Wow! I didn't even know they made a 2.0 pulley! And why did you have more timing!?

Nevertheless, what size nozzle would you recommend? And also what combo of meth/water would you use?

 

50/50 of water/meth. You can always pick up that combination at any autoparts store simply by buying the "blue water" windshield wiper fluid.

 

Seriously!? That's where you guys get your stuff from?

That's great! Here I was thinking I'd have to special order this stuff and keep it on hand....

 

They don't anymore. It was a limited run and I happened upon one by chance actually.

It was able to run more timing due to the amazing knock resistance that meth injection gives you. The ECU will keep advancing timing until it either senses knock or it reaches the peak timing it is mapped for. Since there was no knock it just kept advancing it until it reached the max it could run.

Nozzle size depends on what water/meth mix you plan to run. If you can get pure methanol for cheap (I can get it for about $2.75 here), then a 14gph works great with a progressive kit.

You will want a progressive kit to make it work, one with a failsafe is HIGHLY recommended. I use the coolingmist CMGS and it works great, nice and consistant and allows for great control over the spray.

If you use a stage 1 you will be limited to around half the nozzle size of a progressive kit. Also if you use washer fluid then you will want a smaller nozzle as well.

Basically I need more info to help you pick a nozzle or mix.

 

Incorrect. Only -40 washer fluid is 50/50. The ratios go down the high the temp rating. At -0 it is only about a 10% mix.

Also 50/50 is not the best in my experience. I have always seen the best results with pure methanol personally but mixes work good and have their place as well. Even pure water can work well.

Water provides more octane then methanol since it's octane rating is infinite. Methanol cools the IAT's faster then water and provides more fuel which means more energy is in the cylinder and can thus be extracted.

I have used everything from pure water to pure methanol and everything in between. Running the lowest temp washer fluid you can find works fine, just got to adjust the nozzle size to work with it. Too much water and you will bog the engine and reduce power.

 

I appreciate all the info.

Ideally i'd like to run pure meth. How quickly does the engine go through meth? I assume the more boost, the quicker it goes.

I want a failsafe unit FOR SURE! Can you point me in the right direction?

Really appreciate all the help.

 

Well before you settle on pure methanol find your local suppliers and check the price. Treat the methanol just like you would gas when figuring out the cost. It will improve your MPG and is fuel so treat it accordingly. I would also get it in 55 gallon drums if you want to run pure methanol, just simpler like that.

How much you use is directly related to how often you boost it.

This is the kit I recommend for a failsafe kit. Used to be cheaper but still the best bang for the buck.

https://www.coolingmist.com/pagedisp...controllerkits,

 

Yeah i'll have to check out the price and go from there.

That kit is awesome! A little on the steep side but I'm going to put it on the "want soon" list.

 

Forgot that w/m in windshield wiper fluid is about 60/40, actually you can get it around 57/43. I posted the 50/50 with the thought in my head that it's supposedly the best combination, depending on who you ask.

Bascially there are two camps when it comes to water/methanol. The first seems to think that 50/50 is the the best combo. Then you have the camp that feels that 100% methenol is the way to go.

TA, when you say that 100% provides the best results for you, how are you quantifying this? Amount of PSI and timing you're running? Dyno? Seat-of-the-pants feel? It just seems like with a 14gph nozzle you'd be running pig rich, and the O2 sensor would detect this and the ECM would start pulling fuel out. What do your LTFTs look like?

My fittings came in today, so maybe I can have this setup on my 4Runner over the 4th of July weekend. I'd like to experiment with different ratios as well.

 

Here is a good article from RB Racing, who advocate 50/50 w/m (WARNING: There's a NSFW picture down near the bottom):
http://www.rbracing-rsr.com/waterinjection.html

Good discussion on 100% methanol vs. 50/50 mix:
http://www.camaroz28.com/forums/forc...ection-491444/

 

WI might be my next mod. It has been over 100-deg lately and I feel bad feeding all that hot air to my SC and engine. I have the URD 7th injector setup and I would run water only and not rely on it as part of my tune. That said, is a simple and inexpensive kit with a single flow rate and a simple on/off pressure switch enough, or is it still recommended to go that variable rate route? I'm not looking for power, just the cooling effect and the intake tract/cylinder cleaning effect.

 

Well actually the amount of methanol in the washer fluid varies a lot more then that and is pretty easy to figure out. Here is a chart that shows you the basic relationship of temp rating to methanol mixture:



Far as what mix works best, to understand this you first have to understand the basics about how water and methanol each effect the combustion process. The rest falls right into place after that.

I did test this various ways but started all of it with running the math. My testing just confirmed the math.

So to start out with lets talk about water. When injected into the intake the first thing it does is start a phase change from liquid to gas. As we all know it takes a lot of energy to change the state of something.

