Snow water/meth system ????'s

[TurboDave]

Anyone on here have any experience with the Snow Water/Alky MAF based injection system???
GNX405 finally got a WOT pull recorded on DS (his 87 Mazda LC2). It has this system on it. It uses a mixture of water/heet. 2 cans of heet to 1 gallon of water (actually -20° windshield fluid), and this mixture added to the somewhat smallish reservoir.

Here's the issue. The car seemed to pull real hard with no apperent issues, until we looked at the DS scan. During normal driving the O2 volts look normal (stock NBO2). But when going WOT the O2 volts drop into the 020's and stay there during the entire WOT time. At the end of the run the O2's return to expected readings.

My guess is that the water/heet(source of meth) injection is causing the wierd O2 readings, unlike pure meth injection.

For the particulars it's a moderately(internals) built LC2, with 55's, TA6(something) turbo, TT alky chip (too much timing I think), and Translator/LS1

He'll have to pull some boost out which he did. Haven't heard back but I'm hoping he's now closer to 17#.
I also suggested pulling the boost way back and shuting off the Snow inj. and see what the O2 did, but I'm not sure how low he'll be able to get the boost. The TT alky chip is indicating that it is defaulted to 23° timing .

Definately got some tuning to do! Good practice for him. :wink: :wink:

But the original question.... Lotsa water/little alky... is this what's causing the O2's to drop in the 020's during a pull? I doubt that they're really that lean or it would have blown both heads off. It was running 20# boost during that pass and only recorded about 5-6° of KR at the 2-3 shift

I have absolutely no background in water injection to draw experience from.
And only 3rd party info on actual meth injection.

Help guys!!

 

[Razor]

Contact Snow Performance for their recommendations.

Post back.

 

[bison]

only recorded about 5-6° of KR at the 2-3 shift

Only 5-6*. Turn the boost back down till you get more info.

 

[qwks6]

I remember reading that eric pulls fuel out at wot for alky, because the kits we usually use add only alky. That may be one reason it's leaning out. I'd ask eric about the chip.

 

[Grumpy]

watch the pump !!

 

[Pablo]

Narrow band O2 sensor is COMPLETELY useless for WOT tuning. To quote Bruce Plecan, you might have better luck reading tea leaves .

The low NB sensor readings are consistent with something called O2 saturation. Typically it's caused by overly rich mixtures which can happen with alky or just gas, or any fuel for that matter.

Narrow bands are only effective in a very narrow temperature, pressure, and mixture range. That's why they are called narrow band sensors. I'm not sure why anyone even tries to tune without a wide band these days.

I'd also suggest that you just use pure methanol as your alky kit fuel

 

[TurboDave]

Narrow band O2 sensor is COMPLETELY useless for WOT tuning. To quote Bruce Plecan, you might have better luck reading tea leaves .

The low NB sensor readings are consistent with something called O2 saturation. Typically it's caused by overly rich mixtures which can happen with alky or just gas, or any fuel for that matter.

Narrow bands are only effective in a very narrow temperature, pressure, and mixture range. That's why they are called narrow band sensors. I'm not sure why anyone even tries to tune without a wide band these days.

I'd also suggest that you just use pure methanol as your alky kit fuel

I know their not very usefull for WOT tuning, but I've been doing it for 22 years. One thing in those years that I've never experienced is what you're talking about (O2 saturation). I've had pretty lean mixtures, pretty rich mixtures and almost every other situation, but never saw an O2 sensor show 20's during a WOT run.

Trust me, I understand how O2 sensors (narrow and wide) work. That sensor is what we have for now.

As for running pure Meth, I don't know a thing about Snow kits, and I'm not sure the pump or the red plastic lines will handle pure meth.

 

[Grumpy]

As for running pure Meth, I don't know a thing about Snow kits, and I'm not sure the pump or the red plastic lines will handle pure meth.

they can handle straight meth BUT they have "issues" with the pumps.. we went threw 2 and then went to Julio's pump

 

[scot w.]

Dave you know me. I hate to inject all that crap into my engine! I like to reap all the benifits of pure methanol. For the little extra money I would have went with the Razor kit but I know it came on the car when he bought it...

It looks like this is probably the kit he has Snow Performance: Stage 2 MAF Boost Cooler?

I looked on there site and knowwhere did it mention anything on what the pumps can handle as far as pure methanol. If I was you I would register on the forum located on there main page and ask your same questions and see what they say.

As we would also like to see what they say, post up the link to your question so we can follow it.


Scot W.

 

[TurboDave]

Dave you know me. I hate to inject all that crap into my engine! I like to reap all the benifits of pure methanol. For the little extra money I would have went with the Razor kit but I know it came on the car when he bought it...

It looks like this is probably the kit he has Snow Performance: Stage 2 MAF Boost Cooler?

I looked on there site and knowwhere did it mention anything on what the pumps can handle as far as pure methanol. If I was you I would register on the forum located on there main page and ask your same questions and see what they say.

As we would also like to see what they say, post up the link to your question so we can follow it.


Scot W.

