I had myshop install a methly (20%, 80% water) injection kit to come on under boost at 4psi to max boost.

I was expecting to see some dyno results in the 500 rwhp+ range. I still do not have the car back (installing a boost guage) but the baseline dyno was WAY low at 414 rwhp....see my mods below...I hit 484 rwhp on the SAME dyno 4 months earlier.

I am thinking it could be the following issues---

1. Dyno needs to be recalibrated
2. Some how my ECU got reflashed at the dealer (I did the service recall ...the one BEFORE the ECU flash...not sure if they messed up the ECU like in Victor's case). I specifically said I have a Kleeman ECU and do not want you (MB) to touch it.
3. My car has some other issues -- recall my rwhp was 394 with the same configuration with a busted Evo cooling system hose...when it was fixed I got to 484 rwhp
4. Car was dynoed in 3rd gear instead of 4th gear this time
5. I did not provide instructions on getting into dyno mode (my fault)...does this make a difference?

The mechanic said that once the methly was injected the car picked up 60 rwhp ....don't know about the torue.

He also said that no HP was picked up from the cutouts but torue increased....earlier in my previous dyno I had believed that I picked up 11 rwhp or so from the cutouts partially opened. Not sure whats going on with that part but not concerned about that.

Do you think any of the issues from 1-5 above would explain the crappy 414 rwhp dyno? Do you think the 60 rwhp gain from methly sounds plausible.

I think next steps are either --

1) K2 reflash, redyno in 4th in dyno mode
2) take car to track to get MPH reading....assuming 60 additional rwhp that should in theory put me into the 125-126mph range vs. 120-122 for K2.

what would you do?

 

#1,4, & 5 seem unlikely to be causing your large power delta. They could contibute, but not 70 HP.
#2 & 3 seem like a good candidates. How did the A/F ratio look?


This suggests that your IAT is fairly high. Do you know the percentage of the injection?


I agree with your steps, but I would leave the cutouts closed and disable the methanol injection. You need to get back to your previous baseline before you can give it a fair evaluation. Can you post the dyno plots? Do you have data logging capability?

 

Without seeing your actual dyno plots, he only point I would disagree with grumpy is #5. Unless your car has been running noticeably different recently (you would notice a drop of 70 rwhp), the simplest possibility is that they did not properly put the car in dyno mode and the ECU was not allowing full power output.

In alot of the new motors unless the car is in dyno mode the speed discrepancy between the front and rear axles signals a problem to the ECU which will either prematurely cut-off fuel at higher revs or activate the brakes.

Posting the actual plots would be of great help, including the atmospheric data

 

grumpy: I left a reply on your earlier thread re: ecu reflash issues but no one replied. This case is exactly what I was referring to-any more responses?? Joker

 

Jack it could be the same problem you had before with the ic system only this time it could be the pump itself. My suggestion before you do anything is to hook up a scanner and have a friend watch your iat's, timing, boost and tps percentage. Any generic scanner that has the kwp2000 protocol will work.

As far as dyno mode goes i have seen it make as much as a 30 hp difference with it off. One tall tell sign is that the car will display an abs malfunction light until driven for a while if it was not in dyno mode. For the same reason's eclou mentioned.

 

Can somebody explain "dyno" mode to me please? Is it a setting that has to be done inside the ECU with a scanner?

 

Why are you using 80% water and 20% methanol. You should be at 50/50 water to methanol. I have found that methanol/water injection didn't necessarily give me any real power gains but it does keep the engine from heat soaking. However, if your engine is already heatsoaked, it will definitely give you a big hp increase.

Try placing your mix in the freezer and get it as cold as you can. Before you strap to the dyno put it in your meth/water resevoir and then see what it will do. The colder than ambiant mix will give you that extra cold intake charge and it will feel like you are hitting the bottle.

