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Tuning Alcohol/Water Injection

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Blown93LX

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How do you tune Alcohol/Water Injection?

I'm going to be using NOS solenoids and jets.

What are the signs of using too much alcohol/water and when its not enough?

Thanks
 
We have scan tools that read the O2 values from the O2 sensors in the exhaust, and most use a EGT gauge to read the exhaust temp to get it in the proper area. Most are using a variable speed pump, so all we have to do is turn the nob to speed up/slow down the amount of alky. Turn the other dial to change the turn on point, and turn another dial to turn the boost up or down.
 
Gonna be tough without a knock sensor. Best way would be to run a good digital EGT guage and go by that, but it would still be nice to know the knock counts. Good way to know that you have too much alky is the motor will bog and you'll actually feel it. Good way to know you don't have enough is to see the O2 volts, EGT, and knock count. Bad way is hearing a loud *POP* ;) . Good idea would be to run an indicator light in the car to know when the pump is actually on. This way you can relate any bogs/knock to the pump actually being on. You're gonna have to go a lot by feel, but I know your setup is going to be sweet so spend the extra ching and get an EGT guage. Don't worry about not having a knob to control the flow...... it's better to have constant flow anyhow. Jets are easy to change!! If you're looking for a good EGT guage, check with SMC at http://www.precisionte.com Look under Buick products, in the engine electronics section. $199.
Check with some of the stang guys in your power range to see what kind of EGT range they see, then go from there. Every car is different.

And by the way..........
Who's your daddy?
 
Originally posted by ViciousV6
Gonna be tough without a knock sensor. Best way would be to run a good digital EGT guage and go by that, but it would still be nice to know the knock counts. Good way to know that you have too much alky is the motor will bog and you'll actually feel it. Good way to know you don't have enough is to see the O2 volts, EGT, and knock count. Bad way is hearing a loud *POP* ;) . Good idea would be to run an indicator light in the car to know when the pump is actually on. This way you can relate any bogs/knock to the pump actually being on. You're gonna have to go a lot by feel, but I know your setup is going to be sweet so spend the extra ching and get an EGT guage. Don't worry about not having a knob to control the flow...... it's better to have constant flow anyhow. Jets are easy to change!! If you're looking for a good EGT guage, check with SMC at http://www.precisionte.com Look under Buick products, in the engine electronics section. $199.
Check with some of the stang guys in your power range to see what kind of EGT range they see, then go from there. Every car is different.

And by the way..........
Who's your daddy?
Click to expand...

What ViciousV6 states above is exactly why I have added an MSD knock alert and a WideBand O2 sensor. I use those two to adjust my SMC kit. BTW, I had a Paxton kit on my 99GT. The motor is stock and I run 11-12 psi on it. I'm trying to avoid the EGT gauge simply because I'm not in a hurry to drill a hole in my new JBA ceramic headers. But so far, so good.

Anyway, First it tried to find the line where the tune didn't need the W/A injection. Then I had an idea of what would be too aggressive. But because I don't run anywhere near the boost the GN guys do I had to get a smaller nozzle. The kit came with a 15 gph@100 psi. I ended up with only a 1 gph in there before it wouldn't bog down the tune. I also adjust my chip settings as well. What I mean by that is I don't want a real rich mixture in the chip tune if I'm going to be pumping a W/A mixture in there. While I was at about 10.5:1 with the chip, I would go off scale of the WB into the 9.X:1 range. Too rich and the power falls off. But when I inject a 60/40 water/alky mixture in with the chip at 11.7:1 it goes to 10.5:1 when the W/A comes on. And that's with the 1 gph nozzle.

The stuff really works but you have to make sure your using it right and get a good handle on it and your tune or else it may slow you down. Again as ViciousV6 said because of the lack of computer feedback Ford gives us it's a little tough to tune.

Ed
 
Ed, what pump pressure are you running at (100psi?), and which manufacturers nozzles are you using?
 
I bought the full line of standard mist nozzles off of www.mcmaster.com.

I ended up with the smallest nozzle, 1 gph@100 psi vice the 15 gph@100 psi that came with the kit. I normally have the pump speed set for about 6. I honestly don't know the pressure that relates to.

I have a 4 program JMS Autologic chip. Some are for 8-9 psi and no w/a injection and others are for 11-12 psi with and without w/a injection. So my tune isn't real agressive and would probably be okay without the injection kit but on stock pistons I don't want to take that chance. Also I have to be able to run only water for some classes.

I have the kit coming on at about 7-8 psi and I can see the mixture go from mid 11's to mid 10's with everything set like I stated above. Water to alky mixture is about 40/60.

Hope that helps. BTW, Bob is local to me, I'll talk to him about the new forum. Won't hurt to try.

Ed
 
Do those Mcmaster nozzles work ok. I was gonna use NOS nozzles...that way the jets are fully adjustable.
 
Thanks Ed, that helps. I'm going to make my own kit, I was thinking of cutting/modifying a fox-body fuel rail and utilizing a pressure regulator to fine tune once I found a decent size nozzle that got me in the ballpark, but I may run a speed dial for the pump so I can tune it from the cockpit (seems as though most are doing this?).

I'm not sure what percent mix I'll run as I want to utilize this as a fuel supplement as well, it should make well over 500 rwhp and I don't want to use any bigger than my 42lb injectors in-case it gets close to 550rwhp or so.


