Water injection

obi_waynne

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A3 1.4 TFSI 150 COD
I have been reading up on water injection systems and it seems a good way to prevent knock and allowing the engine to run with higher octane fuel. Has anyone actually fitted this to their cars? Does it make a BIG difference?

Are there any drawbacks to water injection systems? Does it have to be injected at the point of fuel injection or can a mist be taken in near the air filter?
 
Why would anyone want to squirt water into their engine? It seems mad to me. Cars dont run on water :lol:
 
there was definately an advantage on carburator and early injection, (like having an intercooler on a boosted car, it cools down the intake charge, therefore a more dense fuel/air mixture) but with modern ecu's i'm not sure if there would be any benefit
 
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there is a benifit but your talking silly power. seen a kit for impreza sti.
for the kit to work efficiantly the engine has to be kicking out 400+ bhp
 
If you don't fancy spraying water into engine, then try spraying it over intercooler. This will cool intake charge resulting in denser air allowing more fuel to be injected. Spraying over radiator also helps in heavy/stationary traffic conditions. Trigger can be either manual or automatic. You can also use carbon dioxide or nitrous (these, being very cold, work better but are more expensive to re-fill)
 
That would seem to be more sensible for a street application - thanks for the tip Old-Git.
 
Why would anyone want to squirt water into their engine? It seems mad to me. Cars dont run on water :lol:

You must not know the fact that water is produced during combustion already.

Look something like this for each 100 gallons of gasoline burned diesels are similar, If you don't believe me then feel free to look it up. Your worring about adding 63ml/min of water to a engine that is making gallons and gallon of it.

90-120 gallons of water
3 to 10 gallons of unburned gasoline
½ to 2 pounds of soot
¼ to 1 pound of resins and varnishes
1 to 4 pounds of nitrogen and sulfur acids
6 to 10 ounces of insoluble lead salts (if leaded gasoline is used)
1 to 2 ounces of hydrochloric and hydrobromic acids.
 
Thanks OG. Its gaining popularity from what I can make out. Researched article coming up..... watch this space.
 
HI Lads,

Haven't been on for a while but just saw this post, What/Alcohol Injection has underlying benefits that you may of overlooked!

Water/Alcohol Injection is a good systerm for high performance applications;

1: This system helps take charge/combustion chamber temp away allowing for less chance of detonation and short bursts of higher boost to be run, This is the point that you have talked about,

2: This is the not so broadcasted fact, but i will try and explain it!! Your injection water into your cylinder in a atomised state, This water then hit the heat of the engine and as it is in such small form evaporates, Now water is made up out of two part Hydrogen and One part oxygen, Now the Oxygen is broken from the Hydrogen and works as a catalyst for the flame front creating better performance, Remember that you inject thousand of molecules in to the cylinder,

'Every little Helps'
 
Thanks ACE! Good observation.

Do we inject water into the cylinders, mix it with the fuel in the manifold or inject it upstream of the air filter for best results?
 
Hi Wayne,

There are different ways you can inject it, My prefered way and depending on the quality of the kit is to have it inject in the inlet manifold on the headers, One per cylinder or as a fifth injector, I would normally inject in the direction of flow as it is being atomised via the injector,

What i can do for anyone wanting to do this is i can weld boses on to the manifold, drill and tap them for the injectors or drill them for push in injectors, If anyone wants this done please let me know

I forgot to add that Hydrogen is also a flammable gas !!!
 
I've been washing my hair with an explosive substance - no wonder it's all dropped out! :lol:
 
Good one wayne!!! :D

What i find amazing is that oxygen is a catalyst, Hydrogen is a flammable gas yet when the two are mixed it becomes the best way to put out fires!!!!!
 
out in SA ive seen cars using water injection systems and it works well. its more of an anti-knock system but comes with bonuses such as cooling intake charge(more power) . it works well on turbo or high compression motors nd can even squirt methanol
 
i run a 30/70 mix of methanol / water and to get the best results out of it you have to map it in, it does have properties when just fitted but if you map it in then the benefits of the octain boost from the methanol coupled with the denser combustion from the water makes for some good gains on high bhp aplications
 
:eek: The engine knock sensor would not be able to compensate for that very easily! Some water injection systems have a controller which will back off the timing a little when the reserviour dries up. You might get away with partial throttle as a get you home measure but you should at least have a gauge or warning light. ;)

Is it sprayed before or after the turbo? Pre turbo does not cut out so suddenly as the moisture in the air pipes acts as a buffer. After turbo it is a lot more sudden as the vapourisation is almost instant.
 
on mine the water meth will only get switched on for the strip, theres no need for it on the road as there arent many roads were it would be possible to open the car up to 2bar boost let alone want to. the dual maps will know the difference between running with and without automaticaly when the injection is switch on. it will also be mapped to fire only at a set boot and temp setting which the ecu will control and cater for, anyone that runs up a strip without checking the car fully has got to be mad so no need to worry about running out of water at any point with mine.

there is a gadget you can get from some places i know demon tweaks do it which is a lead of sensors that light up an led on youtr dash as the bottle gets low, id imagine it wouldnt be too hard on a decent ecu to wire it in as a fail safe to stop the map switching or to conect the led to an adible alarm

my injector is set up just infront of the throttle body in the intercooler pipe and wont fire till the engine hits 2bar

and james ( econ ) thanks for the quality input lol
 
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Hi, I am a newbie here..
I also have made a homemade water injection system for my car (1993 Nissan Cefiro A31). It was pressurized by an R/O pump at 120 PSI and controlled by a solenoid.the result is good. I have gained 15 HP more power. seems that my fuel consumption also decreasing slightly.
so, water at precise amount squirted into intake chamber make you gain more power at cost of only water.. it was 1 year already since I install the WI system, and i notice no corrosion at all. just make sure you fill demineralized water into the reservoir. the spark plugs also always clean as new. worth to try!
 
