Quote:
Originally Posted by 101Volts
Funkhoss, here's an idea.
[...Water/Methanol Injection...]
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Interesting idea. I wasn't very familiar with this, so I did some reading about it.
It seems that it's most useful for turbo/boosted applications, to reduce combustion temperature--allowing for more ignition timing and/or boost (and thus, more power). I'm not sure how much benefit it would have for my (naturally aspirated) application, though. At any rate, it's pretty expensive and somewhat toxic/dangerous. And...if anything, I wish sometimes that the wagon had less power, not more...
I'm not likely to do any other major mods to this wagon, except maybe (bio)diesel conversion, if/when the 350 needs a rebuild. Given how many miles we put on this car each year, and how reliable these engines tend to be...that might be a few decades from now.
If I suddenly had a few thousand bucks to throw at it, what I'd probably explore is either a manually operated hydraulic hybrid system or a hybrid system that uses large super-capacitors. If I could recapture and use most of the energy wasted during braking in this car, the average summer MPG would probably go from low 40's to low 50's. The car is so heavy, and it takes so much energy to get it moving, that any amount of braking wastes a significant amount of fuel. Even though I already minimize braking as much as I can, recapturing the rest would still offer a substantial improvement.
-Funkhoss