Good idea to bring this up to Bob. I've been on the Corral for almost 5 years now and this was unheard of back then (at least to us), and this subject has grown like a weed in the last 6 months! I'm sure if we asked some of the Turbo 3.8 guys to pop in every now and then they'd be more than happy to keep things going.
 
Blown93LX:

The nozzles at www.mcmaster.com are exactly the same nozzles as what came with my SMC kit. There is a fine screen filter on the new ones, this was removed on the nozzle that came from the SMC kit.

We can move this over to the Power Adder section of the corral and leave these guys be. When we start doing most of the chatting amoungst ourselves it's probably best to show some repect and take it somewhere else.

Ed
 
Ed, it's good to have you posting here! You are the first person (that I can remember) to indicate he was tuning with a wide band 0-2. No suprise in that considering the cost.

A lot of us tune until we begin to see knock, then back off. Problenm is a lot of scan tools only read knock every second, or so. It is easy to have knock you don't hear, and actualy be doing some damage to the engine without realizing it.

Question...Does the 0-2 respond to very small changes in fuel pressure, and boost? Just how sensetive is it?

Also, where did you get it, and what was the cost.?

Thanks in advance! :)
 
Originally posted by Turbo__Tim
Ed, it's good to have you posting here! You are the first person (that I can remember) to indicate he was tuning with a wide band 0-2. No suprise in that considering the cost.

A lot of us tune until we begin to see knock, then back off. Problenm is a lot of scan tools only read knock every second, or so. It is easy to have knock you don't hear, and actualy be doing some damage to the engine without realizing it.

Question...Does the 0-2 respond to very small changes in fuel pressure, and boost? Just how sensetive is it?

Also, where did you get it, and what was the cost.?

Thanks in advance! :)
Click to expand...


Whats a Wide Band O2 Sensor? How is it different from a normal O2 Sensor?
 
A wide band 02 is temperature compensated so that the f/a reported is the same for a given mixture no matter the exhaust temperature. It also is linear from one end of its range to the other. The narrow band sensor used by most oem applications is only accurate about it's midpoint and has no compensation for exhaust temp changes. They are pretty much useless for wot tuning. Heck, they are useless for wot tuning.

You all can keep the discussion here as many of us are interested in such things. :)
 
Glad to see the positive repsonse from you guys. I hope to return the favor someday.

I dont' know the sample rate of the MSD knock guard that I use but if I get the sensitivity too high I can see and hear almost every cylinder popping! At least the one nearest the sensor. So the jury is still out on how good that is. Sensitivity seems pretty critical between detonation and normal vibrations.

The wideband on the other hand has been extremely useful. I have about $200 into it and seems to work wonderfully. It's a Do-it-yourself construction project around the old Lean-Burn Honda O2 sensor. Which is the same sensor many much more expensive widebands use. They only charge a lot more for it.

There are two DIY-WB projects, one american and one australian. IMHO the australian kit is the best setup but a bit harder to assemble. The accuracy is supposed to be within .1 of the expensive stuff, which is well within what I need. I have no reason to doubt this based comparing my dyno time and what I see on the display. SO FAR... it also seems to handle the W/A kit just fine. It helped me figure out that the nozzle I was using was way too big. I can now actually target a F/A mixture with the nozzle size and pump speed. Range is 10.0 to free air.

Read the page closely, everything you'll need is either linked to or on the page itself. Even a source for the sensors.

Mines been in close to a month and works wonderfully so far. What would really round the setup off would be an EGT gauge, but I'm not going to do that to my nice new ceramic coated headers. :)

Hope that helps,

Ed
 
Don't let that number fool you! That's probably australian dollars. I got mine new in two days for about $120. Check out thepartsbin.com link.

If it was $600 bucks I wouldn't have one either! :)

Crap! I didn't notice I forget to post the link. Whata dork! Sorry.

Ed
 
Ed you are not a dork, not yet anyway! :)

I feel like a dork, because I checked today and the price for that is what approx. what you said.

Hmmm, makes you wonder what they will sell the final, assembled kit for...
 
The assembled kit thing is new. I can't say what other folks time is worth. I know it took one night to build the FMD, two nights to do the WB board and one other just building the wiring harness for it. I also spent another night or two dorking around with it in different cars and figuring out how and where to put in my car. I'm sure I could do the kits quicker but fatuige affects quality.

I'm not sure of the update rate. I think it's in the docs somewhere. I'll look. But it's good enough to get a glance at it every now and then and it looks to keep up pretty well. My car is making around 400 rwhp and has 4.10s with a 5 speed. I don't get long to look so I ended up mounting it on top of the dash over the steering wheel. Also the floating led responds almost instantly where the digital display had a small lag, but it's so small it's hardly noticable. In fact faster would be too fast to read at a glance.

Only drawback I have found is that the display takes a minute to warm up in really cold weather. Big deal.

I have an over the shoulder camera mount, maybe I'll take a quick video of it working this weekend.

Ed
 
How are you guys mounting the mcmaster nozzles into the pipe (or manifold)? And how are you connecting the water line to the nozzle? I have a very ghetto setup right now and I'm trying to see if there is a cleaner way to mount and feed them. Thanks!
 
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