Alky and Cold temps....Alky not vaporizing

[turbo nasty]

Up here in MN we experience cool nights at the beginning and end of our seasons.
I know theres a temp where the alky wont effectively evaporate and flash and stays in liquid form and then will heavy a heavy wet flow and track who knows where in the intake and then bad things happen as cylinders get less fuel or more fuel.
I have seen the air temps drop to the high 40's post IC and Nozzle with the temp sensor in the rear wall of the lower manifold during a long pull on cool nights late in the season with Amb temps in the high 50's low 60's

Anyone have a idea where the line would be where the air temps would be getting in the danger level?
@HIGH PSI @Razor @bison

 

[Razor]

Couple things at work.. one alcohol is 21% thinner than water so its easy to get it working. The pressure the pump makes does a great job at breaking down the liquid into a fine mist.. and then simply watch for knock. I bet if you used just enough.. meaning the right amount.. you won't have issue. If you arbitrarily crank the pressure/volume up and spray way more than needed, the you will aggravate the process and def get into distribution issues.

Couple items on side note, I have had customers running AWD cars in -20 degree weather with boost, actually made some pump warmers for these as the pumps when that cold would simply not spin up and make pressure as fest. Clearances tighten up on them with cold weather. I have not way in Florida to replicate that.

Happy boosting

 

[Chuck Leeper]

Block warmer installed into the alky tank?
Hook up the t/b heat hoses in cold weather?
Put a 180* stat in?

 

[Razor]

Do like the trucks and block off the intercooler to make it not work as well.. that will raise temps. Figure boost creates 11DF per PSI.. so if the IC doesnt work, there is plenty of temps.

 

[pacecarta]

Block warmer installed into the alky tank?
Hook up the t/b heat hoses in cold weather?
Put a 180* stat in?

the alky in the tank gets warmed a little by the underhood temps of the headers ,dp ,turbo and radiator.
its the santoprene in the pump that gets hard when cold , the greased bushings on the motor shaft have more drag and the pump head that shrinks when cold that leads to leaks larger than the nozzle so alky delivery suffers
ive had pumps leak in the 20s and be fine once it warmed up to low 30s

you would need to keep the pump in a warmer environment than out on the bumper
mounting inside the car would solve it but if the pump develops a leak meth fumes aren't good for the brain

 

[Mr.Spool]

I have seen the air temps drop to the high 40's post IC and Nozzle with the temp sensor in the rear wall of the lower manifold during a long pull on cool nights late in the season with Amb temps in the high 50's low 60's

Ive seen temps like this plenty of times and have had no issue.

 

[bison]

If you are dealing with low temps and an unknown flow of methanol it's time to port inject it and erase the variable. It had been done and it works. It takes very little methanol to work properly as an anti-detonant.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[pacecarta]

Ive seen temps like this plenty of times and have had no issue.

agree iv run at tracks when its just above freezing and IAT temps in the 40s , IATs never stopped me from running ,, what stops me is when the sun goes down and the track cools and traction goes away

 

[murphster]

I'd say there is a lot of things going on that you have to watch out for. #1, are you logging alky pressure? With all the money in your combo that seems like a no brainer. Any leaks will lead to slow build up of alky pressure and that can be magnified in the cool weather with the faster spooling. Always prime, and then prime some more. The other thing could be a combo of the cooler weather and running less boost. Lower temps out of the turbo combined with cooler ambient temps could have an effect if your alky ramps aren't very good. Having the test kit would show you when the alky is coming in and making sure its dialed in right. If you have the alky coming in a little soon, no big deal on kill mode in the summer. Now say its winter and boost is turned down and now all that alky is still there and the temps are a lot cooler and maybe that could lead to distribution problems, who knows. The main thing is to make sure its working correctly and set correctly.

For reference, when I've run in late November in 50 degree weather the lowest IAT I saw was high 50s low 60s. I think its safe to assume I had no distribution issues since I had no problems making more power than most on alky. So I was still a few degress above ambient at the end of a long pull dumping in a ton of alky and the boost wasn't ridiculously high either. So if you are seeing way below ambient temps in similar weather maybe there is an issue and the IAT sensor is getting saturated, I don't know.

Just a lot of things that are unknown to make a definitive statement on it. I know that personally I can run a ton of alky in cool weather with no issues and my logs show that my alky system is working correctly with high pressure and injecting linearly right as the boost comes up and testing showed I had no leaks beforehand.