Answers to meth/water injection questions

[Innovative Tuning]

206er had some good questions for me about my meth injection setup on one of my legacy turbos and I thought I'd make a thread to share the answers with all of you. I get asked some of the same questions relatively often now that meth injection is becoming more popular.

My mod list for background on the car in question:
Legacy SS (my current daily)
VF39 (stock US STi turbo)
Custom 3" turboback exhaust
stock STi bypass valve
Napa plug wires
boost cut defender
turbologic MBC
Coolingmist stage 2 meth injection kit with 1 gal tank upgrade
I run 21 psi peak tapering off towards redline daily on 93 octane with meth injection.
there's more, but not engine related...

I'm curious about your methanol injection setup, got a few questions if you dont mind.
so you arent running an intercooler, just the injection?
where did you get yours and how much did it cost?
where do you get the methanol?
you ever run it with water?
likes/dislikes of this setup?
thanks,
Jeremy

Jeremy:

I have no intercooler. I use the stock turbo to throttle body pipe with a modified recirc. hose for the stock STi bypass valve I'm using to hold the extra boost. The stock legacy turbo valve leaks like crazy even at pretty low boost levels. Without pressure on the top valve it opens at around 6 psi and the STi one is good to around 19 psi. With pressure on top (normal operation) the legacy one still leaks at low boost levels but the STi one is good for mid 20's or so.

I use a coolingmist stage 2 kit with the gallon tank upgrade. My shop sells the kit I use for 469. This includes a tunable progressive controller with an onboard MAP sensor. I use the custom tunabilty to make my own meth pump duty cycle per MAP table with the included software. This keeps my air/fuel in line during part throttle, spoolup, and WOT.

We sell meth for $3/gallon which seems to be about average. It's generally much cheaper at a race shop than a home improvement store like Home Depot, etc. The range seems to be 2.50-5/gallon depending on where you get it.

I've tuned a ton of cars with water, 50/50, and straight meth depending on their build and use. Straight meth generally doesn't produce optimal results, but I'm always using my own cars as test beds for various things and I wanted to do something different. On most cars I tune, 50/50 works better than straight meth since they're not using it as a fuel persay, just for cooling.

Likes :
huge gain in power

much more consistant power from the lack of heat soak

saved me a ton of money in injectors, rails, fuel pump, engine management system (This car is set up for a $1006 challenge...a race where the cost of car and total build is under $1006. Yes about half of the Grassroots challenge amount. To be clear I didn't skip engine management because I thought it wouldn't help. I'd love to have a standalone ECU in the car. Engine management system tuning is what I do for a living, but this is just my budget beater. Using the stock ECU has worked pretty well and the engine is still in tip top shape).

I pop the hood and the car looks totally stock except for my downpipe and the STi bypass valve which looks stock to those who don't know the Legacy SS one is black plastic.

I don't need race gas for the car to be quick enough to have some fun.

Meth is only used while in boost so I only use around 1 gallon per tank and a half of gas during city driving and almost none during highway driving. Most of my customers use less than this.

Dislikes:
You can't run meth at certain events such as autocross. I usually do one event a year and I'd have to run water injection only. This isn't a big deal for me since I have 4 other legacy turbos, but those that autox should be aware of this. Meth is fine at the local rallyX, but not Club or ProRally (water only). Meth is fine at some road racing and drag events, but not others. Sometimes it changes your classing as well.


Notes:
At a rallyx or similar event you can go through a lot of meth since you're in boost a lot. Not a problem, just size your tank properly and/or bring extra with you.

I change my spark plugs once an oil change to make sure I don't start getting misfires. Luckily it's not a WRX and this is super easy. I use regular NGK copper plugs. This is related to running 20+ psi more than running meth, but they go hand in hand.

Get a good clutch. My ACT heavy duty clutch is spanked from the huge torque jump I get now when I hit 21 psi on the VF39 at around 3200 rpm. The clutch still holds on the street, but at rallyx the on boost/off boost transitions and jumps in torque got it slipping pretty badly. I'm putting a 6 puck disc in to stop that.

