Water injection

L

Leigh Wilson

Member
Fellow Frogger
Joined
Aug 11, 2002
Messages
80
Location
Tamworth
I have just fitted a water injection system to my 1.4l R10. Plan was spotted on the net. Very simple: cost about $5 to make. It is a new car! The effect is remarkable. I couldn't believe it, but it works just as was stated.

3 litres of water 70%/ethanol(metho) 30% (methanol is better)/a splask of hydrogen peroxide (used as rocket fuel in a concentrated state.)per tank of fuel. ie 5-10% ration to fuel. Hardest part is jetting the intake volume. Amazing the effect of a hammer on the tip of a syringe.(Took about 30 minutes to get it right.) That is so that it did not run rough at idle and increased water volume as revs increased.

The article I used was written by a New Zealander for the New Zealand Sporting Car Club.He cites an R10 (1108 cc)travelling at 50-55 mph gave 40-45 mpg (1/3 throttle). With water injection his fuel consumption went up to 53mpg at the same speed and throttle setting.

I know there are cynics out there, but $5 is not much for a bit of adventure. I am amazed at the difference.

If anyone is interested, I'll try to refind the web address of the article.
 
Here is the web address of the article I quoted.

<a href="http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman/mannject.html" target="_blank">http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman/mannject.html</a>

This article is not a scientific paper, but is very practical and interesting.
 
G'day

I seem to recall that 20-30 years ago you could get kits for these injection systems. They had a plate under the carby with an adjustable jet in it to set the mix ratio.

They never really took off with "normal folk" but were popular with hill-climbers etc. Just why they disappeared I can't remember but you'd reckon that if they really were as good as the promoters say they'd be on every car out there ?

Anyone with a real good memory ??

Bob
 
Hey Leigh,
Robert Mann's article For a NZ Car Club on water injection has been on my web site since it started
The alcohol is not essential to the system it does help with the cooling effect, but the added cost kills the cost savings, of the increased fuel economy. On my R10 i'm using tap water, for a 20 deg C drop in the blown inlet air/fuel charge.
dance dance dance
 
Sounds good! Any probs with water in the oil? I might even give it a go - what size needle did you start with, and would you recommend a smaller one (1289cc) since you had to squash yours?

Cheers

Stuey
 
Stuey,
I haven't had a problem with water in the oil the car dosen't do many klm's though, although being supercharged at 10lb boost would compound the problem if there were one, and any fuel saving would be insignificant as it guzzles 1litre per km of avgas. a_drink
The water jet i used was an air bleed from a 16TS Webber down draught, it looks like a No 60 drill size or there abouts

<small>[ 20 October 2002, 08:11 PM: Message edited by: Damien Gardner ]</small>
 
I heard (somewhere) this was bad for the valves... is that true?

If it really is this good, then why isn't everyone doing it? Why don't cars have two tanks, one for your petrol and one for your injector water :)

(I don't mean to sound like a skeptic, I'm just curious as to the long term implications.)
 
Hi,

Pleased to inform you that you are not the only skeptic in the world. Read the article I referred to. Do a general search on the web about water injection in combustion engines. Have you never wondered about the relationship between car manufacturers and the oil industry? Do you believe that every car is produced to perfect design and tolerance specifications? Why isn't every car using the Sarrich engine?

Yes Damien, I understand what you are saying however yours is the decision between performance and economy. The addition of methanol is certainly superior to ethenol (metho), and does significantly contribute to the impact of the water injection.Three litres of water/metho/H2O2 adds about $2 to the cost per 30 litres. Just add another cup of water if that is too expensive. Mind you methanol(if you can get it) has an octane rating of 115 and water is as good an octane booster as lead - but cleaner.

There are not many modifications that can be made to a car's performance that are clearly observable, particularly for $5.

If you have questions and have not read the article do so, most will be answered. Then DO NOT believe them - go to the web and do additional research.

No, it won't hurt your engine. Water is a by product of combustion.

Many combustion engines do right now use water injection as part of their design.

Maybe a water tank in addition to the petrol tank was just too much for car manufacturers who are litigation scared. Have you ever owned a Renault 750? How many times did you have to stop the garage attendant from putting petrol into the radiator intake? It may have nothing to do with suitablility or benefit but public convenience. Why do we have warning lights and not guages? Because ladies in the US couldn't read them and there was a consumer backlash. What do most enthusiasts do to warning lights? Replace them with a guage!

Be decisive, make your engine better, by adding water injection.

Wow! What have I unleashed?
 
I used water injection on my 404 wagon when I was working as a courier in Sydney...

It gave an improvement of about 1mpg or 1.5mpg.

Garry Willmington used to be a real protagonist of these things, sold heaps of them from his Luddenham workshop.

Many years ago, of course, Frank Kleinig sold them from his Burwood shop.

Biggest thing against everyday adoption, I think, is it's one more thing for people who really don't care about their cars to have to do... "Oh, and some water when you get petrol... open the bonnet." No sir... most people find it too much trouble.
 
