Sure, but meth has benefits water doesn't. And water has benefits meth doesn't.

It depends if you want it for charge cooling, added octane, supplemental fuel, or cylinder cooling.

Water won't ever get your charge temps down to 150* like methanol can... So by injecting pre-turbo with 100% meth you can see huge gains. The early methanol turbo F1 guys sprayed 50% of the total fueling through the turbo for this reason. If they injected all the fuel post turbo, they were way down on power. It up's the efficiency of the turbo by cooling the charge a ton. Post turbo it can do this as well, but with less dramatic gains.

Water isn't going to cool the charge down below its flash point, and its not a fuel. So its not practical to run 500lbs+ an hour of water through an engine. Sure it pulls more heat at like volumes, but how much can you spray before your ignition craps out. I had trouble with ignition even at 7-8 gph of straight water. Yet I've run 35gph or so of straight methanol with no trouble, and that's nothing compared to what some have run.

My gripe is hearing all these guys thinking they drop 300* off their charge temps spraying diddly for volume because their water/meth soaked sensor tells them so. There's a formula for calculating the temperature from at a given volume of air VS a given volume of methanol. Most of these kits are spraying a 10th (or less) of what is needed to see the claimed charge temps.

I'm not stuck on charge temps at all. I think most of the benefit in simple small volume kits is in the knock suppression from the fluid pulling heat in the cylinder. Which is great, and usually all I do these days.

But if you are looking for a performance bump (charge cooling) at your current boost level...(similar to the Holdner tests) 100% methanol is a better choice IMO. Wish I had the time to pump 500lb an hour through the turbos and see what it was really capable of on a simple non-intercooled SBE build.

 

I completely agree that using a soaked IAT is basically useless....but it does make a good failsafe in a stock ECU to pull timing should your WMI kit fail. I remember a post recently by @AwesomeAuto about how the water in WMI saved his motor from a massive overboost, while the octane boost from the meth content did jack.

 

Thank you forced fed , those will work perfect , now I have to figure out a way to get them shipped to Canada .
Lots of good info in this thread . Currently I'm running a single nozzle in the charge pipe before the throttle body . Don't remember the size of the nozzle but it was specced for about 700hp by aquamist when I bought the kit .
I see some knock right when the turbo hits full boost around 3500 rpms or so and usually it's when I get into boost the first time after I have warmed up the engine after its sat for a while . Once its heat soaked after couple of runs the knock is gone .
I got rid if the knock by softening the timing around the area. Which leads me to believe it has to do water meth not being able to mix properly with charge air while everything is still a little cold probably leading to poor distribution. Hence why I'm looking into port injection .

 

I'd be pretty unhappy if my charge temps were 150degF in the first place, unless it was a very very warm climate.

 

That just highlights the fact using only water needs more precise tuning all round. And that just adding additional fuel...ie methanol is largely idiot proof. Anyone can just dump a load in and it will work.
But that does go back to Chris's question about distribution. Dumping a shitload of methanol in to spurious intake designs never intended for wet flow....should be monitored.
It would be good to see some proper testing on this either with 8 thermocouples, but preferably 8 lambdas.


But then at which point is it no longer "methanol injection"....and has become methanol fueled, with pump fuel injection lol ?

Dumping in more methanol than fuel...is kind of defeating the purpose of methanol injection which in many respects is an easy performance gain, without requiring vast quantities.

And with water injection, it's seeing abilities to create safe gains, and that you can refuel anywhere, any time. That is less easy with 100% methanol as most people do not carry methanol about with them

A bit like A2W using only ice boxes. Great for a track where ice is available....not so great for much else.

 

When is your setup triggered? May try triggering it earlier at smaller volumes? 3500 is pretty low RPM. Lots of load in that area. I can see if boost is coming strong there it will spike the cylinder pressure. Id limit boost/timing in that area as you've said. I don't lean on my turbo car w/ boost or timings till after 5k or so RPM wise. Might also look into spraying a small amount pre-turbo. For the cost of a "T fitting and nozzle its worth it IMO. I ran 2gph nozzles pre-turbo on my intercooled setup. I never saw puddling in the IC or had any issues with that amount @ 50/50.


150* is pretty tame for a methanol or E85 based fuels. If spraying pre-turbo with methanol, you want to keep the charge temps at 150+ to stop it from condensing before it enters the cylinder. Not having to deal with the hassle of intercooling is a bonus IMO. No pressure drop across the core, less weight, less cold side volume, etc... I'd argue huge amounts of methanol pre-turbo is at least on PAR with the typical A2A unit once all is factored in. But not practical, as you say.

My typical A2A LS charge temps where around mid to low 140s at 20-24lbs w/ the big 1200hp Treadstone unit. Pretty on par with the other A2A cars I've tuned. So If I had to sacrifice 10-20* of charge cooling for a giant bump in turbo efficiency, 30+lbs of weight, no pressure drop, and faster response? It doesn't seem like a bad deal. If only it didn't have several drawbacks as well.

