Alky tuning with WideBand

[Razor]

FULL THROTTLE SPEED - Item Description Page

This is how I do mine. Typically close to the TB and firing against each other.

A single M15 should be fine on your setup, unless your running low pressure. Not knowing pressure is difficult.

I can make pretty good guesses, I hate making wild guesses like those that already been made.

HTH

 

[PhilM]

nirto71455:

I would first contact Steve and see what he says - again, trying not to step on toes here, then figure out exactly what you need for flow. Then it's not a shot in the dark again - even with 2 nozzles... heck it may fall out of the carefully laid out parameters that the SMC kit was meant to work with.

I can easily do the setup for ya, just keep in mind it's NOT my kit, nor would I take responsibility in making it fully optimized for it. Throwing together a few nozzles and fittings isn't the hard part! Like Razor says, guessing isn't the best way to setup alky - esp. when errors can cause catastrophic failure.

That's enough talk for me here... email me if you want me to do one up for ya.

 

[Razor]

nirto71455:

I would first contact Steve and see what he says - again, trying not to step on toes here, then figure out exactly what you need for flow. Then it's not a shot in the dark again - even with 2 nozzles... heck it may fall out of the carefully laid out parameters that the SMC kit was meant to work with.

I can easily do the setup for ya, just keep in mind it's NOT my kit, nor would I take responsibility in making it fully optimized for it. Throwing together a few nozzles and fittings isn't the hard part! Like Razor says, guessing isn't the best way to setup alky - esp. when errors can cause catastrophic failure.

That's enough talk for me here... email me if you want me to do one up for ya.

Well written +1

 

[nirto71455]

Hey Guys,

Thanks again for all your help. I'm not looking for a scape goat by any means. I do all the work on my car I have noone to blaim for stuff but myself. I simply took Steves advace and other WELL KNOWN Turbo Buick racers / vendors to slowly drill out the nossel and keep adding alky until the car went slower or started to bog.

Well... I never made it to the bog point, but was starting to get concerned about how much alky I was using per pass, and at what point the alky would start taking over the pump gas burn causing pre igintion like Razor had stated.

It's not like I just went hog wild and driled from .058 to .086 and hammered the car through the gears. It was done little by little one change at a time. Test drive, whatching the wide band, paying very close attention.

There's a reason my blow through setup has over 300 1/4 passes on it without a single tear down......

All I really needed was some opions of was to much alky being used in one pass? I know there as some way smart guys on here such as yourselfs with tons of experaince. I blieve I have my answer that yes it's probably to much alky if not right on the boarderline.

I've called Steve, he's sending me a hand full of nossels to play with. I will drill them out a little since I'm feeding a 462ci but will not alter the vains this time. Thanks for all your input guys and time it write up the posts you did! You all are great and the attitude on this board makes the buick community what it is, and such a pleasure to be involved in.

--Rich

 

[spins4]

You need to quantify a few things to understand how much you are spraying: first question is what is your alky / gasoline ratio? If your fuel map is tuned for 11.0 off the alky, how much fuel are you pulling out to get back to that same AFR? This percentage would be the alky you are spraying in relation to the fuel.

And what do you mean by 'preignition' by spraying too much Alcohol? Alcohol preignites when the mixture is not rich enough. And as long as you stay off the revlimiter when spraying tons of alky (OR you cut the alky WITH the fuel inj...which is how I have mine setup when it hits the revlimit so no issues), you will be OK. I've done up to 50/50 Meth/Gasoline (believe it or not!) and had no issues. It just wasn't needed so I scaled it back...

 

[Alky V6]

You need to quantify a few things to understand how much you are spraying: first question is what is your alky / gasoline ratio? If your fuel map is tuned for 11.0 off the alky, how much fuel are you pulling out to get back to that same AFR? This percentage would be the alky you are spraying in relation to the fuel.

And what do you mean by 'preignition' by spraying too much Alcohol? Alcohol preignites when the mixture is not rich enough. And as long as you stay off the revlimiter when spraying tons of alky (OR you cut the alky WITH the fuel inj...which is how I have mine setup when it hits the revlimit so no issues), you will be OK. I've done up to 50/50 Meth/Gasoline (believe it or not!) and had no issues. It just wasn't needed so I scaled it back...

