFR change to the rich side. Add meth and it gets more and more rich. As a rule of thumb, if your car is making 200WHP, you turn the water on, and you will loose 10WHP or so. But also the AFR will richen .5-1AFR depending on the % of water/meth to fuel.

The saftey to WI is relative to what you are doing. The cars in stock form, or even 15% are very safe. This is such a safe setup, that you should never worry about blowing up the motor. So WI would add saftey, but it would be a waste if you are not going to tune for it. You would just be loosing some (but John P has some data to disprove this) power for no reason.

Now there is the possibility that you will gain power due to there being less engine noise (knock), and the ECU adding some timing back in. But i don't think it will offset the power quite that much. But you will see something in the next week or so proving or disproving this.

How much meth you asked?? 100% is perfectly fine! But when you use 100% meth, a tune is 100% necessary! Because of the huge AFR changes seen with adding Meth (fuel) a retune is necessary to reap the full benifits.

I never said V8 guys make big power , but they just use it with their SC kits. The 2 best cars to look at for what to expect are Subarus and EVOs. WI is very welll proven on these cars, and many many tests have been done. I can post up one of our recent WI tests on an STI. A full tuned STI, on 92, then WI on, then tune only fuel, then add boost, it is very good. Like i said this same type of test will happen with the a 15% mini very soon.

John P,
Good to hear from you again! Your findings on the nozzle placment are interesting. Just like we have found with other cars with crappy IC's is before the IC is best. Since you used 100% water, this might be why you saw a gain. The water makes the charge temps cooler, and the ait temp sensor sees this and adds timing back in. Also it helps with knock.

But to prove it, a retune would need to done on both nozzle placments, with both mixtures. But from my experience, water only works so well. Then the meth mixture comes into play, but the more meth the more tuning is needed. Either way, your early findings do show that the ECU is always pulling timing.

stevecars60,
You bring up a good point about the IC. TMIC, or WI?? As a bolt on, TMIC will win since WI will loose power. Well normally! But i think that in the next few months somethings will change and people will see the light with WI. Of course both serve their purposes. A free flowing IC, and WI is a potent combo!

You also bring up a good point about WB's. This is a very important tool to have to tune the car. And in the Mini world, real "tuning" doesn't really happen. That will be changing soon.

 

Hi all my friends,

Glad to be back. It's been a long Winter. Getting ready for Y2007 track season. Here are my responses to the posts so far:

I neglected to clarify in my earlier post that my WI system is designed to improve HP and engine reliability by charge cooling and charge cooling only. There are other methods of "WI" that improve HP e.g. water plus Methanol injection. Water most effectively cools the charge by being boiled, going from the liquid to gaseous state. This process consumes considerable heat energy and cools the air / fuel column. The keys to successfully vaporizing the injected water are: 1) atomize the water with a small nozzle and as high a pressure pump as you can get (no windshield sprayer pumps),and maybe a little Water Wetter, and 2) inject the atomized water into the hottest and highest flow portion of the air / fuel column as you can.

In my system, I found that by injecting directly into the SC outlet, up stream from the IC, resulted in measurable HP gains. Injecting post IC resulted in no HP gains. I think that the post IC injection site just wasn't hot enough to efficiently vaporize the water and little charge cooling actually occured.

Don't have a water pressure regulator for this system. The goal of the system is charge cooling, not injecting fuel, e.g. Methanol, and precise fluid metering is not important.

The engine management system is not tuned to capitalize on the improved charge cooling, and there are gains to be had here. I adjusted the IAT input voltage by replacing the thermister with a variable resistor. On the dyno, found 5 more HP, for example. Returned the IAT to "stock" configuration for track use, but this underscores the gains that can be found from custom tuning with WI.

And, the black strut tower braces are an add on, part of the campaign to try and improve chassis rigidity whenever possible.

Regards,
John Petrich in Seattle

 

"TMIC will win since WI will loose power. Well normally! But i think that in the next few months somethings will change and people will see the light with WI. Of course both serve their purposes. A free flowing IC, and WI is a potent combo!"
No argument there. In a bigger picture WI, with the right size tank, presure & injector placement, you could be looking at filling the WI tank as often as filling the gas ( or close to ).
The perseption is you need more injection for best results, at least from what I see for most applications around here. Your point, bigger IC, is an important part of this sceinario. If you can cool the mass quickly the larger cooling area will sustain a lower overall temp for a longer period of time. You would need to look at average percentages over different driving conditions to determin how much the WI would be needed ( the how much - how big - how often ). This could be done.