I'm going to switch to 50/50 water/meth and put the stock fuel system back to normal in the next few days to compare. I'll report back with my results.


If anyone has any questions please fire away. Before anyone gets the wrong idea, I didn't make this thread as an argument that meth injection is better than having an intercooler. That's just how I'm using it on this particular car.

-Mike

[Carbix]

Nice... well done helps out in so many ways. befor your thread i knew nothing of meth... now i know lol thanks.

One thing i would like to ask, is this kind of set up hard to install?

is it something a noob could doo?

can you run both intercooler and meth? at the same time.

how much power can be given from a meth set up 15-30hp?

[Innovative Tuning]

Nice... well done helps out in so many ways. befor your thread i knew nothing of meth... now i know lol thanks.

One think i would like to ask, is this kind of set up hard to install?

is it something a noob could doo?

can you run both intercooler and meth? at the same time.

how much power can be given from a meth set up 15-30hp?

One major thing I should mention. When deciding what to inject remember:
water cools more than meth
water is not a fuel, but meth is
meth is around 100 octane
water freezes so if you're in a climate where it gets around freezing use meth to keep it from freezing
meth boils at a relatively low temperature so don't put the tank in the engine bay. I always put it somewhere in the trunk.

It's not hard to install. It will take some time...around 5-6 hours to do it properly. You need to wire power and ground, mount the tank and pump. If you can handle that you can handle the rest which is just hooking fittings together and running lines. The only other part is mounting the nozzle which can be done a variety of ways depending on what you're installing it into.

Yes the majority of new builds we do on street cars use intercoolers and water/meth injection together.

The power gains really depend on the rest of your setup and how you want to use the injection system. On a 35R powered STi we see around 60 whp on pump/meth vs. pump alone on a car that already has a good intercooler. On my legacy turbo the gain was even larger. I wasn't comfortable running over 12 psi non-intercooler before the meth kit and the charge was hot at that point. Now I'm running around 10 extra pounds of boost with cooler denser charge. Gains on other setups can be much smaller. If you have a particular setup in mind let me know and I can try to estimate it for you.

Remember that you need to tune your setup to take advantage of meth/water injection. If you take a stock WRX running 93/94 octane and add water injection to it you will only lose power. If you tune for it you will gain power so there's a big difference.

-Mike

[Legacy777]

Just a quick question/comment.

You mention you're using a stock STi BPV to hold the extra boost. The BPV is just a valve, so if it's closed and in tact, I don't think there'd be any problem with the legacy valve holding that pressure.....

[Innovative Tuning]

The stock one leaks heavily above 14 psi of boost. All BPV's and BOV's have their limit. The limit on the stock plastic unit just happens to be really low. I could tell it was leaking from the way the car was behaving, but then we pressure tested the intake system to confirm it.

[206er]

so you "tune" by just upping the boost? and do you go by egt's or afr to tell when you are safe? is the afr affected the same by gas and meth or not? how well does the stock ecu deal with the extra fuel?

[555BCTurbo]

The methanol system acts kinda like a 5th injector, independent from the ECU...because I am sure his MAF is railing at around 14 psi with the VF39, and he mentioned that meth is around 100 octane, so when it is injected it will dumb down the octane a bunch, and make the AFR's a bit more friendly


Do you have a wideband in the car? I would be interested to know what kinda AFR's you achieve with meth and 23 psi

[BAC5.2]

Just a quick question/comment.

You mention you're using a stock STi BPV to hold the extra boost. The BPV is just a valve, so if it's closed and in tact, I don't think there'd be any problem with the legacy valve holding that pressure.....

Mine leaked above 14psi also.

Why not use winshield washer fluid? It's cheap, and it works great.

One of the major racers we work with runs 110 octane race gas at time attack events spraying washer fluid with it. Using that setup, he made more power than he did on C16, and his fuel costs for the events dropped SIGNIFICANTLY.