Two main things will cause methanol to preignite. Temperature and/or pressure. We all know that a gas engine runs at higher cylinder and exhaust temperatures.

And the anti-detonation properties cause us to up the boost, further increasing temperatures and pressures, until ... no warning at all ... BANG! It's too late now.

You have to understand one important thing about methanol. You absolutely will NOT get detonation that will warn you of pending doom the way that you get with gasoline. When methanol decides its had enough and you have a lot of it ... all of a sudden ... POP!!! Head gasket if your lucky. More likely, a rod out the side of the block. And, OH YES, I know what I'm talking about. And by the way, I've never had the lucky experience.

 

[nirto71455]

And as long as you stay off the revlimiter when spraying tons of alky (OR you cut the alky WITH the fuel inj...which is how I have mine setup when it hits the revlimit so no issues), you will be OK. I've done up to 50/50 Meth/Gasoline (believe it or not!) and had no issues. It just wasn't needed so I scaled it back...

Spins4,

I'm running a MSD 6AL with my limiter set at 6000rpm. I do hit the revlimiter more that I would like either due to the trany holding the gear to long (should sift at 5800) or by instant tire spin in 1st or 2nd gear on the street.

Is there a way that you're aware of that I could have the alky quit spraying when the 6AL is cutting spark or would I even benifit from that?

 

[spins4]

Spins4,

I'm running a MSD 6AL with my limiter set at 6000rpm. I do hit the revlimiter more that I would like either due to the trany holding the gear to long (should sift at 5800) or by instant tire spin in 1st or 2nd gear on the street.

Is there a way that you're aware of that I could have the alky quit spraying when the 6AL is cutting spark or would I even benifit from that?

With a spark cut revlimit you will be fine. The situation which poses problems is with fuel cut type revlimiters.

Imagine this: car is moving along, hits the revlimiter the fuel injectors get cut, but the alky keeps spraying-- what you basically have here is an EXTREME lean condition on alky which is the worst possible situation you want to be in, and boom... backfire if you are lucky, and preignition / parts destrcution if you are not. I encountered this first hand and luckily all that happened was a bent throttle body linkage! The risk of this goes up with the amount of alky you spray. On small amounts its not a big issue... the more you spray, the more careful you need to be with fuel cut based revlimits. I have known people to bend rods on perfectly good tunes and scratch their head. Looking at the logs the car registered no knock noise until RIGHT at the end of the dyno pull when they tagged the limiter-- yep you guessed it, lean on alky = boom, bent rod.

Again with spark cut you will be fine.

 

[BDC]

Two main things will cause methanol to preignite. Temperature and/or pressure. We all know that a gas engine runs at higher cylinder and exhaust temperatures.

And the anti-detonation properties cause us to up the boost, further increasing temperatures and pressures, until ... no warning at all ... BANG! It's too late now.

You have to understand one important thing about methanol. You absolutely will NOT get detonation that will warn you of pending doom the way that you get with gasoline. When methanol decides its had enough and you have a lot of it ... all of a sudden ... POP!!! Head gasket if your lucky. More likely, a rod out the side of the block. And, OH YES, I know what I'm talking about. And by the way, I've never had the lucky experience.

Hi Don,

Do you have any other information on this or anything else to share? I'm curious to hear more. It seems to me, at first blush atleast, that gasoline, being the much more volatile fuel, would be the one that would suddenly knock without any warning as opposed to methanol. Am I mistaken on this?

B

 

[spins4]

Hi Don,

Do you have any other information on this or anything else to share? I'm curious to hear more. It seems to me, at first blush atleast, that gasoline, being the much more volatile fuel, would be the one that would suddenly knock without any warning as opposed to methanol. Am I mistaken on this?

B

Thats actually not true. As you approach the limits with gasoline, you will get detonation, which is easily discernable from normal engine noise & operation. Detonation happens after the spark event. On a mostly methanol fueled car, you do not get detonation. Your car will be happily singing along, until you cross the limit and suddenly you have (without detectable warning) pre-ignition. Pre-ignition does not show up on knock sensors or on spark plugs ( well unless you consider the spark plugs damage after being contacted by foriegn matter as a sign ) it just happens and rips motors apart.