Ray, I think you have spotted the problem. It's not the technology, its people and lethargy. Why aren't all cars supercharged or turbo charged? It definitely makes the performance of the engine much better.

Yes, I too had a 404 stationwagon. A great car! Mind you, I was disappointed that they went to McPherson struts. The 403 was the best handling dirt road car I have ever driven. Tramlining didn't need brute force to be overcome. The geometry and the transverse, semi-elliptic leaf spring on the front end was just perfect.

Aaaahhhh, the good old days!
 
Well... I'd say the 404 and the 203 compared well, the 403 was a bit flexible in the body IMO.

Actually, I don't think the struts changed much except to make the front end ride a bit softer. They were an overkill, too... looking at the Mk1 Zephyrs, they worked out how to avoid all the problems they had and didn't really appreciate that some of them were due to poor design, methinks.

Hence, the strut turns and the shaft doesn't, spreading the wear around the shaft for greater durability... and truck-like trailing arms are sure better than the sway bar links of the Zephyrs... and I guess the Vedettes, though I've never looked at them in detail.
 
Another interesting web site to visit for water injection:
<a href="http://www.better-mileage.com/water1.html" target="_blank">http://www.better-mileage.com/water1.html</a>
 
OK, well as Leigh suggested I did some wider research. I haven't looked off-net yet, but I did do a lot of searching. I was largely impressed by what I saw, and I'm now thinking around the possibilities of fitting water injection to my 505.

Firstly, though, I did hear of some potential problems. Many do not apply to a low-volume water user - one drag racer reported corroded spark plugs (increasing the gap) after a dozen runs or so, but he was running a _lot_ of water.

Other problems were turbo related (improperly atomized water sprayed onto a turbo turbine is like sand at that velocity) or otherwise irrelevant to the NA user.

But I found this <a href="http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&threadm=5muuja%24dug%241%40news.impulse.net&rnum=1&prev=/groups%3Fq%3D%2522water%2Binjection%2522%2Bcorrosion%26hl %3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DN%26tab%3Dwg">here</a>:

My opinion is that you mechanic has it about half right. Poorly atomized
injected water can scour oil off of parts--the cavitation that happens when
a droplet of water lands on a part, and then boils off of it can easily do
this. With well atomized water injection, this problem is substantially
cured. (Poorly atomized fuel will wash oil off of parts even worse than
water, as the oil is SOLUBLE in the fuel droplets!) In this regard, one
might observe that a steam cleaner works most effectively when it is set to
spray a MIXTURE of water droplets and steam, not pure steam, out of its
nozzle!
Click to expand...
Has anyone who has run the $5 water injection listed cracked open their engine yet? What about you with your system, Damien?

It's worth reading the rest of the above linked post, cos he gets into some other stuff including that water vaporised (ie made into steam) prior to the intake port will displace a sizable quantity of air (hence lowering volumetric efficiency.)

I found more worthwhile info <a href="http://www.karlsnet.com/mopar/waterinjection.shtml">here</a> (water injection as opposed to induction, on an NA engine) and in <a href="http://yarchive.net/car/water_injection.html">this thread</a> (mostly on big American turbo-ed cars, but worth reading anyhow.)

I guess that a hypodermic needle of the right size probably does atomize water in the same way a carby needle does, but I can't think of an easy way to tell for sure (it's a shame inlet manifolds aren't see-through!). The bit that worries me is the gap between the needle and the intake manifold, where the atomized water runs the risk of hitting either the side of the rubber tube or the edge of the tube fitting, at which point I imagine it could form large droplets which would gradually flow off into the engine. Perhaps drilling, and threading, a hole in the manifold itself would be safer.

The only other viable suggestions I'd heard were carby needles (a more expensive equivalent to a hypodermic I assume) or NOS fogger nozzles (probably way too expensive.) Conventional fuel injectors will apparently rust very quickly if used to pump water, but I did find one source who said he was using one (but he did say he had only just rigged his system up...)

I'm planning to fit Jaycar Programmable Ignition to my 505, so I've been daydreaming about a solenoid-controlled water injection system wired to the Econoscope (a 3-stage vacuum gauge gimmick on the 505s) and then wired to the Jaycar ignition kit to provide the appropriate ignition advance.

It's probably more effective (from the KISS principle and also with regard to proportioning flow) to go the needle-in-the-vacuum-tube induction method, though... the problem is that if I used the same vacuum tube on my EFI motor, the water would have to travel around several (3) big corners before it got to the engine, not to mention negotiate the plenum chamber... and I imagine this would affect atomization.

I'd really like to mount a fuel injector, if I can find one which is corrosion-resistant.
 
