Water Injection

[NV D15 7]

Hey Guys... and Gals

Anyone here run Water Injection (WI) on there vehicles?
If so, post away

For an experiment I put an extremely crude setup on my daily driver 1979 RWD 323 Wagon. Consiting of a 2nd washer bottle runing a line into the aircleaner and ziptie-ing a VN windscreen squirter nozzle, to squirt directly into the primary throat. Put a toggle switch on the dash and i was in business. Now the poor old 1400cc motor, the rings were a bit sad and she used a bit of oil. The top speed with the WI switched ON was an incredible 60kph more then with the WI switched OFF.
Usually WI is used for cooling the intake charge down and giving some tuning leahway, but in this case it was giving the Wagon extra compression.

Since then ive upgraded the nozzle to a right angle brass fitting with a small number drill hole providing the misting effect into the carby.

Also the motor has been replaced, the old motor pulled down for inspection, but hard to tell if the WI had any effect on the bores but the head chambers were relatively clean and free from carbon, which was expected to be pretty bad considering the oil usage

Regards Mark

[gennyshovel]

http://www.landracing.com/forum/index.p ... 368.0.html

[momec]

In a previous job we used the old sprint car motor for the workshop ute and it had to have water inj to stop it pinging. Could always tell when the water had run out.
It does a great job cleaning carbon from piston tops to.

Chris

[DLRA]

I used to run water injection in my rally cars. All Datsun 1600's with 1.6 to 2 ltr Nissan motors. It didmakea difference, especailly when I used to accidentially spill a bit of something else in there instead of water....

[Zaltrennwagen]

it's an old thread but one of the Worlds experts on water injewction is right here in OZ. He runs mazda rotary turbos with huge amounts of boost . It is now aknowledged that water injection Does increase horsepower . The big secret is make the water into a vapour and that means lots of pressure and fine nozzles.
I am thinking of using bronze bosch Kjet injector nozzles to atomise the water/metho mix and when the solenoid cuts the water the injector should shut off and prevent water leakage into the engine...I hope..
most of the better systems use diesel burner inejctors because they are either brass or stainless steel ,so water won't corrode them. The problem with them is that solenoids often dribble and the water can build up to damaging levels causing hydraulic locks, when the engine isn't running.
Quite a lot of info here ,they have their own forum where ideas are kicked around.
http://www.aquamist.co.uk/cp/cp1.html

[ROSS BROWN]

Interesting peices of hardwear on the aqumist site..... Will take a couple of days to get my head around it...
Interesting to see methanol also being injected into the charge.... I,d assume we would have three different tanks
INJECTOR PLACEMENTS

[Zaltrennwagen]

theres quite a lot of info on the web regarding the best places to inject water.(throttle body,before or after turbo's etc etc ) Some of the keener blokes install one for cylinder . The water /metho mix has proven to be the working one with the mix added together in the holding tank.

[Greg Watters]

my take on it is ..Not sure how much advantage it would be for a NA motor , if your borderline detonation, if you can use a better fuel and fix the problem not introduce a new variable .
for a turbo or supercharger a correctly sized intercooler is more effective at cooling the intake charge AND increasing the density of the intake air as it cools, water inj can cool but in doing so convets water to steam which takes up a lot of space , so net air gain into the motor is minimal at best .

But water is a great anti detonate and if you can't get a better fuel or are limited in your intercooler options, its a great alternative.

best used at high pressure to make a fine mist, your going to think this a bit odd but a pump from a coffee machine and a cheap inverter can get you a 12v 120psi water pump relatively cheap, and an aquamist jet and pressure or throttle switch completes the simple water kit
http://www.espressoparts.com/V_38
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/200w-Car-12V-240 ... 2a0b84191b

Had an interesting comparison this year with the 2 bikes at Bonneville, i had water injection with the ice water intercooler, trying to keep the motor from melting at 28+ psi boost on the long track , it had 1680 deg f temps at the turbo entry ...flat line, the temp would rise to the water inj turned on at 25 psi then drop a little and hold constant, Jims bike with no water but a similar ice intercooler,ex temps would continue to rise to 1900+ deg.. scary at first but it was running exactly as had done for several seasons, just the first time we had logged exhaust temps .

[Rob]

I'm not sure they'd pass enough volume but ..Arizona Mist Systems http://www.azmistsystems.com/index.html are the units used at amusement parks to keep the long lines of riders cool.

I bought some nozzles to use to keep the verandah cool and they run off mains pressure (around 20psi av.)

Cheers,
Rob

[Zaltrennwagen]

one of my cars has air suspension and i had thought of the electric pump,but why bother when the pressure is already available at over 200 Psi. We used to have frozen coke machines which use a stainless steel tank that can be refilled and plumbed directly into CO2. I Found some small versions on ebay.us for around $50 . I could fill one with water and have it connected to the cars suspension system. A solenoid and my Kjet inector idea would roughly round up the package. At 200PSi.the little holding tank is well within it's limits ,afterall,the cars tank holds more. and I would only need to check it occasionally ... on these older high comp street cars i feel water injection is vital to keep the pistons from being destroyed . Water has been shown to allow more advance = more effective use of fuel ...

[Raging Bull]

I've been thinking about this lately too...

It seems to me the most effective use of water could be to unleash the potential energy in the expansion ratio of converting water into steam and so producing true usable power (among other benefits such as reducing tendency for uncontrolled detonation) by timed direct injecting it into the combustion chamber some time after TDC in the power stroke with injection being controlled as an ancillary function of an ECU.