He made 654whp on C16, and he made 688whp on 110 and washer fluid. This was on an Element Hydra with Hydramist (it was Element Tuning's black 02 wrx time-attack car).

On a stock STi motor, there was a 40whp jump using washer fluid. Stock motor, GT35R, 430whp on 93 octane. 472whp on 93 octane with water. The runs were done back to back, the car never came off the dyno. That was an Aquamist system.

Have you tried it? I think the washer fluid he was using was some no-name special at under $2 a gallon.

[Innovative Tuning]

so you "tune" by just upping the boost? and do you go by egt's or afr to tell when you are safe? is the afr affected the same by gas and meth or not? how well does the stock ecu deal with the extra fuel?

I use my wideband with logging software (looking at lambda of course since I'm mixing fuels) and the progressive controller to tune the fuel.

Methanol and gasoline have different stoich values, but if you tune by lambda rather than air/fuel it doesn't affect the way you tune the fuel.

I'm leaving the timing up to the stock ECU so clearly it's not as optimal as with a standalone as I mentioned earlier, but it's been consistant so I have no reason to believe it's unsafe as long as the air/fuel mix is safe.

Why not use winshield washer fluid? It's cheap, and it works great.

If there was a significant difference in cost I'd consider it, but 99.98% pure meth is 3 bucks a gallon. If I dilute it with water to get it down to the ratio of washer fluid it costs about the same as washer fluid. I'd rather not run the coloring and window cleansers and crap through my piping and engine.

Also you have to remember in my case I'm using the meth as a fuel. Phil is expecting it to evaporate before it reaches the combustion chamber. He's running far less volume than I and only 20%-30% concentration of meth.

[Innovative Tuning]

The methanol system acts kinda like a 5th injector, independent from the ECU...because I am sure his MAF is railing at around 14 psi with the VF39, and he mentioned that meth is around 100 octane, so when it is injected it will dumb down the octane a bunch, and make the AFR's a bit more friendly


Do you have a wideband in the car? I would be interested to know what kinda AFR's you achieve with meth and 23 psi

I'd rather not say specifically since I've found many people will go out and run my afr's on their car thinking their car is close enough to mine that it will work out for them. I'm not saying you'd do that, but enough people will see this that someone will try it.

I will say that the lambda is about what i'd run if my car had a nice big FMIC and race gas at this boost level, so it's working like a champ. My intake manifold is COLD after beating on the car. After running a lap at RallyX everything in the engine bay is smoking hot except the intake system which is still cool to the touch.

And my maf maxed below 10 psi on this turbo with the exhaust I have.

[Innovative Tuning]

I decided to make a little FAQ. Advanced users will notice I'm heavily simplifying the answers so everyone understands what I'm talking about.


Why is water/meth injection something I should consider?
It can be used to increase margin of safety and/or make more power (after tuning) by cooling the intake charge and decreasing the chance of detonation.

What does a water/meth kit consist of?
A standard kit includes a high pressure pump, lines, fittings, and one or more nozzle(s).
The tank or reservoir is sometimes included.
Some kits also include controllers and sensors which allow greater control of how much fluid is injected under different conditions.
Others include warning devices, such as low level detectors to warn you if your fluid level is low in your tank. Clog nozzle detectors and flow sensors can warn you if your system is not getting proper flow to the nozzle.

How does it help?
Gas, water and methanol all remove heat during vaporization. Running richer air/fuel ratios helps cylinder cooling to a point and then you get diminishing returns in cooling and lose power, plus you run the risk of getting over rich misfires. Water and methanol both remove considerably more heat than gasoline so they provide greater cooling without having to run the car overly rich. Since heat is a major cause of detonation, cooling the intake charge and combustion chamber temps helps prevent detonation.

What should I inject?
water cools more than meth, so if cooling is most important to you, use a higher percentage of water.
water is not a fuel, but meth is. If you need more fueling from the kit, use more meth. (meth is a pretty good fuel as well at 100 octane).
water freezes so if you're in a climate where it gets around freezing use meth to keep it from freezing 25% meth to water or higher concentrations shouldn't freeze in western, NY).
meth boils at a relatively low temperature so don't put the tank in the engine bay. I always put it somewhere in the trunk.

