Any one try water injection?

Here is aquote to show the difference in power gained from water injection.

 

Back 20 years ago I worked across the street from a FLAPS. Head counter guy was pretty good and ran H2o injection on his 3/4 ton Chevy diesel. It was lifted, 36s, regeared. Stock Chevy diesel, worked well for him. IIRC, he did mix and alchohol or something in his supply tank in the winter as water didn't flow too well below 32* Don't know if it ever lived up to his expectations for more power though. Seemed to me he was always tinkering with it.

 

Now all we have to do is find a way to meter the flow and adapt it to our Hurricane engines and turn them into Typhoon engines.R)

I would be willing to experiment with this.

 

all you need is some of these mounted in your manifold, a reservoir and a source of pressure. super-atomized agua for your every need

http://www.allmist.com/10-24Dnozzle.html

 

Okay - forgive me for the dumb question, but can someone give me a really simple explanation of how a water-injection system works?

The only water injection I've ever heard of ended in hydrolock and a broken connecting rod...

Surely you're not talking about squirting water into a cylinder, are you?

 

No, squirting it into the carb to be burned with the fuel and air charge. The water is shot in vapor form, mixes with the fuel, cools the charge and burns with the gas. Mixed with metanol in a 50-50 ratio the engine will make more power and control combustion and pre ignition. It is old technology and like I said Edelbrock built an electronic one back in the late 70's called varajection that used rpm and throttle load to vary the amount of water. The varajection was laid to rest when we came up with variable timing on the cars to retard timing when pre combustion (knock) was detected.

 

I would have thought that mixing water in with the gas would lower it's combustability... (not doubting you, just thinking out loud)

 

No just effectively raises its octane, so to speak.
Like I said this is old technology dating back to the 30's or so, like the post above it gave the Corsair another 350hp , and allowed the p-51 to reach its incredible speed in dives. Gas mixed with water still burns no matter what. In an engine you have the compression to contend with and thats why water injection was so big in the late 70's, bad gas and high compression, especially on 7 year old cars (at that time) that were designed to run on 98-100 octane fuel and then you couldn't get anything higher than 91-92, so to drive your Hemi powered monster you ran water injection.

 

If I could get my :v6: up to 2100 bhp I think I would be satisfied without the extra 350.

 

forced induction could do it. Not sure how long though, maybe a second or two R)

 

Saab was working with water injection but they were trying to achieve better fuel economy. They were actually injecting fluid from the window washer reservoir. Check out the article…

http://www.aquamist.co.uk/dc/coollinks3/index/rally/saab/press/press.html

 

So it looks like that they have the electronics figured out. On my carbed vehicles, I wonder if I could use a system utilizing a washer bottle, vac signal on high end vac port, an electronically controlled solenoid to open and close the water line valve at given engine speed/demands, and a metered orifice?

 

From what I've seen, this is/was the simple way to do it. The only down side to using engine vacuum to draw the water is that you get your best vac signal at idle, and worst under WOT. Cruising, it would work ok. This type of setup *does* work, it just seems like it wouldn't work as well as a system using a pump under pressure. Regulating that pressure/water flow is the hard part. Last night on my way home from work I was wondering to myself if you couldn't take the booster venturi out of the primary side of a Q-Jet or somthing and put it in the airstream...sort of a carb in a carb. With the booster they use in that carb it wouldn't take much vacuum to get it to spray water. And the jet in it would atomize it pretty well...

 

Funny thing is, after posting this and driving home for lunch, I was thinking about that. I then thought of the pressure required. Then got to thinking of using something like a NOS plate. It would have an orifice for each venturi, like you said, regulating the pressure would be the hard part, it would have to vary with engine demand and RPM.

Anyone have a Laptop and a Program to "Donate" to me for the cause?R)

 

I was also thinking of a NOS plate type setup under the carb as one solution. I read an article from the late 1970s by a guy who had tapped his smog pump for a pressure source, since it varies with engine RPM. He used a valve of some sort to reduce the pressure coming off it though. Not much help if your engine is pre-emissions though. Maybe hook up some other sort external water pump driven off the engine, like the external oil pump used on some race motors. Thoes are big $$ though.

 

Saab was using a washer bottle for their experiments, so I assume that they were also using a washer pump.?!:? You won't need to have any serious pressure since the water will be injected into the intake air stream. I bet that a regulator of some sorts can be devised. I was thinking of a switch that attaches to the carburetor, that when at W.O.T. it will activate the switch, inturn will activate a solenoid, which will turn on/off the water flow.

 

Hmmmm. Seems like a washer pump would work. I was thinking that maybe you could use a tiny ball valve hooked up to the carb linkage, so it would open as the throttle opened. Valve fully open at WOT. That would work if a). you can find a ball valve small enough, and that turns easily enough not to require changing throttle return springs, and b). the demand for water is linear, not curved...I would think the ammount of water going through the valve would be a linear increase (?) could be wrong...I'm not any expert here, just guessing.

There are already carb mounted switches for nitrous that open the NO2/fuel solonoids at WOT, so that wouldn't be a problem if you only want a wide open water jet. I wouldn't think you would even need a solonoid for that...a washer pump probably draws such a small current you could run it directly through the switch. If not, just wire in a relay.
There should be a couple of way to vary the water stream, either through pressure regulation or changing the jet size. There are lots of regulators out there.

Just had a thought...wonder if you could hook a potentiometer up to the carb to vary the voltage to the washer pump, thus giving control of the speed of the pump and flow of the water? Sort of like a throttle position sensor...

Just watch...my neighbors are going to wonder why I have a humidifier jammed under my hood hooked up to my air intake with a piece of dryer hose :twisted:

 

This seems like a fascinating idea to me. Does anyone think it might improve fuel economy too? With the price of gas these days, that's something often on my mind. I realize that as said earlier, it isn't snake oil, but it does seem to have some limited benefits. I suppose the added moisture would rot the exhaust piping more quickly, but then again perhaps not if it got hot enough before cutting the motor.

I'm wondering if an electric fuel pump hooked to a pressure regulating valve, like those used on air compressor applications (only smaller), and then adjusted as needed by the throttle linkage would work. That valve would have to be mounted (don't ask how) as to not interfere with the carb's throttle, or bind up the linkage. Then another tube would run out the other end of the valve to a nozzle as discussed earlier.

Well, that's my conception of this. The electric fuel pump may be overkill. Anyway, I do like the basic idea of having water injection; thanks for bringing this up!

 

Sounds like some serious engineering going on here. I once knew a guy who's fuel pump went out, so he put gas in the washer resevoir, cut the hose from the sprayer and stuck it in the carb. I thought he was smart. Yall are on a different level altogether.

 

A buddy of mine had a fuel pump go out and tried to limp home by having someone else steer while he dumped gas down the carb from a can. I don't think they got very far. I don't remember, but there may have been alcohol involved. I don't think he was smart R)