The real tuning part is interesting. When someone can segragate the management from the rest of the functions the Mini ECU has, real world tuning will be a reality. Peferect Power looks to be a player soon if not already. The new "Q" Unichip has some potential. As good as what's available today it still apears that you need to re-map with JCW, MTH, GIAC, EVO and the like before adding the piggy ( I could be way , way, off here, so take this last statment as just a point of view ). Ultimately, IMHO, it will be a piggy that ends up with the permanint job.

A good wide band is 1 bad *** tool. TampaMCS wrote a post a while back that hit the nail on the head ( i can't ever find anything when i want it ). The only thing a WB won't help with is oil presure other than that it's the swiss army knife on the dash.

We're throwing a first of the season blizzard today, you're all invited
.

 

Is no one here concerned about the adverse effects of corrosion?

"Reports of more rapid corrosion of the steel and cast iron components of engines to which water injection has been added suggest that more frequent oil changes, particularly when the engine does not experience sustained high temperature operation to evaporate any water from the oil, are prudent."

Link

 

Sure, I am concerned, but then again, I change my oil every 3K and after every track event.

I'd rather worry about corrosion then seeing the a/f ratios sit about 12.5 WOT on track days.

 

I forgot to mention...I add Klotz upper cylinder lube additive to my solution and my oil is changed every 3k+-

Compatible with methanol...

 

"tap water", yikes, wouldn't your nozel and intake tract experience mineral/calcium build up over time?

Distilled water seams a necessity.

 

I am running WI with parts from Coolingmist and Devil's Own. Rigth now it is being injected into the output horn with the injector pointed almost straight upflow into the IC. I will post pics tonight. I think I will try changing it to the output of the IC. I am getting a new head next week and will have it apart so I can have a fitting made and welded in. ANd then I can try switching back and forth see where I get better results.

 

How much lube do you add to your water/meth solution?

 

Not for me. I'm use to running straight meth as a fuel. The volume that would be used for this application is quite small. It's very true meth is one of the most corrosive fuels. More oil changes are necessary. There are additives, castor oil for 1, that will help ( also has a gear head tell in the exhaust aroma ). A tablespoon per gallon for 40 mix should be enough. When the mix is 70 - 90 then you will run into some bigger issues. We would run a pint per gallon 100% meth & change oil every 5 or 6 race hours ( or as often as possible - time permiting ), small engines as often as every heat, run gas in the engine to flush any meth residue.

Your concern is well taken. IMHO people think they need more injected mix than is necessary. For some applications more is better but for a DD.... don't know. It's cold here now, come spring I think I'll go WI with a high presure mist low volume similar to what I run with NOS, might be a water only after reading the John Petrich post. Or not......

 

Where is one finding this additive? Are you adding it to the oil or to the water/meth?

I run a little less than 60/40 water/meth. In the summer I plan on doing some experimentation on plain water vs. a mix.

At the track next week, I will be pouring a gallon of ice cold distilled water / meth mix in

 

Good stuff & no residue. Their whole product line is quite good, we have used this product along with their 2 cycle mix in our pipe & shifter karts.

 

Klotz? most motorcycle dealers cary it & add it to the water meth mix.

 

I found them online, I ordered some

 

I don't remember exactly but I think it's something like a couple of ounces to each gallon...I'll have to check the bottle.

I mix it into the water/meth solution...this also helps lube the pump's seals (and solenoids if you have them)

Where do you get your meth from? I'm thinking of mixing my own...might be cheaper than Snowperformance Boost Juice...

 

Me to until last week. I have added things and never cared to take it to the dyno. I felt like I was making improvements but I never really knew. I just drove it and had fun.

While out of the country last week a "friend" put my car on a Dyno Dynamics dyno and it pulled 193.5. I was real happy. For what I've done the numbers were good. That with a stock ECU.

My car pings at times and thats why I'm looking at WI. My friend is going to add allot more HP and I'm thinking the WI will help with what we are doing. We are going to dyno the car along our project path. I guess you hit a point where you want to know if your investment is paying off. Or maybe you don't?

Either way this thread is great. Lots of good people sharing knowledge in a constructive manner. Imagine that! We even have a vendor adding his knowledge and helping out the home brew guys along the way.

Amazing.

Longboard

 

Yup this is a fun thread, even productive...

FYI Sid is pretty right on the oil mix. A tablespoon per gal is what I ran at about 40 - 50 in a 2 gallon mix. Try some Castor oil if you want the race car smell. You can get it at Costco... Gotta love that smell......

For a quick meth supply go to a propane dealer. They use it to keep their tanks dry. And yes mix your own. Why not???? Get what you want, there aint no rules for the stuff....

 

Propane dealer? I'll ask...but hope they don't laugh me out of there