I've had the idea nagging around in the back of my head since I was 10 (for over 35 years) so now is the time to finally get it out.... As a kid, I use to visualise a "squirter" spraying water onto a stove plate inside the motor heated by some external method thereby creating a bastardised modern day version of a steam engine.... Now all these years later as a heavy duty diesel mechanic soon to be starting my new job in the engine room at a Caterpillar dealer, not only do I have access to and knowledge of injectors I can modify to fulfil injection duties for both fuel and water, I finally "get it" that the heat source required for the conversion is indeed already "there" and therefore will not require me to steal my mother's electric iron to commandeer the heating coils

I won't post the link here (don't know if it's allowed), but there's some very interesting reading on the subject over at stanleymotorcarriage.com....

I'm currently in the early stages of a 2 year plan to develop a motorcycle engine with direct cylinder head fuel and water injection for a race engine project that will be coming to the salt I hope in 2012. (I just gotta work out what I'm going to put it in car or bike?).

[Zaltrennwagen]

heres an interesting pic of Frank Klienig, and his MG Hudson special which featured water injection. he sold a form of water injection for years which worked on the low compression engines and crappy fuel around after WW2.

[Zaltrennwagen]

I've been thinking about this lately too...

It seems to me the most effective use of water could be to unleash the potential energy in the expansion ratio of converting water into steam and so producing true usable power (among other benefits such as reducing tendency for uncontrolled detonation) by timed direct injecting it into the combustion chamber some time after TDC in the power stroke with injection being controlled as an ancillary function of an ECU.

I've had the idea nagging around in the back of my head since I was 10 (for over 35 years) so now is the time to finally get it out.... As a kid, I use to visualise a "squirter" spraying water onto a stove plate inside the motor heated by some external method thereby creating a bastardised modern day version of a steam engine.... Now all these years later as a heavy duty diesel mechanic soon to be starting my new job in the engine room at a Caterpillar dealer, not only do I have access to and knowledge of injectors I can modify to fulfil injection duties for both fuel and water, I finally "get it" that the heat source required for the conversion is indeed already "there" and therefore will not require me to steal my mother's electric iron to commandeer the heating coils

I won't post the link here (don't know if it's allowed), but there's some very interesting reading on the subject over at stanleymotorcarriage.com....

I'm currently in the early stages of a 2 year plan to develop a motorcycle engine with direct cylinder head fuel and water injection for a race engine project that will be coming to the salt I hope in 2012. (I just gotta work out what I'm going to put it in car or bike?).

A diesel ? water injection isn't going to work with the Diesel but i guess you know that... Petrol direct injection is as old injection itself. I have an engine (or 2...3 OK 4) that is the younger sister of the mercedes m186 direct injection engine as used in the gullwing. On the old m186 as used in the 3-0-0 cars the spark plugs are in the block but in a gull wing the plug holes are used for the injectors. When the fuel charge explodes after igniting ,the piston is effectively covering the injector thus protecting it.
The gull wing used a different head which has the spark plugs in it. Another major reason ,apart from lots of power from only 3 liters, was that the engine lays on it's side and to reach the plugs would involve getting at them from under the car . not easuy on car with a space frame chassis.
The injection is mechanical using the Bosch MFI . These are great,giving instant throttle response because the fuel is injected at 200PSI. A mate has a MFI pump as a curiosity peice that was modified by Ed Iskendarian to run a turbo charged big block Chev.

[Raging Bull]

A diesel ? water injection isn't going to work with the Diesel but i guess you know that...

Excuse me, maybe It's the way I wrote it, I wasn't saying I'm going to do it as a diesel, merely that I'm going to use (modified) diesel type injectors as used on late model common rail diesels that require no shielding from combustion heat and pressures. My first love is methanol, but I'm going to trial it on my road bike, so it will probably be petrol.... to begin with...

Having said that, I'm actually sure that if it were done in a properly controlled way it could work on a diesel...

I'm guessing here you're possibly thinking water in the combustion chamber of a diesel is going to raise cylinder pressures to a point where a hydraulic-ing condition would cause rods to bend etc...

I contend (with no real evidence to back it up other than many years experience tuning and building diesels) that well atomised water introduced into the combustion chamber after the point of maximum cylinder pressure (ie: after the fire event has occurred and the piston is on the way down) would substantially lower exhaust gas temperature - which is one of the bug-a-bears of maximum horsepower potential of a diesel.

Alll the tuning and mixture set up information in manuals for; Caterpillar, Cummins, Komatsu (is Cummins) stipulate a maximum safe EGT ALL within a range of 625 to 650 degrees C. for constant full load, although I know of many race diesels would exceed this for short periods. Going for a drive in a CAT iron ore dump truck pulling 350+ tonnes up the hill for fifteen minutes straight, sitting in the dickie seat with the laptop hooked up to engine telemtry confirms this range the EGT's are held at and if not, you know something's not right.

With a diesel, very much unlike a petrol or methanol- in that additional fuel increases EGT (not decreases as in a petrol or methanol). Also with a diesel, the adiabatic efficiency (ability of the fuel to absorb heat and therefore take it out the exhaust) (think of the recent post about water vs coolant) of diesel is far lower than a petrol, which is in turn lower than methanol. So one of major power limiting factors for a diesel is removing this heat, which if could be done would allow more fuel to be added which up to a certain richness in A/F ratio will increase power, although at some point, heat versus extra power produced reaches a limit of diminishing return beyond which is not worth pursuing a richer A/F ratio. Removing some of this heat that damages pistons beyond this 650 (melting point of aluminium) or so level is something that I do think may be possible with water injection... But not by just holding a hose at the intake as is the crude method of most water injection systems.

[Lynchy]

The gull wing used a different head which has the spark plugs in it

Not sure where the plugs are on this one!



One of the poor guys at Bonneville had this car rotting away in the backyard and thought he'd do something with it.....