The big issue IMO, and the reason we don't see cars running half their fuel through the turbo, is safety. You'd need/want a burst panel style intake, or some way to vent pressure in the event of a backfire though the intake. Kevin Jewer pushed this theory past anyone I'm aware of (personally anyway) Running 60bs of boost and injecting 105 GPH of methanol pre-turbo. To be able to cool 500-600*+ charge temps to around 150* without an IC is impressive IMO. That setup ran great, until a back fire caused the charge piping full of methanol to explode like a bomb. That's what stops me from doing it anyway. And even If I were to do it... There would still be benefits to injection small amounts of water on top of it all.

I think the methanol VS water debate is 2 different subjects all together as you say. The subjects are lumped together because typical kits are doing both with a 50/50 mixture. I Agree 100% water volume should be calculated and injected in as fine of a mist as possible and at the runner if possible. It is less likely to be distributed evenly as you say. My point was, if your intake charge is above 150* "wet flow" isn't as much of an issue with methanol. And if your above 212* its not an issue with water either. The question then becomes... What is considered high charge temp wise for the fuel you run? And can you reach your power goal without detonation at those higher temps.?

My twin 64mm 5.3 has no IC. I see 225*ish at 12lbs. 250*+ (sensor max) at 19lbs. (that's with the water spraying at the turbo inlets) IAT sensor is recessed in the intake behind the TB. While I know this charge temp. isn't ideal... I am confident my 10gph of 50/50 sprayed at the inlet of each turbo is likely not very "wet". I'm assuming even the water is mostly vaporized at this point and my IAT sensor readings are fairly accurate. Also guessing (by plug readings mainly) that distribution isn't horrible (TBSS intake). I run e60 fuel and don't appear to have any detonation or other issues at these charge temps.

It takes a lot of will power not to simply bump up to 40+gph of straight methanol pre-turbo and see what kind of gains could be had!

 

this is your IAT temps?! I always though past 130 was no good. When I spray my M1 it drops to 60s super quick. However I spray close to TB. Not into turbo itself. I have dual IC for my setup to but never really thought they made difference. Apparently I was way wrong lol.

 

Yes, ethanol blends are great stuff! The old SBE 5.3 record holder ran 30+lbs on twin S366's and no IC on straight E85. No water/meth either. His IAT was maxed at 255+ before the 1/8th. He actually went faster removing the cheap china IC everyone is so fond of. It just depends how knock resistant your fuel is, how the engine is tuned, and how efficient your turbo setup is.

Trust me... When you spray your M1 the charge temps are no where near that low! What you are doing is spraying fluid all over the temp probe which spits out false overly cool data. You are constantly pulling heat from a stationary small surface area (IAT PROBE) The air entering your engine is enough to fill up a large room several times over on a 1/4 mile pass. Its would be like fogging 10gph of methanol into your living room for a few seconds and expecting it to change the temperature of the room. It ain't happening! The volume of air to fluid is way too large. The air ingested at the turbo is also out the tail pipes in less than a second. So there's not a lot of time for the fluid to pull heat out of the air. Where as your charge pipes, intake, and sensor are constantly exposed to the fluid and pull heat over time with a compounding effect.

You need a TON of methanol to cool air charge temps any worthwhile amount. (much more than any typical kit sprays) Even then you won't get the charge temps down much past the boiling point of the fluid. Which is about 150* with meth. Again the big benefit isn't the charge cooling on typical kits. Its the ability to pull heat form the CC and add octane. As mentioned, methanol is just less finicky at large volumes and won't blow out spark. And if your intake temps are down in the 130* range its not enough to flash the methanol into a gas. So you have the wet distribution thing to deal with. Where as in my example with NO IC... there is likely no fluid hitting the IAT sensor so we can see what the actual air charge temps are. Or at least close to it.

If you do the math with 100* inlet temps my charge temps will be bout 250* at 12lbs. 314* at 19lbs.

So the amount of fluid I'm injecting as 12lbs is dropping about 25* off the charge temps. Which falls inline with the math. Since the GM sensors aren't accurate after 250ish I really have no idea what the drop is at 19lbs.

Also if you know how much power you make and convert that to lbs/min, you can calculate the amount of straight methanol needed to drop X amount of charge temperature. At 1000hp (100lbs/min) 8gph will drop the charge temp 15*. At 500HP that same 8gph will drop temps 30*, or until you reach around the 150* boiling point.

This isn't really my information. This is almost all data from Kevin Jewer. He spent months and months collecting data... testing on dynos etc. WB02 on each cylinder, EGT on each cylinder etc... Even had a MAF sensor hooked up and monitored on the dyno. Very thorough testing...

 

I was planning on running no IC'er and 93, with meth, and an LS6 intake-but Stevieturbo brought up something I did not think about, spraying a liquid in a chamber meant for air. Distribution prob would be a problem. I dont have the room in front for an IC'er, but maybe make up an A/W system. No E85 in the area.

 

Charge temps with out an IC are generally enough to turn even water into a gas state. The OEM intake manifolds aren't known for getting "dry air flow" perfect either. Id be extra cautious with 93 and no IC. Low compression and big ring gaps woudl be best IMO. Recently dealt with a couple A2W setups. I was always against them because ICE is such a hassle. But even without ice, they seem to do a better job than my "1200hp" Treadstone A2A. If I ran an IC again... I'd go this route. esp with 93. I'd add a simple water/meth kit as well.