This is the actual kit:

Snow Performance: Stage 2 GM MAF Boost Cooler?

But yes, I guess I'll try and register over there and see what advice they can add.

 

[TurboDave]

Does Eric have a phone number I can contact him at? If so, I can't seem to find it.

 

[scot w.]

Does Eric have a phone number I can contact him at? If so, I can't seem to find it.

Here it is dave (618) 548-5953

 

[jhanson1750]

I've been using the same kit for @ 2 years now and had the same thing happen recently. Install a new o2 and run it again. I found the water/methanol mix is crap! Put 100% methanol and be done with it. Mine did the exact same thing about 5 miles from the track after a 75 mile drive to get there. I found that after my o2 read bad it fould read correctly after the boost came down to @15lbs, but with mine it didn't matter no alky or with alky it did the same o2 would tank at @ 20-50. Good luck Jon Hanson

Sorry just saw that you are using the MAF based one, mine is boost refrenced only.

 

[Eric Stage I]

TT alcohol chips are designed for 100% alcohol, no water. Water will lean it out and cause misfiring. The misfiring will allow oxygen through the exhaust driving the O2's way low, or weird spikes in the O2 reading.

Some people have had luck starting with a small % of water and working your way up (adjusting fuel to keep a good A/F). You have to be really on top of things to make water injection work ok.

If you can't find methanol, you can get denatured alcohol at Lowes or Home Depot, etc. Denatured will work just as well in almost all cases.

I would replace the water with alcohol and start again. If the O2's still drop out, then double check the grounds near the back of the passenger cyl head (the O2 ground is in that mess of grounds), and possibly replace the O2 sensor. Might want to check fuel pressure under boost to make sure it isn't truely lean.

I'm not home this week, but I'll be checking the forums and email.

Eric

 

[TurboDave]

Thanks Eric. When John gets back off vacation, I'll have him look at a few things.
What worries me is that I'm not so sure the Snow system can handle pure Meth.
I don't think the car is "really" as lean as the NBO2 says, especially with the timing in that chip, and the 20# of boost during that pull.

I had him lengthen the actuator rod to reduce boost, and I think I'll tell him to also pull some timing out of the chip, and run with the snow system turned off to see what the O2 does.

Hopefully he'll get it squared away sooner or later. I'm tempted to have him give you a call and try and trade the alky chip for a non alky variety.

 

[Dave H]

I am a dealer for the snow stuff, and have used it on a lot of forced induction Mustangs.

When tuning the snow kit (using rain x sub zero windshield wiper fluid straight - the orange-ish looking stuff), we can usually go to a timing curve from a normally aspirated Mustang, and do very little to the fuel side of tuning. We set it up for 11.5 - 12.0:1 AFR. On a 03 Cobra, the snow kit and tuning is usually worth 60-75 more rwhp, using just the rain-x in the tank.

Since the Snow kit is not adding a lot of alky, it doesn't affect the AFR as much as others that run 100% meth. You also don't want as rich a mix (mid 11's vs mid to low 10), since the stioch afr isn't being altered a lot from the meth.

With all that being said... I run Julio's in my Buick

 

[TurboDave]

I'm guessing now that he'll need to look at the O2 sensor, and/or it's grounding wiring.
Oddly enough, it seems to behave somewhat normally at cruise. However, at WOT it drops into the 20's, no not 200's, 20's.

Here's the kicker, at dfco (deceleration fuel cutoff) the O2 readings go into the 800's

As for the snow kit installed, it's the stg2 MAF based controller. Not exactly an ideal choice especially for high boosted buicks that easilly max their maf at 14-15# of boost. Especially troublesome when we're used to running in excess of 23# with alky.

If we can't get this ironed out any better he may have to try and see about switching over to a MAP based controller, or some other brand.



Dave H. Good points, but for our high boosted buicks some bad choices were made on this particular car (as stated above, MAF based vs. MAP based).


I'm wondering how much methenol content there actually is in one of these gallons of -20° washer fluid???????

We'll have to see how things go when he finds time to sort out this O2 stuff. Right now, he's deep into trying to get his GNX restoration finished up ASAP (been at it for 5+ years now).

 

[Quick6'n'-K.C.]

Dave, you might look to see if the ground wires on the back of the passenger side head are tightened, and all of them are still there after the hybrid install.

I can tell you for a fact that if those are not grounded, your WOT millivolts will eventually work their way down toward 300 200 100 ect.
We found this out working on a friends car right after the rebuild.

If your 02 millivolts were really that low, dont you think you would be getting alot more than 5-6° of knock retard?

Double check the ground wires, i think there are 4-6 wires and 3 ilets.

Then just add a little more WOT fueling and tune for no knock.

BW :smile:

 

[TurboDave]

Oh, I'm quite sure it's not that lean!! and in view of the fact that decelerating O2's are also backwards (800 instead of 000), that there's a ground issue or a bad O2/wiring issue somewhere that needs attention. Hopefully I'll remember to take my Fluke 87 over to his house NC tomorrow and see if we can't track something down.