Got any pics of your setup raymondst? Are you injecting directly at the same point as the fuel or up/down stream of it? Does it have a cut off if the water level drops?
 
I have picture of my setup on Mitsubishi Lancer..I am injecting into the intake planum, with a mist nozzle (30 micron size)
Yes, it has cut off and an alarm to remind if the water level is below 1/4 tank. i have a very simple diagram of the water level indicator.
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not at all. these picture was taken from my friend's website, saft7.com. It is an indonesian 'tips and tricks' for automotive website. I have my friend to take picture of my water injection set up. be my guest, use it.just erase the word saft7.com at the corner please..
 
and this is a small diagram (so simple) of water level indicator/alarm. just modify the electrode position in the reservoir.\
when the water level is low, the buzzer starts to buzz. if needed, change the buzzer with a LED light, and place a relay to the connection to cut off the system
water_level_indicator
 
Water injection,

alone does nothing to raise power. An engine will lose power if running at the same rpm and load when water is injected, boosted or not.
This was determined way back in the 1930's and they came to the conclusion that to allow higher resistance to detonation in boosted (supercharged) engines distilled water and methanol were mixed together 60/40 and subsequently as 50/50.

Mixing with methanol had the effect of lessening the amount of power lost which also brought cylinder head temps down to allow higher boost pressures than could be tolerated in the same engines without WM50. It's known as Anti Detonation Fluid, -ADI nowadays, because that is what it does. It's not a power booster in itself.

The benefits are that it keeps the combustion chamber very clean as there will be no carbon build-up. It also allows engines to run on really low octane fuel without suffering knock and can help with economy & emissions.

The other consequences are that water is, as everyone knows, very corrosive especially to engine components. It also kills O2 sensors quite quickly. The amount of extra maintenance required to carry out corrosion prevention regularly in a normal production engine is not worth the hassle frankly.

http://www.snowperformance.net/

Here is a brilliant link that says it all...........

http://www.rbracing-rsr.com/waterinjection.html

Reading around this website proves Americans have a sense of humour (esp. see tab "eat sh*t") here: http://www.rbracing-rsr.com/
 
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Water injection,

alone does nothing to raise power. An engine will lose power if running at the same rpm and load when water is injected, boosted or not.
This was determined way back in the 1930's and they came to the conclusion that to allow higher resistance to detonation in boosted (supercharged) engines distilled water and methanol were mixed together 60/40 and subsequently as 50/50.

Mixing with methanol had the effect of lessening the amount of power lost which also brought cylinder head temps down to allow higher boost pressures than could be tolerated in the same engines without WM50. It's known as Anti Detonation Fluid, -ADI nowadays, because that is what it does. It's not a power booster in itself.

The benefits are that it keeps the combustion chamber very clean as there will be no carbon build-up. It also allows engines to run on really low octane fuel without suffering knock and can help with economy & emissions.

The other consequences are that water is, as everyone knows, very corrosive especially to engine components. It also kills O2 sensors quite quickly. The amount of extra maintenance required to carry out corrosion prevention regularly in a normal production engine is not worth the hassle frankly.

http://www.snowperformance.net/

Here is a brilliant link that says it all...........

http://www.rbracing-rsr.com/waterinjection.html

Reading around this website proves Americans have a sense of humour (esp. see tab "eat sh*t") here: http://www.rbracing-rsr.com/

well you are right sir.thats why i also use piggyback computer just to do the rest with the engine,at least, the cooler the intake, the denser the air,and the more oxygen sucked into.
in my opinion, if we use distilled water and the alcohol/water mix there will be no corrosion.
 
where I can find a water alcohol injection system which vary the amount of water injected into the cylinders as a function of the rpm and has a injector for each cylinder?
 
Good day! Has anybody here used methanol/water injection for CRDI/Turbo Diesel engine or equivalents? If so, what are the benefits/drawbacks? I'm planning to install Devil's Own meth injection system in a few days...would like to gauge if I'm doing the right thing...

Thanks in advance!

More power to TC!
 
What are your aims and aspirations? Are you running a lot of boost? I'm not sure I'd bother with a diesel engine that uses direct injection as I find it hard to see the benefits on this setup unless you're running something pretty mad.
 
Hi, running a 50/50 water methanol mix on my PT Cruiser crd when dragging it. The intake temp drops 3 or 4 degree below outside temp as the intercooler only works once your really rolling with air going through. Cannot be used to cool the outside of the intercooler when drag racing as water will drip on the track. Is an 80bhp incease mad enough?
 
Greetings silversurfer and welcome to our TorqueCars forum :)

My only experience of water methanol injection is through the experiences of some old Saab 900 owners, this had mixed reviews o_O
 

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