Thread: Water injection

I have run water injection to quench pinging on high compression engines, not sure how much use it would be on a low comp engine. You can use a washer bottle pump with an adjustable vacuum switch and a LPG safety cut-out (or microswitch on the throttle lever) , just aim your nozzle into the intake before the throttle. Metering by fish tank bubble hose adjuster..

BTW damp air has no more free oxygen than dry air, it's all around 21%...

Nitrous Oxide would be more effective in giving That little shot of extra power.

Regards Philip A

I had water injection on a tough 302 ford V8 back in the 80's.
It was suposed to stop detonation,wasnt much good and sometimes syphoned back into the engine when not running.
In the end I turfed it and got slightly thicker head gaskets to reduce the compression.
It worked best with a 25% to 50% metho spirits mix
Andrew

Water or water/alcohol injection was popular in the early-mid 1950's in Australia. We were importing cars that needed higher octane fuel than was sold in Australia. Water injection was a method of maintaining ignition advance and thus full performance. Otherwise the new higher compression engines would have to operate with retarded timing. The use disappeared within a couple of of years of "Super" petrol becoming available.

Its other use was in high performance turbocharged aircraft engines in WW2. When a pilot pushed the throttle to Military Emergency Power, or "through the gate" as it was termed, water-methanol injection was activated. This acted as an extra intercooler (latent heat of evaporation) allowing the addition of extra fuel to the denser air charge thus more power. A tell-tale was activated under the cowling to tell the ground crew that a pilot had used emergency power. USAAF rule was that an engine used in this way had to be removed from service for teardown, inspection, and overhaul.

I had a electronic water injection unit in the 80's.and added metho some times.gave a clean cyl head.

very good in the heavy polution detuned days with my starfire commodore and 85 bluebird.allowed you to run advance in the leyland in hot weather.

my RAAF mates reversed engineered it and improved the circuits.-they also added a MSD system and mult coil.

mitubishi chain drive lancer with 4X GT40R cascade switched.
dick smith point assisted ignition modified to give 7 sparks a go------2x 80 amp alternators-one delta wound to feed the current draw and stop the engine missfiring when the 4 driving lights was turned on.

bizzar now you buy a cheep car with more high tech

I'd be tempted to try it on a Tdi that has EGT issues on hills.

I found this kit which looks like it would work great with tdi, it has a boost pressure adjusted switch that can be tuned to kick in between 0-60psi.
200 psi water alcohol methanol injection kit turbo sc | eBay

I figure I could have an enabling switch on the dash and if my EFT gauge ever beeps at me I can flip the switch to cool her down or have the EGT alarm switch it on. It would only be used on those rare occasions, not looking to dump a power boost on the old motor - purely for emergency cooling of EGT's.

Would it be best to inject before the intercooler or after?

I doubt I will end up doing this anytime soon if at all because of the multitude of other things I need to spend money on

... but given this kit would it be a bad idea to install it for emergency EGT reduction on a tdi?

Water methanol injection is very good at reducing egts and giving you an extra boost in power at high boost settings. Devilsown do a very good kit with a progressive controller to give you complete control. I have been using it on my patrol for the past 6 months. I have a 2gph nozzle pre turbo and a 3gph nozzle pre intake manifold. It is set to start injecting at 10 psi and reach 100% at 17 psi. Egts pre wm injection would peak at about 500 degrees c post turbo, now they peak at about 400, power at full injection is noticably higher. I run a 50:50mix of water and methanol for an increase in power but you could run 100% water for egt cooling only. Have a read of their website, other manufacturers include coolingmist and snow performance.

Originally Posted by Jason F

Much like when the vehicle runs better on damp days due to the cooler wetter more oxygenated air.

You're getting a little confused.
The cooler the air, the denser the air. It has no more oxygen in percentage terms but has more molecules of air (nitrogen, oxygen, argon, carbon dioxide, hydrogen, Neon, helium, krypton, xenon) per volume. You would also be using more fuel.
I have a cold air intake which supposedly gives me an extra 3kW.
In the chemical burn of the air/fuel mix, water is a waste product. If I remember the old chemistry days correctly, at standard temperature and pressure, the volume of water produced is greater than the volume of fuel used.
I think you'd get more bang for your buck if you turbocharged the thing.