50/50 water/meth is a good mix for most setups. It won't freeze, it's easy to mix in that ratio and you get some of the properties of each.

notes: Once you're tuned for a certain mixture and flow, don't change it without getting retuned first! This is like changing your injectors or fuel without retuning.

Methanol is not allowed at certain events including autocross. It IS allowed at rallyx and tsd rallies, but not Club and Pro Rally. It's allowed in some drag and road racing classes, but not others, so check class rules.

Where can I get methanol and how much does it cost?
Some race shops and chemical supply stores.
3-6 dollars/gallon depending on where you get it.

How long will the install take?
This really depends on how complex the kit is and how much room you have to work with etc. Most kits with a trunk mount take around 4-6 hours to install and some with more failsafes, sensors, and wiring it into a standalone ECU, for instance, can take up to 10 hours. It's not hard, it's just time consuming to do it all the right way.

Can you run both an intercooler and water/meth? (at the same time)
Absolutely. This will further increase cooling in addition to what your intercooler is already doing.

Can you use water/meth injection without an intercooler?
Yes. Water/meth injection can be using on naturally aspirated vehicles as well as forced induction setups without an intercooler. I'm currently running my daily driver this way at 21 psi, but this is not for everyone. If you're unsure if this type of setup is best for you, just ask me.

Why aren't you using an intercooler?
From the outside my car looks stock except for the muffler.
When you pop the hood, there's still nothing to see except the downpipe.
Cost/Benefit - my intake charge is cooler than what's possible with an air/air intercooler alone and meth kits are relatively cheap. They're also universal so I can take it out of this car and put it in something else any time I want.
Better spoolup. My charge pipe from turbo to throttle body is about 6 inches long versus a few feet for a top mount that would heat soak all the time or around 12 feet for a front mount which is a lot of piping to fill, plus the core.

Note: THIS IS NOT FOR EVERYONE!!! If done wrong this can cause serious engine damage or even death!!! Well...probably not death but you get the idea.

How much power will I gain from adding a water/meth kit to my current setup?
This really depends on the setup and how it's tuned. Some cars will benefit some from installation without tuning (generally from being octane limited) and others will lose power. Custom tuning the injection to your vehicle is key to safety and getting the most out of it. I've seen gains from 30 to over 100 hp from water/meth kits after tuning. Again if you want to know how this will work on your setup, just ask me.

Is the meth/water injection kit going to be spraying constantly?
No. Most kits only spray above a certain MAP (manifold pressure), MAF (airflow) reading, or throttle position. Boosted applications generally only spray while in boost.

How much meth/water am I going to go through?
This depends on the amount you're injecting and how often you're injecting it. The average for my customers is about 2-4 quarts per 1-1.5 tanks of gas during city driving. At a rallycross or other event where you're wide open almost the whole time you can use a LOT more fluid. This is not a problem, just size your tank properly and/or bring extra with you.

Is my vehicle ready for water/meth injection and is it right for me?
This is a tough one to provide a blanket answer for.
If you're at the limit of your driveline's capacity then probably not. For example, if your clutch is barely holding now, adding more power isn't going to help until you upgrade the clutch.
If you're naturally aspirated, unless you have a standalone or fully tunable setup that can be used to advance ignition timing and tune fueling this probably won't help you.
If your vehicle is purposely built for racing in certain classes/events, make sure it's legal before using it.
If you're running a forced induction street car, chances are water/meth injection will benefit you, but you can always just ask me to be sure.

How much should I inject?
This depends on a lot of things, but the main factor is how much cooling your setup requires. Some vendors have charts of flow per HP to use as guidelines, but oftentimes you have to deviate from their recommendations to best match flow to your particular needs. I can help with this one as well.

Note: One of the nice things about having a kit that uses a progressive controller is you can get a single semi-large nozzle and vary flow through it for your needs so you can grow into it ias your setup changes over time.

