Water/Methonal cooling kits, any good?

[runningmonkey]

What are folks thoughts on water/methanol injection / cooling kits

Iv got a charge cool set up on my turbo motor at the moment, but its not really cooling the charge as the radiator and pump are to small and Iv been advised to change the system to either an ice box setup or go water/methanol

CB Performance sell W/M kits but I don't know a great deal about how they work and what the results are like. Could anyone running W/M kit give some advice on whats best?

Cheers in advance John   
 

[Garrick Clark]

I Have the AEM kit.250 psi pump.1 nozzle per cylinder, using the smallest jets. The kit is good quality.

[Martin S.]

The AEM kit sounds good. Where do you have the water jets installed? Any pics? How much cooler is the intake temps after installation?
https://www.aemelectronics.com/products/water-methanol-injection-systems/water-methanol-injection-kit-for-forced-induction-gasoline-engines

The CB kit looks good as well but I don’t understand how it is controlled. AEM shows a control unit as part of the kit.
https://www.cbperformance.com/product-p/7060.htm

This idea seems ideal for bugs as it doesn’t take up much room under the hood. A setup was going to be next on my engine and came recommended but circumstances stalled it. We can get 50/50 here as winter windshield washer fluid everywhere which works excellent.

[Garrick Clark]

I have my nozzles in each manifold port. Under the butterflies. Triggered at my 3/4 boost limit. Smallest devils own  nozzles, any bigger and the spray puts out the fire.
   

[Martin S.]

Pics would be nice if you can. Do you have individual throttle bodies? I think I can get away with one water jet with a single throttle body.

[Garrick Clark]

Yours is very different to mine . I'm using  dual dells ,so having water spray into the turbo hats and down the throats isn't good as it corrodes the carbs from the inside out and also goes into the float bowl etc causing all sorts of problems hence 1 per cylinder below the butterflies. I have used 1 nozzle on my Single SU carb set up. It worked well. I've re fitted the dells again to challenge myself, as blow through dells is nigh on impossible to get right.

[slowsixtyseven]

I use Snow Performances progressive kit (with gauge) and it works extremely well. I can setup whatever psi I want to start spraying from the drivers seat as well as turn it off when I run race gas at the track.

The water/meth really does a good job of lowering intake temps under boost. I will usually see a 15-40 degree drop in intake air temps when I start spraying, depending how long I spray for. This helps slow down the amount of time it takes for my heads to start seeing some hear too. I have also effectively raised my boost by about 4-5 psi on the street. I was previously running 10-12 psi on pump gas (91) and now I run 14-15 psi. I don’t get much pinging like I did before the kit.

I put my reservoir behind the backseat and have my nozzle right before the throttle plate. I have not seen any huge corrosion issues; there is a slight bit of white build up but nothing problematic.


I’m getting ready to install a water/air intercooler and hope that it helps drive my overall head temps down when under load. Living in the mountains gets the heads warm when climbing and not under boost and spraying. I’m hoping I can control my head temps on long summer drives between the intercooler and water meth.






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[Martin S.]

Your engine looks awesome!
Is the line at the very top the methanol line?
What are the typical intake temps that you get now?

[dive!dive!]

This is very interesting. I am contemplating adding a turbo to my 1776 (already full EFI, so hopefully easy(ish) but am a little put off by the thought of a charge cooler (water cooling on an air cooled car!). Water/Meth injection has its appeal for sure.
On the above installation - where do you measure the intake temp ?

On a more general, but related, note - when does a charge cooler or water injection become necessary  ? Above a certain boost or above a certain air temp ? I realize it depends on where the engine pings but a rule of thumb? Say I only wanted 5-7psi of boost, are either necessary (I live in the UK so a)its cold and b)98 octane gas is everywhere )

Cheers
Steve

[Martin S.]

I’ve run a 1776 Berg 7:1 cr semi hemi engine with draw thru carb at about 8psi and also 15psi, as well as EFI 2332 low psi all without either an inter cooler or water injection. It’s completely optional and helps to make the intake more dense resulting in more power.
My EFI has an intake temp sensor for the ECU as I thought they all had?
My current setup absolutely does not need water injection for any reason other than the fun aspect. It doesn’t overheat or leak or anything like that but it’s something I’d like to try someday regardless. Just like more boost!

[dive!dive!]

Yes, they all do as far as I know. Mine does - I have an air box system on mine and my air intake sensor sits there.

I was wondering in slowsixtysevens engine where the intake temp sensor and meth injector were positioned in the intake - do you measure intake temp before or after the meth injection?

My 1776 makes 125-130 at the flywheel, I'd have to drop the CR a bit but would only need 7/8 psi or so in theory to make plenty of power. I think I'd go without any form of intake cooling to start with and see......

[Martin S.]

On mine the sensor is called Manifold Air Temperature sensor MAT and is mounted in the manifold after the throttle body.
Since I’ve run both high 8.5 and low 7.0 CR I can say they both make lots of power. The low cr with semi hemi came on with more of a bang by comparison but the higher CR with tight deck was on track to making huge hp before getting sidetracked unfortunately.
Combo of porting, cam and chambers put it in the +300hp future range potentially.