The energy used is heat, the use of said heat to change the state of the water causes a drop in air temperature. This leads to a denser air charge and thus more oxygen molecules for a given volume of air (aka, the mass air flow is increased even though the CFM flow remains the same).

The water keeps the phase change going until it hits the cylinder although generally the water will not fully change state until the extreme temps inside the cylinder. So there is virtually always liquid water making it to the cylinder. This is a good thing though as it has it's own advantages.

Once inside the cylinder the temperature and pressure starts to go up drastically, this will quickly flash any remaining liquid water to gas. This process will cool the internal cylinder temperatures a lot along with cooling off any hot spots and increasing cylinder pressure to some degree.

Basically it makes the engine significantly less knock prone as it finishes its phase change.

Now we are into the combustion cycle of the engine where the other aspect of water comes into play. The fact that it has an octane rating of infinite (non-combustible). Obviously this means that a little bit of water will go a LONG way to increasing the effective octane of the fuel you are using.

This makes you significantly less likely to knock yet again. Both the phase change and the octane effects of the water are directly proportionate to the amount injected.

The downside to the very infinite octane rating and non-combustibility of water is that you are very limited in how much you can inject before you start bogging the engine and robbing power instead of adding it.

You also generally need to be able to tune the car to take advantage of pure water as the timing/AFR's will need significant adjustments to take full advantage of the water.

Lastly the biggest disadvantage to water is that it brings no energy to the table. It does on the other hand take up space that could otherwise be Fuel which does bring energy.



Now lets talk about methanol. Methanol does everything water does and a lot more. To start out with methanol atomizes much better/easier then water so from the start it has the advantage.

It also far more readily changes states from a liquid to a gas (pour some water and alcohol on the ground and watch for yourself). This means that the intake temperatures will drop much faster with methanol then with water (as I have backed up in the real world). This means a denser air change and more knock resistance.

Same goes for inside the cylinder, it changes states and cools the cylinder just like water. Although it doesn't absorb quite as much overall heat as water you can inject a LOT more methanol then water to balance this out easily. Which we will get to in a second.

Methanol has an octane rating of between 120 and 140 depending on who you ask (generally it doesn't get a consistent rating as it generally rates off the charts which stop at around 120). Methanol is used to make 4000+hp in big drag cars though so you can bet it has plenty of octane.

So while methanol doesn't have the octane rating of water it is still really stinking high. The biggest difference is that with methanol you can inject as much as you want without bogging the engine (considering you can tune for it).

Since the octane and cooling effects of both water and methanol are directly related to how much you inject this means that you can get more effective octane out of methanol.

Lastly, methanol is a fuel and as such brings energy to the table. In fact it not only brings energy but also oxygen due to the way the molecule is formed. It is released during combustion, which is why it takes 2x as much fuel to reach the same AFR on a wideband (the wideband just detects how much oxygen is left in the exhaust).

They both have their place. Water generally works better in high compression applications as the higher cylinder pressures and temperatures need the extra octane that water provides. Methanol is simpler and easier to work with as you simply inject it and then tune as if it was any other car.

Since you can inject a lot more methanol, you can match the octane from water pretty easily in most cases except you are bringing more energy/fuel to the mix instead of displacing it.

In real world experience I have seen better results with pure methanol in basically everything I have tried it in. I am sure there are some cases that water would be more effective. Or if you were stuck using a small nozzle for some reason the water will indeed add more octane for a given nozzle size.

A mix can also work really well, just takes time to dial it into exactly what your car likes.

Far as my testing of it, I did quite a bit of testing on both the 4runner and MR2. It basically just confirmed the math though. On my MR2 (2.0l 4 cylinder turbo), I was running 2000cc worth of pure methanol through it and made great power, 30whp gains at the same boost level.

Ignore dip, this was during tuning and had a rough spot.



I tried various mixes of water but power was reduced with all of them along with major bogging issues. Even cutting the nozzle sizes down to 400cc the water was still way more touchy and harder to work with and didn't provide near the power gains of pure methanol.

I noticed this same trend with my 4runner. And no it didn't run pig rich at all with the 14gph nozzle. I actually wanted a larger nozzle. Keep in mind though that I had a 2.0 pulley and headers. When I was on the 2.2 pulley it wanted a lot less methanol, think I was using a 10gph.

The meth injection only turns on under boost. So it doesn't interfere with cruise except for those few psi before it switches over to open loop. It took it about a week for the ECU to learn the meth injection and from then on out it ran great. AFR's in the ~13's under closed loop boost. Then when in open loop the AFR's would stabilize in the 12:1 area give or take half a point (stock ECU so tuning was limited to playing with the progressive meth controller).