What is a progressive controller?
A progressive controller increases flow as MAP (manifold pressure), MAF (airflow), or some other sensor indicates a greater need for injection. The most common example is a turbo/supercharged vehicle which sprays more meth/water as boost rises and the need for cooling increases.

How do you tune for water/meth injection to make more power?
Generally speaking, you tune for it similar to tuning for race gas.
1) Leaning the engine out (leaner lamda, not necessarily leaner afr - if you don't understand this, don't tune it yourself).
2) Advancing ignition timing
3) Increasing manifold pressure (more boost) or nitrous oxide injection.
I highly recommend leaving this tuning up to an experienced professional tuner such as myself to make sure you get the most out of your water/meth kit and to avoid engine damage.

I heard that sometimes meth injection pumps fail. Is that true?
While this used to be an issue on most kits and is still an issue on some, the ones we sell are 100% meth safe now and we haven't had a single issue.

Should I be using a progressively controlled kit?
The simple answer is yes you probably should since the flow comes on gradually rather than all at once. This way it's easier to tune for larger amounts of flow while keeping it seamless. You can also vary the flow rate of a given injector size using the controller rather than having to physically change injector size to change flow rate. The only downside is it costs a bit more than a kit that has on/off style activation.

If you're injecting a small amount of fluid as compared to the amount of standard fuel you're injecting for minor cooling and have no wish to change the amount of flow in the future, this may not be necessary. For example if you're injecting 2000cc of fuel and you add 300cc of water on top of that the change isn't dramatic. If you're injecting 1000cc of fuel and you suddenly dump an extra 500cc of water/meth on top of that the car my bog for a second. Using a progressive controller can smooth that out.

I'd say at least 95% of my customers use progressively controlled kits.



I hope this has been helpful to some of you and as you come up with more questions let me know so we can turn this into a nice FAQ.

-Mike

[BAC5.2]

Ahh, I missed that you were using it as a fuel.

That is DEFINATELY not for everyone.

Standard water injection is probably something for everyone, but definately not using it as a fuel.

Phil was really happy about the washerfluid and cam2 results. I haven't talked to him in a few weeks, but last I checked he had already set up his 06 with the Hydramist and is running washer fluid in it.

One thing I've noticed is constant use of water/meth injection with certain kits is not at all advised. So to those looking to buy, just call mike and order the kit he's using. Aquamist systems, for example, aren't designed to run all the time. Other systems, like the Hydramist, and the system Mike is using, apparently are designed to allow for constant usage.

[Psychoreo]

Does where you inject the meth make a huge differance (specifically for cooling)? Obviously if it's to close to the throttle body it may not evaporate, but I was thinking about running a small frontmount (my power goals aren't huge) and injecting either just prior to the FMIC or directly into the FMIC itself. Not too sure if that second one works or not, does anyone happen to have a cross section of a front mount lying around?

[Psychoreo]

Let me clarify my last post. Basically, does how far from the intake manifold you inject the meth have any significant play in the effectivness of the system?

[Innovative Tuning]

Does where you inject the meth make a huge differance (specifically for cooling)? Obviously if it's to close to the throttle body it may not evaporate, but I was thinking about running a small frontmount (my power goals aren't huge) and injecting either just prior to the FMIC or directly into the FMIC itself. Not too sure if that second one works or not, does anyone happen to have a cross section of a front mount lying around?

The sooner you inject it the more of the piping it will cool, just as you'd expect. I generally don't recommend spraying through an intercooler as over time it will corrode it. I haven't seen this happen in charge piping or the intake manifold.

To answer your question, I'd spray a bit after your intercooler assuming there's a decent spot to place a nozzle. Perhaps a few feet from the throttle body.

[Psychoreo]

Ok, that's basically what I was looking for. I wasn;t sure if injecting in or before an intercooler would provide better cooling due to the air volume in the intercooler. I'm really just looking for the effect of a large IC, but the space requirements of a small one. I'll take some pictures when I can.