 

There have been dyno plots posted on these forums that show pulls w/o dyno mode being engaged. The only noticable effect was hitting the top-speed limiter when in 4th gear. Here's a link to a thread started by Stiff1 from earlier this year. He showed no appreciable difference, whether dyno mode was engaged or not (464HP w/o dyno mode - 452HP with dyno mode - one day apart).

https://mbworld.org/forums/c219/136556-just-had-my-first-dyno-after-kleemann-k4-installed.html

Other cars, like BMW, will limit RPMs if there is a speed differential between axles. I believe the M3 is limited to 4000 RPM when this occurs. It doesn't appear as though the E55 is affected.

 

There's nothing wrong with using an 80/20 mix. In fact, since the latent heat of vaporization for water is about twice that for methanol, it will absorb more heat. You could use 100% water if desired. Methanol adds to the fuel's octane rating and provides additional oxygen for combustion when the molecules break down. The more methanol that is used, the more it will affect the A/F ratio.

 

Interesting the cl55 i saw dyno was just the opposite. It was on the same day maybe 10 to 15 minutes apart. I wonder now if it could have been heat related.

The top speed limiter in fourth is not affected by dyno mode it has to be removed via programming.

 

I unfortuantely am working off very little info until I can see the dyno charts. All I know is that the weather yesterday at time of the dyno was 85 with 30% humidity with atmospheric pressure at 30.2 at 350 ft (weatherbug est.).

I really need to see the A/F ratio and get some IATs logged for the next run. If IATs are the issue and I don't find an issue I will be very perplexed as I have the Evo cooling kit and the -10c fan mod.

I am pretty sure the mix was 20% meth 80% water. I will try refrigerating it next time before I use it to see if it makes a difference.

Also as I go from say a 20% meth - 80% water mix to 50%-50% what should happen to the A/F ratio? Should it become more lean = more power? From what the mechanic told me he seemed to think the car was running rich.

 

Change your supercharger belt. Its a 52.5" 8 rib.

 

1.Turn car key to off position
2.Make sure the miles are displayed on the dash screen
3.Turn key to position 1
4.Three times real fast push the speedo re-set button
5.Use the controls on the stearing wheel and goto dyno mode
6.All lights will go on on the dash
7.Start Car
8.You will see the battery voltage

Be careful the car turns into a crazy beast. Don't rely on the car saving your ***, your in dyno mode.Have fun and lay some lines for me aprox $20 of rubber.LOL If you do it right you can go through 1st 2nd and 3rd with out breaking the line and the rear locks up better.

 

.............I think this answered my question. If you use methanol injection in a car that is not over-boosted, you are likely to end up with less power as the injection causes your car to run rich. My understanding of methanol injection is that it is used to make engines running too lean a bit more safe thereby allowing you to run your engine at considerably higher boost. The HP made is from the increased boost itself, not from the methanol injection. Since our engines are "open deck" as opposed to "closed deck" configuration, the ammount of boost that cannot be fueled properly with simple ECU modification will be so high as to blow to engine.

.........Not very familiar with using just water. If you use 100% water for the injection, am to understand that the water simply serves to cool your engine. If so does the temprature of the water not matter? My point is, how easy and useful can this be used in a car that is driven daily? Do you have to jump to your refrigerator each time before you drive your car?

Ted

 

The point of meth injection is to cool the intake charge, and also methanol is a high octane fuel. Both of these serve to prevent detonation and allow higher boost to be run.

 

The primary purpose of water/methanol injection is to cool the intake charge. It doesn't do this by injecting a cold fluid into the intake manifold - it does it by what some refer to as chemical cooling - more accurately known as latent heat of vaporization. The water and/or methanol is injected into the manifold under high presure (somewhere in the 150 psi range). Being forced through a small orifice under high pressure causes the fluid to vaporize, but in order to do so, it must take on heat (you can't get around the laws of thermodynamics). This heat comes from the surrounding air, thus cooling the intake charge. This is the same way refrigeration works, forcing the refrigerant through an expansion valve under high pressure to vaporize and absorb heat. Having the fluid at a colder temperature prior to injection will not have much impact on additional cooling. It will work fine at ambient temperatures, as it has for the past 60-70 years.

