Due to the reduced combustion chamber temps, couldn't I advance ignition, and or lean the mixture to get more power?

Not saying that I would, but I was under the impression that this would be one way to increase the power along with increasing boost.

 

The mechanism around the cooler combustion chamber temperatures is the energy to turn the liquid water to steam. this is the major benefit as you state above indirectly. You get some of this from the evaporation in the intake track...but the majority of the benefit comes in the actual combustion chamber. Normally you would do this with fuel by running rich...turing the excess FUEL from liquid to vapor...but because fuel has so much lower heat of vaporization...you have to add a lot more to get the cooling effects....which obviously causes other problems. those other problems are making the mix so rich it won't burn and or by running at 10.5 or more you have a lot of unburnt fuel that will tend to burn in the turbo/exhaust raising the EGT...not to mention a less efficent burn resulting in lower HP.

remember detonation is caused by too hot of a combustion chamber prematurely igniting the combustion mix. Normal tuning helps to get rid of this by running richer which means excess fuel being turned from liquid to vapor AND of course the fact that a richer mixture is just inherently more difficult to light. Drop a cigarette in a cup of gas some time.

the volume of water injected displacing air is SO minor...I can't believe it even comes up anymore...people are thinking too hard of reasons not to install this. For example...what's a SUPER conservative CFM for the rotary at 15psi ...like 450 cfm? that's 12000 liters per minute...and a big water injector would be like .25 liters per minute(probably much smaller). So thats .0002% of the volume. Adding the alcohol is only there as a "combustion friendly" antifreeze. Pure water will give you the most cooling and most benefit...by burning the alcohol you are only wasting good oxygen that will burn better with the gas you're injecting But again...the volumes are pretty small.

Ford thought water injecton(aquamist pump) was reliable enough to put it on the escort cosworths stock.

Corky Bell's book is great(I have it and have read it numerous times), but it is about race car systems where you DON'T comprimise on things. But last time I checked...most of us are driving street cars where we comprimise all the time. I don't burn 6 dollar a gallon gas for a reason

Instal looks great. I'll be doing something similar once I get a few other projects complete. Having the system lower the boost if the water is low(or not flowing) is a great idea.

I have seen amazing steam cleaning results comparing cars that are stock...burning pump gas with EGR...vs cars running water injection burning pump gas with EGR. Signifigantly less carbon buildup.

john

 

Yes. I was just saying that "tuning lean" to compensate for WI isn't where the biggest gains can be made.

 

No disagreement here with that. Perhaps the "water displacement" phrase was a bit over the top (although what about the difference in compression characteristics between water droplets and air?). I'm just saying that if you've got WI, why not tune and take advantage of it?

All that I've seen were photos of supposed before/after internals. The disassembled engines that I examined did not display these same "amazing" results, although there was some improvement.

 

but dont you install water injection for added safety and not to steam clean your internal's?

 

Both. WI helps keep the hot spots down in lieu of running excess fuel, helps reduce carbon buildup which promotes hotspots, and helps cool intake air. All good and you get to lean out the mix. I run about 1 AFR leaner than I would without WI, can probably take it leaner but don't have the ***** with pump fuel at 19 psi.

 

haha, also, is it true that it rusts out your internals? i heard that but i didnt know if it was true or not?

 

I tried to lean out My AFR`s when I got my WI going last year and I really did not find any significant power improvement. In fact I tried to lean things out to much and had a bit of misfire so I think 10.9 is a safe spot for me. I had read that some guys will tune to 12.5 with WI and I think that is insane at high boost. WI is definately a great safe gard when you are pushing the boost up.

Good job Jesuscookies

 

First let me cover a few points:

Engine cleaning: You will not see much of a difference in racing engines. Racing engines are driven ***** out all of the time on very very high quality gasoline, which is is the perfect situation for carbon to NOT build up. Carbon builds up in engines that are driven easy and use gas under 100 octane.

Secondly, yes, water injection is ultimately an enhancer. Whatever you get with your normal tuning, water injection will make it better if you are using pump gas. The stigma of people using it in place of good tuning has earned it a bad rap.

Alchohol injection is no joke. I have seen 3 different Grand Nationals run chips designed for 117 octane gas reliably on pump 89 by using alchohol ijection. It is a total anti-detonant that simulates the effects of running race gas. I have also seen several other turbocharged cars run racing trim on pump gas just with the addition of alchohol injection. The GMC Sy/Ty guys like to run straight methanol.

Corkey Bell is an intelligent individual, but a lot of the things he says is full of ****. For example, where he states several times in his book that turbos should be installed after the catalyctic converters on custom turbo setups, and that nobody has a right to go around dirtying up our air? He defends his own products in his shaky theories a little too much. *coughNSXturbocough*

 

Niiiice car buddy

 

Best statement ever.

Looks great Jesuscookies!

 

anyone recommend any other books?

 

that wing looks way too ricer
but everything else looks nice.
good job

 

how did you install that steering wheel did you have to modify the column and how did you keep the airbag from deploying?

 

Carrol Smith
prepare to win
engineer to win
tune to win
drive to win
I think there might be another one...

if you read and follow all the advice in those books...and understand it...you could work in just about any racecar shop in the world. IMHO. there is SO much knowledge in those books you won't believe it.

john

 

you don't really think there are any water dropplets at 1600 C ...or what ever temperature combustion happens at

the majority of the cooling happens because it goes from water liquid to water gas. It takes a lot of energy to do that to water(the energy comes from the heat of combustion don't think of it as loosing hp). You've already packed everything in the combustion chamber...so "theoretically" you will end up with a SMALL amount more gas volume(the water vapor) in the chamber AFTER combustion as a result of injecting the water...but it is inert...AFTER combustion...so it isn't displacing any of the power making stuff(oxygen)

yes, you need to retune with WI to take advantage of the HP it allows(more boost, different timing). WI all by itself doesn't do anything for power. It will take whatever boost level you're running at and make it less detonation prone...