[slowsixtyseven]

Your engine looks awesome!
Is the line at the very top the methanol line?
What are the typical intake temps that you get now?

Thanks! Yes, meth line is the red one at the top of the small intake plenum above the throttle body. My typical intake temps are dependent on outside air temps and engine load. Usually, in the summer, before my water/meth is applied, I see anywhere between 90 and 175 degrees Fahrenheit in the hot summer months. When water/meth is applied, I usually see temps go down to 75-140 degrees Fahrenheit. Its a pretty substantial change, IMO.

This is very interesting. I am contemplating adding a turbo to my 1776 (already full EFI, so hopefully easy(ish) but am a little put off by the thought of a charge cooler (water cooling on an air cooled car!). Water/Meth injection has its appeal for sure.
On the above installation - where do you measure the intake temp ?

On a more general, but related, note - when does a charge cooler or water injection become necessary  ? Above a certain boost or above a certain air temp ? I realize it depends on where the engine pings but a rule of thumb? Say I only wanted 5-7psi of boost, are either necessary (I live in the UK so a)its cold and b)98 octane gas is everywhere )

Cheers
Steve

I measure intake temps right before the throttle body butterfly, but after water/meth injection nozzle. I also monitor cylinder head temps off of the #3 plug.

For a street car in the US that runs on pump gas (91 octane rating here) that gets driven a lot and wants to see a maximum level of boost, I think charge cooling is a very good idea since it offers a certain margin of safety and allows optimum power without need to think about 'where to get gas next'. For where I live (Colorado), a true street car needs a proper tune for all driving conditions including long highway drives, hot weather, climbs and descents in the mountains, slight grades when under slight boost, and trips down the track at WOT. Charge cooling helps extract the most reliability, longevity and power in any normal and extenuating driving situation. Its not mandatory but I want to squeeze every bit of 'safe power' I can out of my street car....and that includes charge cooling for me. The downside is that it adds extra weight to our little cars; water, intercoolers, holding tanks, pumps, etc all add up.

For me, the main issue is fuel octane...91 is okay but if I had E-85 around, I would gladly run that without charge cooling. Or, if I had a race car, I would run race gas and probably have no need for charge cooling.

[Martin S.]

Interesting about the sensor placement. It seems that the sensor can go on either side of the throttle body.
I think I prefer in the manifold before the heads which would measure the mixture as it gets burned.
Do you use the sensor for programming the ECU? I dug out my settings pic of the MAT table.

[slowsixtyseven]

Interesting about the sensor placement. It seems that the sensor can go on either side of the throttle body.
I think I prefer in the manifold before the heads which would measure the mixture as it gets burned.
Do you use the sensor for programming the ECU? I dug out my settings pic of the MAT table.

Yeah, I too would prefer to have the sensor a little further down the intake, preferably after the TB and closer to the heads, but there is also potential for heat soak there as it would be closer to the cylinders/case. I do use the sensor for informing the ECU how much fuel to inject based on temp, often for hot/cold starts, etc. Is that what your MAT is for? I do not have the option of changing the temp tables themselves though.

[Martin S.]

This article explains the difference between the systems. Motec is another system similar to mine.
The end of the article talks about Electromotive. It’s quite a unique system.
https://www.hotrod.com/articles/electronic-fuel-injection-2/

[dive!dive!]

This article explains the difference between the systems. Motec is another system similar to mine.
The end of the article talks about Electromotive. It’s quite a unique system.
https://www.hotrod.com/articles/electronic-fuel-injection-2/

That's a good summary. Mine is what they talk about at the end - a hybrid of Alpha N and Speed Density. I have an AEM ECU. I use throttle position versus rpm for the fuel map and load (manifold pressure) versus rpm for spark (this works well as you can easily replicate what a vac advance dizzy does at light loads. Mine also has a lot of sensor inputs - AFR, 4xEGT, Intake Air temp, head temp and I also have it control a cold start valve (simple solenoid, that is open at cold temps and sits in the balance pipe between my throttle bodies - means I simply turn the key at any time of year with no throttle input and the cars starts and idles...)

So much more fun that cleaning out carb idle jets every other month :-) , but does add a lot of complexity to our simple cars.

Steve

[Martin S.]

True. I haven’t had many problems with mine either over the many years and over 30,000km on the engine without it coming apart.
The warm up sensor, which is not even needed, started acting up a couple years ago and caused the engine to run like crap. Nobody wanted to touch it locally but Karmann Sutra on here gave me the number for a guy in Cali who connected remotely to my lappy using Team Viewer and looked at the logs.
He suggested taking a look at the warmup sensor, (from a stock VW Bug/Van EFI application) and as soon as I disconnected the sensor the problem disappeared. That was satisfying to figure out the problem that way.

[Garrick Clark]

Is there an optimum boost psi to start spraying.