DIY - Water Injection

[Dust]

the cheapest windshield wiper fluid is what most use. the wal-mart winter blend is supposed to be about 38-40% methanol. Burns pretty well, and with a diesel, I know that some have seen better MPG with it. Even just water bumped it up.

[dremd]

Originally Posted by tjts1

I would like to hear more about this setup. I was thinking about doing the exact same thing until someone pointed out that that fuel injectors don't last too long with water running through. Do you have pics? thanks

Sorry I have not been watching this thread.

Everything lasted until it threw a rod (about 1 year):-( (car got run without oil 3 x LONG STORY, don't ask)

I do not have pics that I know of, I can look, but it was about 5 years ago.

Injectors can be found in junk yards for nearley free, mine were fre from scrap engines, so I just didn't care if they lsted or not.

One thing i did do was NOT hook it up to my turbo timer, I didn't want to inject water just before shutdown, may want to put a switch on it for non turbo timed car.

[CobraBall]

The following is from a quote from <http://www.landracing.com/forum/index.php/topic,4138.0.html>, a land speed racing website (aka Bonneville Salt Flats).

"...what the water really does is cool the incoming charge, retard the burn rate in the combustion chamber to reduce pre-ignition, and provide an additional quantity of working gas for the engine to expand and produce pressure.* In any installation and technique listed here, we need to separate these three effects...

...Specifically, cooling the intake charge without affecting anything else has advantages and effects equivalent to running on a cooler day.* Retarding burn rate to reduce pre-ignition (as opposed to detonation) is a separate effect that requires a higher amount of water.* Reducing pre-ignition through TBC's, smoothing sharp edges, or other chamber effects has to be compared to water injection without the penalties of injection.* Last, the best use of water is to absorb excess heat where we know we simply have too much heat in the combustion chamber and need to stuff some more inert mass in there (beyond the nitrogen in the atmosphere) to absorb it and push the piston down instead of melting it."

Although it is a high speed racing site, many of the aero and engineering principles that apply racing can be applied to econ vehicles.

[Stormin' Norman]

Cobra, thanks for that info. I was cruising around for other info and found a guy who's done Water Injection successfully on a Turbo, as well as a Crankcase Ventilation mod, and some other neat stuff. If he isn't a member, he should be.

Water Injection Project

The Picture is there, large format, if you click it.

Check out his main page:
Matt Karls' Dodge Mod website

And from there check out his formulas and data table (weight/HP/MPG).

[CobraBall]

Another good source can be Google Patent Searches <http://www.google.com/patents?hl=en>

Search water injection gasoline engine

Patent searches can provide a lot of good info. ie vortex generator

[Stormin' Norman]

Never knew about that service from Google. Thanks!

[metromizer]

I built one of these (similar to the one on the Aussie site) back in 1981 after reading an article in a performance magazine. My 1930's designed carburated aircooled engine had been 'hopped up' by the previous owner to where it now had a little over 9:1 static compression. Yep, it pinged and rattled if I didn't use premium fuel. I retarded the timing, and power was noticably lower and it got a few miles/ gallon less. I guessed increase in throttle blade angle to go relatively the same cruising speed was the culprit. It seemed to run a little hotter oil temps at that timing, and didn't idel well either. Advance the timing and use premium, and all was good.

After adding the low-buck water injection, I was able to keep the advance in timing once again, but use regular fuel. The engine ran better, idled better, ran cooler, and seemed overall 'happier'. As mentioned however, there is always a downside. I ran it out of water several times, and the engine would ping <so I'd have to drive real carefully until I couldget the tank filled> Mine would go out of adjustment, too, but I never tracked down the source of that. Condensation inside the engine conserned me. This milky white sludge would collect inside the oil fill cap, and I assume elsewhere inside the engine "this can't be good" was my thought.

It was sort of a band-aid for an engine build for performance, I figured the additional oil changes, remembering to add water, fiddling with the needle valve just wasn't worth the effort. I wasn't sure if internal condensation would cause long term issues, but surmised if I drove the car daily, the condensation would just boil off as steam and go through the pcv system.

Here is the thing that most tinkerers forget when it comes to raising the compression of a normally aspirated engine: the higher the comprression ratio, the better cylinder filling you get. In fact, cylinder 'overfilling' is what you get. This is a well documented and good for a power increase. What it does for FE I don't know, and would guess it all depends on what engine we are talking about.

[CobraBall]

Good discussion about water injection on
The Mayfield Company Homepage - Automotive Analyses website.

[CobraBall]

Another excellent Website for DIY water/alcohol injection. RSR Water Injection Calculator

[RNANS]

Hello All
As far as cleaning up carbon deposits and preventing buildup, all you have to do is see a cylinder head of a car that has blown a gasket, allowing the water jacket cooling water into the cylinder...clean as a whistle, ask any mechanic!!!
Water injection itself helps by absorbing the heat in the combustion gases to turn into steam. Everyone knows that water itself has a high latent heat of evaporation...less heat thrown out into the exhaust gases and water jacket means more efficiency. Normally only about 15% of the available energy is used to drive the car, the other 85% or so goes out the exhaust or coolant.
So How does the steam help?
from data derived from WWII aircraft and literature I have read, the steam pressure
(sort of steam engine like) adds to the BMEP (brake mean effective pressure) of the exisisting , burning air fuel charge to force the piston down. The figures I have consistently found are 20-25% of the amount of fuel being used at any given moment. The anti detonant property is already well established. More water than this will not work, ie snuff out the flame front or get mixed in with the oil....one should be well aware of the dangers as someone so rightly pointed out. With regards to WWII aircraft the systems were very simple because unlike cars, these warbirds used their maximum power at a fixed WOT throttle setting in dogfights. In cars there will need to be a proper metering system to realize its full potential, as well as a cutoff during the warming up cycle. If any one would like the references please contact me
The Articles for the voltage controlled DC water pumps are definitely worth a try, but make sure the water is injected downstream of the Hot wire MAF to prevent the platinum wire in the MAF from suffering an untimely death!
Cheers