 

The corky "band-aid fix" always cracks me up. Here is a very talented tuner that goes into great length explaining and supporting many of the positions he takes in his writings and he throws out a sound-bite with no explanation or support and this is the one part of the book people remember. There are dozens of papers that were explained, supported and peer reviewed by top engineering minds that have shown completely differently. Myths and misconceptions like this are why people should not learn technical things in pop publishing books - very poor editorial integrity - they encourage sound bites rather than supported arguments pop readers get bored with that type of important stuff.

For those that have taken the time to read Corky's book and have chosen to repeat it as being steadfastly supported and backed up - at a minimum take the time to read this one page (less than 5 minutes of your time) with a truly open mind. Then reach your own independent conclusions rather than relying on someone elses.

http://waterinjection.info/documents...rinjection.htm

The reason behind this is optimum power AFR on internal combustion engines is around 12.5:1 (well at least on reciprocating engines it may be different due to different efficiencies of rotaries). http://waterinjection.info/documents...portunity2.htm Any time you are richer than optimum power AFR you are hurting performance.

In the end using overly rich gasoline settings for knock suppression is the real band-aid. Water is the better tool for suppression. It just isn't for everyone - it requires an additional system, which requires additional complexity, monitoring and maintenance. Gasoline is simplistic and mainstream and it works at suppressing knock - but from a performance perspective it works poorly at suppressing knock. Which is why every WRC team uses WI on top of their race gas to keep in that optimum AFR range. Which is also why series that once permitted WI were forced to no longer permit it because teams that didn't use WI complained it was an unfair advantage.

 

From a section in the page http://waterinjection.info/documents...rinjection.htm :

"As the water absorbs heat the droplet sizes will decrease and the surface area of the water droplets will increase. Any additional volume from this reaction will be more than made up for by the reduction of the charge temperature and its resulting increased density. Water is not displacing the volume or weight of air in the induction charge and actually working to increase the volume and weight of air that reaches the cylinder."

Alrighty then. So much for the displacement theory

Guess I will be looking into a WI setup once again, John.

 

Whew!!!!!

Thanks for the clarification Ed.

 

wow...I guess this changes things


Also where could alcohol be bought in large quantities?


edit: don't say the liquor store

 

The difference is the amount of detonation resistatnce it provides. Water is about 6 times more det resistant than gas, and Methanol is about 3 times more resistant.

I might be misquoting that info. You can find out for sure by going to http://waterinjection.info/phpBB2/

Same site different link http://www.turboice.net/

This site is a wealth of information on WI. I know there are several people on this site who are also on that forum.

I got a 5 gallon drum of methano mail ordered from.

http://highfuelsn.goemerchant7.com/i...dedDepts=81113|81050

They are very expensive, but if you can't find it elsewhere this one will do the trick.

You can also get Methanol in various amounts in windshield wiper fluid. cost is about $1 a gallon.

Also speed shops sell the stuff for about $2.50 a gallon.

Again, if you truly want to learn more about WI

check out www.turboice.net

 

Thanks for looking at it with an open mind, I know sometimes it is hard to overcome a respected, experienced and proven tuner - and I rely a lot on Corky's book. He just really let me down with only a paragraph poo pooing water injection and just dropping it. I find that even when it sounds good question everything. Research and independent conclusions reached on our own really is powerful.

Heck for way too many years I used water injection WITHOUT understanding it just blindly knowing it worked because I had seen it work. But I could never discuss why coherently (and if I tried I was generally wrong as to why it worked) - hence the research and discussions with others that resulted in the water injection information site.

Methanol is usually readily available anyplace that sells race fuel. The mail order sites are easy for the door delivery but expensive. Winter windshield washer fluid is about 48% water, 48% methanol and 4% detergent. Be careful on the detergent part - some jets, especiatlly smaller orifice ones, will get gummed up as the water and methanol evaporate from the tip. If you use the fluid, just make sure you periodically clean your jets - becomes part of the additional maintenance.

Something to keep in mind when using mehtanol is that it has a different stoich AFR. If you start working with lambda readings on your sensor instead and think in lambda it is easier. This is because most WBO2's actually read in lambda and convert to AFR based on your selected fuel. But a stoich lambda of 1.0 is 1.0 for any fuel no calibration necessary.

Another thing to keep in mind is that while lambda is not sensitive to the fuel used - it is sensitive to the partial pressure dilution of the additional present water introduced in the intake but not present in the reference atmosphere. So you sensor will read closer to stoich than the actual mixture you used.

I usually run 50/50 water/methanol for a couple reasons. Just a little bit of water is very effective and if I do pull too much gasoline in the tuning it is nice to have the methanol there to make sure all the oxygen is used up. Plus methanol has better combustion characteristics in general so it doesn't hurt anything if it replaces some of the gasoline in combustion.

BTW on the site url's turboice.net was the original name for a few reasons (turboInternalCombustionEngine and even though I am coming up on middle aged too quickly I thought it sounded kewl). When we had provider problems we picked up http://waterinjection.info since it was more applicable to the site content - turboice.net does still point there for now but it may not in the future. So in general just keep in mind www.waterinjection.info instead.

 

Jesus cookies,

what happened to yoru link??

I wanted to see your aquamist install..

 

That was my buddies web site. He must have taken the pics down.

I will see if I can a hold of the pics, and post them up for you.

 

oh, sorry..... i dont know if i have them anymore... i had to delete my whole website and start over`