Weistec is offering a methanol/water injection kit for the M279 engine.

Anyone have any experience with methanol?

 

this is a good question I have been asking too

 

I have meth installed on my 65. Works great in the summer the tap on elbow started leaking. Probally going to dial it in this winter on the dyno. I run the AEM kit off amazon was about 450. I run the smallest nozzel, I played with all three and te smallest one the car seems to like the most. It would keep iats down, when running bigger nozzles the car felt slower and would buck hard coming off theottle. With bigger nozzles I would get a bigger drop in IAT but the car was slower.

 

Power is officially insane now and I am running the smallest nozzle. Turning ESC off is no longer an option. This is a must-do mod and can't believe it is not discussed more.

 

Wow dude sick setup! How much power u running?any vids?

 

Thanks.......I plan on taking some videos over the Thanksgiving Holiday.

 

I just ordered the Weistec methanol kit for my M275. Did you need to retune the ECU to work with meth or is that not necessary? I have my ECU/TCU tuned through Eurocharged.

 

I do not retune for water/meth on my vehicles, I just consider it supplemental cooling and cushion in terms of detonation resistance. I'm not sure Eurocharged even has the ability to do so...when I had asked about going to a different injector size I was told there was no way to do that on these computers (which is obviously not true, but may well be true within their particular editor). If you lean out your fueling to compensate for it though, it's no longer cushion...then you are absolutely dependent on the system being functional if you don't want to blow up the engine. If you wanted you could probably go to Jerry's "race gas" tune for use with it.

Frankly, methanol is so highly oxygenated, burns so much faster, and you're injecting such a small amount that there wouldn't be much of a correction to make anyway. If you're sized for a pretty aggressive 25% of your fuel flow and mixing 50/50 then you're injecting 12.5% of your fuel flow as methanol which is going to be approximately a 5% swing in fueling so it's going to drop you about .5 in terms of gasoline scale AFR numbers, and methanol is as happy as can be on the rich side of things anyway.

 

 

If you're going to be there in person maybe just get some extra dyno time to figure out exactly what it likes best as far as the tune goes. I did try to run the race gas tune when I was still on gasoline with the water/meth kit but was having problems with the ignition system at the time so I never did really see how well matched it was for that setup. The car was on E85 by the time I had fixed the misfires so it's no longer apples to apples. Do you know what size nozzle the kit has? At 25% of your fuel demands as pure water the charge cooling potential is about 81 degrees F over gasoline alone. With 50/50 at the same nozzle size it'll be like 2/3 that give or take (but better vaporization). On top of that you're changing the specific heat capacity of the air when you humidify it so temperatures rise less during the compression stroke as well. It's an extremely powerful tool in terms of anti-knock/anti-detonation performance. Not quite to the extent of going to an alcohol-based primary fuel, but still very significant.

 

I'm not exactly sure what size nozzles the kit includes. Their site says "Small, Medium and Large Quantity Injection Nozzles Included for a wide range of configuration".
Here's the direct link to the kit: http://weistec.com/water-methanol-in...m275-m279.html

I'm currently waiting for Mercedes to install new ignition coils, plugs and insulators. Last year I replaced the voltage transformer with a new unit and rebuilt the original 03 ignition coils, also replaced the plugs and insulators, but had misfires again after about 9 months/12k miles.. All but the voltage transformer will be brand new this time around, so I shouldn't have any ignition issues.. (knock on wood). I'll be running 93 octane and the kit advises a 50/50 water/meth blend.

 

Holy hell that's expensive. I'm running like a $350 kit. I mean it looks top notch but that's crazy money. I guess that's kind of everything on this platform though. For the power output of these you will probably want to run the largest nozzle in the kit and activate it after boost is on, maybe 10psi at least, unless it causes stumbling or misfires in which case you can try the smaller nozzles.

 

You get more total cooling potential with straight water and it won't mess with your Air fuel ratio that way. But 50/50 is pretty typical. A little alcohol in the cylinder can increase the burn speed of the entire mixture.

 

Yeah it's definitely not cheap but hopefully it will be well worth the money. No doubt the M275 can be very expensive to mod (and maintain). I'll also be upgrading the OEM engine mounts to the billet aluminum Speedriven mounts. IIRC the mounts are about $750 but they're well worth the money considering how much labor is involved in replacing them..

I appreciate your input, I'll definitely suggest to Eurocharged to start with the largest nozzle / activate only on boost and go from there. Hopefully their team is familiar with the process but I haven't had a chance to speak with them yet as it's the weekend.

 

I see. I really don't mind what mixture I run, I just want to add a little extra power and help reduce the heat soak these engines are known for. Those are my primary goals. In the future I might upgrade the HE, IC pump and add an ice tank but if meth helps enough I might just skip those mods.

 

You're right they aren't cheap, but there's really no specific reason for that other than the Mercedes emblem and the fact that vendors seem to think owners have money to burn and can justify that crazy mark-up due to lack of competition. There's literally nothing special or specific about a water/meth kit for these cars except that custom-molded silicone coupler they are including with the kit. Which don't get me wrong, is nice to have...but drilling your own hole in the stock piece works just as well...and apart from that what you got is about a $600-700 kit anywhere else. I wouldn't go so far as to say you're getting ripped off because it does look like a very well put together package, and it will certainly help you take the car to another level safely, but you are sure paying for that convenience factor.

It does look like that comes with the AEM "progressive" controller. So you do have some more flexibility in setting it up and that will help. It allows you to "ramp" the injection in based on boost pressure. On these cars though having such a responsive boost curve I'm not sure that's going to make that much of a difference but it will be a nice feature to be able to fine tune with if you do run into any stumbling.