Gus,
I've not observed any probs in the engine combustion chambers they are noticebly cleaner (as i'd expect), the plug gaps remain unchanged.
My flow rate is currently about 150 ml per minute which for a road going car would require a large tank of water i use a 5 litre plastic bottle painted blact to prevent algae in the water as i use plain tap water. In my research one article quoted Saab produced a car with equal sized water & fuel tank and used a 50/50 mix, another interestin article was Renaults use of water in the Turbo'd F1 to win thge constructor champ a few years back where they were doing miserably with unreliability before hand until a NZ mechanic sugested water the rest is history.
Note:- In a 40 second lap of a hill climb my R10 uses a litre of Avgas therefore the water/fuel mix is not really that high fuel consumption is roughly 1L per km.
cheers.
dance dance dance dance
 
Now I may be wrong here but I seem to remember from my high school physics, (god that was a long time ago) that that you can’t compress water.
Surely adding water to the cylinders is going to increase the compression, albeit slightly.
If the water injection system plays up and you accidentally add too much water you’re capable of causing some serious damage to the motor.

Ren
cheers!
 
Ren - you can't compress any liquid, that includes petrol...

But you are adding the water (not to mention petrol) in a mist, so it's not quite the same as tapping a garden hose onto your air intake :)

The amazing thing I found out (I lost the web site) is the sheer amount of water it takes to hydro-lock an engine. It will apparently stall much earlier in most circumstances, although the high flow of water will allegedly "make your valve stems look like pretzels" eek! .

We're talking more than 50% water/fuel here, BTW.

I had the mechanical injection on my old STI jam at full-rich at one point. This meant that fuel was actually flowing out of the exhaust ports, soaking the exhaust pipe inside and out, and smoking up _everywhere_. I estimate more than a litre was in there (it took more than 40 minutes to smoke it all out after I'd fixed the injection.)

Nevertheless, even at full rich the engine kept running and could pull.

One of the most impressive things I found was the amazing range of viable water/fuel ratios (like Damien said.) People seemed to find 1:14 to 1:20 the most desirable, at least for NA use.

Besides, the danger with these "water induction" systems using vacuum is not so much that the system will fail and add too much water, it's that it will fail and withdraw the water leaving the engine running at up to 30 degrees too much static advance

eek! eek! eek!
 
The water injector pictured below has been temporarily removed from a 1960 403.
It'll be going back on as soon as I've cleaned it up and figured some way of filling the water tank while on the move.

Decidedly inconvenient having to stop and open the bonnet to replenish the water.
People think the car has broken down and we can't have them thinking that, can we?

<img src="http://www.spiderweb.com.au/~intreeg/peugeot/widev01.jpg" alt=" - " />

<img src="http://www.spiderweb.com.au/~intreeg/peugeot/widev02.jpg" alt=" - " />

Can't add much to the discussion, it's mostly been said, it works very well.

edit:
There is a small hole, about 1.8mm, the opening not quite visible here but situated inside the flange.
Not sure about the value of the (vapourising?) diaphragm thingy, it's really a pretty large obstruction which sits just below the throttle.

<small>[ 28 October 2002, 11:59 PM: Message edited by: 3studwheelnut ]</small>
 
3studwheelnut:
The water injector pictured below has been temporarily removed from a 1960 403.
It'll be going back on as soon as I've cleaned it up and figured some way of filling the water tank while on the move.

Decidedly inconvenient having to stop and open the bonnet to replenish the water.
People think the car has broken down and we can't have them thinking that, can we?

<img src="http://www.spiderweb.com.au/~intreeg/peugeot/widev01.jpg" alt=" - " />

<img src="http://www.spiderweb.com.au/~intreeg/peugeot/widev02.jpg" alt=" - " />

Can't add much to the discussion, it's mostly been said, it works very well.

edit:
There is a small hole, about 1.8mm, the opening not quite visible here but situated inside the flange.
Not sure about the value of the (vapourising?) diaphragm thingy, it's really a pretty large obstruction which sits just below the throttle.
Click to expand...
That's a very nicely made little outfit there!

I suggest getting a bigger water bottle...

As for the 'compressing liquids' aspect, this isn't a problem at all. Even if the water doesn't atomise, it's there in such small quantities that it can't be a problem. Then again, if it were able to dribble into a cylinder overnight...

For the information of many, there are a lot of turbocharged engines that MUST run water injection. The water pump comes on at a preset boost, like 10psi or something.
 
That's a very nicely made little outfit there!
Click to expand...
It's never leaked into the oil but I remember the previous owner pointing futuristically at the tap several times.

The tank is a copper 2.5 litre affair with neat seams, brass cap and glass bowl filter, made to fit the upper bulkhead angle of the 403 and rubber mounted. Could enlarge it but could more easily detour the water feed tube through the dashboard so the flow is visible and extend a hose and funnel into the glove box.. ..give the "navigator" something to do.
But a fuel level indicator would be better.
Sometimes stopping immediately to refill is just too dangerous. Like half way up the Moonbi Range for instance - if you didn't know what was ahead - there would be no choice but to stop.

Before being aware of the reasoning behind water injection, I was wondering what I could use instead of water.. metho; acetone etc, now I'm thinking in terms of the ph and other values of injection water.
 
So, say you're stuck in the middle of nowhere, run out of water injection fluid because the jerry-can sprung a leak, but you have a bottle of lemonade, plus a bottle of coke, a bottle of beer and whatever is in the radiator, what would you do?
:)
 
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