In a nut shell, on my cars I have always noticed the best performance by injecting the most pure methanol I possibly could without the AFR's going too rich. In cases where I could tune this meant a LOT of methanol.

 

As long as you don't change the tune, you can use any kit you want. You give up a lot of performance not changing the tune though so that is where the better kits with failsafe come in.

Also the progressive kits generally allow you to run about 2x the nozzle size of a stage 1 kit without bogging, which is nice in many cases.

For you I would recommend the basic stage 1 kit from devils own. Good little kit that is perfect for getting your feet wet.

You should indeed see some noticeable gains with just washer fluid on a supercharged engine. I gained at least 30whp when going to meth injection. Dropped my 1/4 time over half a second. I did tune for mine though so your would not be so extreme but still noticeable.

 

Edit - sorry I just re-read again and you answered my question. I'm really flubbing it on this thread!

Another question - is there a good reason to get a progressive kit if you're running 100% methanol? I was looking at this: http://www.alcohol-injection.com/en/universal/305-dvc-30-stage-2a.html

I don't want to spend the extra money if it's not worth it, but happy to if it's worth it. o matter what I get I"ll do some tinkering to see what works best, but I want a good starting point.

 

A progressive kit WITH failsafe is always the better choice.

In some circumstances the extra cost is not worth it though. Such as just bolting the kit onto a car with no change to an already safe pump gas tune.

In this case it doesn't matter if the kit fails so the only thing you are getting for the extra money is the ability to run larger nozzles. This generally is not needed unless you are changing the tune to compensate, so thus you are back where you started lol.

As a safety device with perks, a stage 1 kit works fine. As a device to make more power and that will be tuned to maximize those gains, go progressive kit WITH failsafe for sure. A failsafe is a lot cheaper then a new engine.

People like to improperly use/install meth kits then blame them when they fail. Get the right tool for the job (and know how to use it) in the first place and you rarely hear about issues.

 

So I've been under the impression that the failsafe is just to prevent hydrolock from a system that doesn't shut off properly. It sounds like another function is to prevent the vehicle from running boost on a tune while the injection system is not working properly (such as putting the vehicle in "limp mode" on certain vehicles). Is that why you're recommending progressive only with failsafe?

If that's the case, could one theoretically find the meth injection system is in fault for some reason (maybe loss of power and lots of ping), and just unplug the EFI fuse to reset the computer, then just light-foot it home on factory settings? Not that it would be the most responsible thing to do, but still plausible?

Sorry if it sounds like I'm not understanding - I'm just trying to see if I understand the reasoning.

Also TA, did you run a progressive system when you were running your SC, or just straight on/off?

Thanks again for being very thorough and patient with all of us!

 

Yeah, you are misunderstanding it. The kit running with the engine off would be an install error or major failure of the kit that even a failsafe would not save. You virtually never hear of this happening though and it has always been tracable to user error when it did when I have seen it.

The failsafe is a system that detect the flow from the system and makes sure that it is flowing as it should. If it detects a disruption in flow then it will trip the failsafe putting the engine into limp/safe mode/boost cut/something to save the engine. At the very least it will flash a big bright LED to let you know to get out of it.

Without the failsafe you have no way of knowing if the meth is spraying correctly or not, so you could be boosting it thinking all is well when in reality the fitting for the nozzle is leaking really bad and not enough meth is making it into the engine.

Should the meth kit fail you can simply drive the truck easy so as to stay out of high boost and you will be fine.

I started out with an AEM kit, utter junk and acts like an on/off kit. Much harder to use and tune for. I then moved to the coolingmist and it was far better. Personally didn't have a failsafe as they were not released when I got mine but I know what I was doing and I watched the wideband to know if anything was wrong.

 

Ok that makes good sense. Coolingmist talks about their double failsafe preventing hydrolocking, but maybe that's a different scenario.

Another thing you keep mentioning is tuning. I thought you pulled all of your 7th injector piggyback stuff off and just ran normal fuel maps, allowing the ECU to adjust fuel and timing for the methanol. Maybe I've misunderstood that as well, but are you talking about tuning the ECU maps somehow like a signal calibrator (since our ECU's are not directly tune-able) or tuning the methanol injection system to get the best AFR's in open loop?

Again, thanks for your patience - still trying to wrap my head around this thing

 

Anytime I talk about tuning for methanol injection I am saying that if the meth injection was not present the tune would not be safe for pump gas alone.

In my case without the meth injection I was about 100hp+ over what the stock injectors could handle as as such would run stupid lean and knock like crazy. So while no actual "tuning" took place, the tune was changed (by removing the 7th injector) so that it was no longer safe without the meth injection.

 

TA, at what boost pressure do you start to spray?