You would have to be running mostly alcohol for this to happen, and its not a concern for 99% of the 'alky injection' setups out there. Even at 50/50 Methanol/gasoline you won't run into this. Its more of a concern when tuning a full (or mostly full) methanol car 'on the edge'. On a methanol car you want to run it the AFR so rich its misifiring, then lean it JUST until it stops misfiring, and then call it a day. The rest of the power comes from spark timing, and there is window where adding more timing does not add more power until you reach that limit, that if you carefully increment the tune while watching HP output, you will never run into the pre-ignition state. However, you must be aware that the state between "safe" and "boom" is a SUPER thin line, where as on a gasoline fueled car you have much more warning before things take a turn for the worst. For an example: say a gasoline fueled car has peak power is at 14deg timing. You go to 15, 16,17, you start seeing detonation... you go to 18,19,20 .. more detonation, then you back off the tune. With a full methanol car if peak power is at 14deg, it will actually make "peak power" in a window from about 12-16deg. Once you go to 17deg...BOOM! No warning..unless you consider the sound an exploded motor makes warning

 

[Alky V6]

Hi Don,

Do you have any other information on this or anything else to share? I'm curious to hear more. It seems to me, at first blush atleast, that gasoline, being the much more volatile fuel, would be the one that would suddenly knock without any warning as opposed to methanol. Am I mistaken on this?

B

I think I can reference that to a book I have. I try to find the exact quote and I'll give you the book title.

 

[Alky V6]

Thats actually not true. As you approach the limits with gasoline, you will get detonation, which is easily discernable from normal engine noise & operation. Detonation happens after the spark event. On a mostly methanol fueled car, you do not get detonation. Your car will be happily singing along, until you cross the limit and suddenly you have (without detectable warning) pre-ignition. Pre-ignition does not show up on knock sensors or on spark plugs ( well unless you consider the spark plugs damage after being contacted by foriegn matter as a sign ) it just happens and rips motors apart.

You would have to be running mostly alcohol for this to happen, and its not a concern for 99% of the 'alky injection' setups out there. Even at 50/50 Methanol/gasoline you won't run into this. Its more of a concern when tuning a full (or mostly full) methanol car 'on the edge'. On a methanol car you want to run it the AFR so rich its misifiring, then lean it JUST until it stops misfiring, and then call it a day. The rest of the power comes from spark timing, and there is window where adding more timing does not add more power until you reach that limit, that if you carefully increment the tune while watching HP output, you will never run into the pre-ignition state. However, you must be aware that the state between "safe" and "boom" is a SUPER thin line, where as on a gasoline fueled car you have much more warning before things take a turn for the worst. For an example: say a gasoline fueled car has peak power is at 14deg timing. You go to 15, 16,17, you start seeing detonation... you go to 18,19,20 .. more detonation, then you back off the tune. With a full methanol car if peak power is at 14deg, it will actually make "peak power" in a window from about 12-16deg. Once you go to 17deg...BOOM! No warning..unless you consider the sound an exploded motor makes warning

Very good explanation. Thanks. I'll still try to find that book.

 

[Alky V6]

Hi Don,

Do you have any other information on this or anything else to share? I'm curious to hear more. It seems to me, at first blush atleast, that gasoline, being the much more volatile fuel, would be the one that would suddenly knock without any warning as opposed to methanol. Am I mistaken on this?

B

I found the book.
Forced Induction Performance Tuning. A Practical Guide to Supercharging and Turbocharging. Author: A.Graham Bell

On page 172 under the section titled, 'Alternatives to Water' which is under Chapter 11, 'Water Injection and other Alternatives', there is a paragraph which reads, "Finally there is Methanol. I really do not recommend its use in a road car, but for a weekend track day it is OK providing you are willing to empty the reservoir at the end of the day. Following that, fluch the entire auxiliary injection system with petrol to avoid corrosion. Why would you want to go to all this trouble? Some people just love the idea of using Methanol;". I do, I do. It continues, "I guess for them it is some sort of nostalgia thing. However, metering is not critical, so quite crude delivery systems are usually not a problem, but do keep in mind that extremely rich mixtures actually promote detonation." The paragraph continues with recommendations for placement of the nozzle. Good book. I highly recommend it.