 

You do not need to retune using our kit unless you decide to run more than suggested flow rates in the instructions. We do offer the option of tuning the ECU to make more power by making the methanol mandatory under boost as opposed to supplemental cooling.

The ability to tune for different size injectors is available, but it's very hard to do from a flash-only tune without someone actually hooked into the car on a dyno to tune it as the car is running. Most tuners prefer factory injectors over aftermarket anyway, as they are more consistent.

The largest nozzle will not benefit you on this setup unless you plan to tune with the methanol as a requirement. Usually the small or medium nozzle is best with what we recommend in the instructions before the system needs to be tuned accordingly.

With our products comes tons of R&D, support, and a large knowledge base at your disposal. Not to mention a warranty on all pieces. We are much easier to get a hold of than the people who would sell you on that $700 meth kit, and they probably have no idea how it works or how to set it up on a Mercedes.


That being said, Eurocharged works with our meth kits very often and will know exactly what to recommend you as far as how to set up and what your goals are. I'm looking forward to hearing your results!

 

 

2014 E63S here with the Eurocharged Stage 1 tune and Weistec W/M and ASV kit installed. Headed over to Eurocharged Houston this afternoon to put the car on the dyno to check cooling efficiency and to see if I can get an increase in performance.
Whether I can approach my 104 octane bhp numbers with 93 octane, a EC stage 1 tune and W/M remains to be seem.
I'm starting with the 250cc nozzles and hoping they will be sufficient...

Hopefully I will have something positive to report. I'm already seeing lower IATs on the road, but I want to document it better.

 

you don't ever want to tune for power with an alcohol system....only for cooling. Should the system fail at WOT with an aggressive tune the ECU might not be able to pull timing fast enough to save the rings/pistons. I ruined a supercharged engine during a test run with 21* timing and 16psi (factory was 8psi). The car ran great with the alky and 16* @ 16psi.

Best to just use it to keep temps within the optimal range and not advance timing because of it.

 

Agree 100%... I am not affecting the EC Stage 1 tune I currently have... I'm just trying to get closer to 104 octane numbers by spraying instead with 93 octane.
I'm hopeful I can adjust delivery to see a result. As it is currently set up... 5psi start, 16 psi max I'm not seeing any increased trap speeds when running 93 octane. When running 104 octane race gas I've seen a 40 whp increase in power over 93 octane which equates to a 3 mph increase in my trap speed. Hopefully I can adjust methanol delivery to see a similar increase in whp, and hopefully an improved trap speed as well.

So its dyno run this afternoon and draggy run later this evening..

 

How many 250cc nozzles are we talking about? That is a very small nozzle. 15% of your fuel flow should be a good injection amount if you don't want any overspray for continued in-cylinder cooling. Up to 60% of fuel flow is useful in extreme situations though. Beyond that and you do start affecting power in a negative way usually.

Your IATs aren't accurate at all when you are spraying water. They are probably barely accurate when you aren't. These factory sensors on most vehicles can be EXTREMELY slow to react to changes in temperature, like 15+ seconds to go full range on most vehicles. I do not know what type of sensor your car has specifically, but most of them ar an artificially low value until you have been in sustained boost for quite a long time. Beyond just that, when you are spraying water/meth, what you get is an extremely disproportionate amount vaporizing on the surfaces of the sensor itself providing falsely low readings, until you reach saturation, at which point they will stabilize and become accurate. But with small nozzles, you won't ever pass saturation. Do the math on your water/meth flow vs air flow rate and you will quickly see that the reported IATs are usually mathematicslly impossible even if your vaporization cooling was operating at 100% efficiency. I am not saying water/meth doesn't work and cool great. It's amazing. I'm simply saying a thermistor IAT is a terrible measuring stick for gauging how well it is doing so. And that you should also sit down and figure out your cooling demand to more appropriately select nozzle sizes instead of just guessing. The math isn't hard, I can help you with it if you give me all the exact details of the setup. Good luck on the dyno ,let us know how you do!

 

We saw a definite improvement. I'm happy with the results. I didn't see the 104 octane results but I did see over 20 additional wheel horsepower when spraying. The kit has 1 250cc jet in each inlet pipe for 500cc Total.

 

So we are talking something like 680 crank hp or so? Would be 68 lb/min airflow if we approximate vs 500 cc/min water flow. That rating is usually at 100psi and most systems are running over 200psi so realistically it converts to about 700cc/min or 1.54 lb/min of water flow. That would likely be about 24% of your peak fuel flow, so it is a pretty appropriate amount, but by no means aggressive. Is it straight water or water/meth? With straight water that is 970.4 BTU/lb * 1.54 lbs or 1494 BTUs per minute of cooling. Acting on 68 lbs of air, the water has about a 4x higher specific heat so that is (1494*4)/68 or approximately 87 degrees F of charge cooling for straight water. Water/meth at 50/50 is about 75% of the cooling BTUs of water, or 65 F of charge cooling. This being at 100% vaporization in the air stream, not accounting for vaporization that occurs on port/intake surfaces. I don't know what your boost level is or temperatures are post-intercooler to start with, but personally I would probably be running progressive, ramping to about 2x that much water flow. It has a significant benefit even going into the cylinder as residual liquid to continue cooling during compression. Much higher than you are spraying now could be problematic if you don't have a reasonable progressive control strategy though, as it would be a dramatically higher water to fuel ratio at lower to mid loads. Don't know what your activstion strategybis either, if it is at relatively higher boost then that would be less of an issue.
​​​​​

 

Forgive me if I shot low on power I just looked at eurocharged's advertised 660 hp but really don't know if that is a whp or crank hp approximation or how it is calculated. If it's making that range as whp then you definitely would benefit from a lot more water.