It is highly unlikely that injecting methanol in an engine that is not 'overboosted' will cause it to lose power. The cooling effect will provide a denser charge that will compensate somewhat for the added fuel (which also produces oxygen when it burns). Because the A/F ratio will be affected, the fuel maps should be adjusted accordingly - just the ones that are in effect when the injection in active at WOT. I don't know what you mean by open/closed deck, so I can't comment on that.

Adding methanol to the water will increase the octane rating of your fuel. It does provide cooling when it vapoizes, but only about half that of water. It's the cooling effect and bump in octane that primarily allows you to run more boost and more aggressive timing, not the richening of the fuel mixture.

 

..............thanks for the explanation. Open and closed deck refers to to the cylinder blocks. In more rcent times, car manufactures are using the open deck method.......meaning that outside the cylinders are open. This causes some to reinforce the cylinder walls and in competition there are stories of people who have poured concrete into the crevices around the cylinders to reinforce them. Example of a closed deck engine is the supra. The engine is a block with holes in it for cylinders. This allows people to run incredible ammounts of boost and then use methanol injection.

.........from your explanation, it makes me wonder why at least the water injection is not used more often in our cars with superchargers since heat is a big problem. I looked up several kits are they are relatively inexpensive.


Ted

 

The domestic term for this is a Siamese bore and non-Siamese bore.

 

The displacement of the oxygen molecules by water molecules causes the mixture to become richer which is why you can run more boost - you have more headroom in the AFR. It is not from the octane bump which is negligible. Essentially water/meth expands the of efficiency of the compressor map.

 

Let's do the math:

- Inject a 50/50 mix of methanol/water into the intake manifold at a conservative 10% ratio. IOW, 90% is air, 5% is water, and 5% is methanol.
- Inject gas into this mixture for a 12:1 A/F ratio - that would be 8% gas injected. IOW, 92% air/water/methanol and 8% gas.
- The resultant A/F ratio is approximately 10.8:1. If you take into account the denser air from the cooling effect, it will be a little higher - maybe 11:1.
- The gas will displace 8% of the methanol, which leaves 4.6% methanol in the mix.
- Now you have a combustible fuel that is 63% gas and 37% methanol - almost a 2:1 ratio of gas to methanol.
- Using gas with a 91 octane rating and methanol, which has a 107 octane rating, the resultant octane rating is approximately 97.

Raising the octane rating by six points is not negligible and will have a significantly greater impact on preventing detonation than a 9-10% richening of the A/F ratio.

Just adding 5% methanol to 91-octane gas at the pump will raise the octane rating a little over a point.

 

[QUOTE=rflow306]The domestic term for this is a Siamese bore and non-Siamese bore.[/QUOTE

I believe Siamesed cylinders refers to absence of water jackets in adjacent cylinders not open or closed decks. This allows for larger bore capability. Most drag racing blocks are "hard blocked" to stiffen the block. Some 1/2 fill and some totally fill the water jackets.

 

I don't think you will find many running 50/50 mixtures on street cars. Methanol is toxic, unstable, expensive, and corrosive. Most run 10-30%. Most importantly, it has less than 1/2 the BTU's of gasoline. Otherwise, why would we not run straight meth in the fuel tank? While it is a very effective anti-knock agent, the actual calculation of octane rating is much more complex than simple algrebra.

 

..............still interested in knowing why nobody is using the water injection for cooling purposes. As described, it sounds like a wonderful thing. Instead, we are spending thousands of dead presidents on Evosport cooling upgrade. Forget about the methanol. Why not do the water injection as described?


Ted

 

[QUOTE=vader]It's not only for having a larger bore its for block rigidness. A Siamese bore block is primarily used for racing and high boost applications were cementing the block is no longer necessary. But now i see what you mean the bottom and top of the cylinder are attached to the block either way while an open deck is only attached to the bottom. Thanks

 

Actually, most run a 50/50 on the street. But even if you run half that amount, it will still raise the octane rating by three points, which is fairly significant wrt detonation prevention.

Here's an excerpt from Snow Performance's FAQ page:
The methanol is not added to provide power from its combustion - it's added to allow the engine to be tuned for more power with the available gas. That means higher boost and more aggressive timing w/o detonation. You can't get the same benefits with a richer fuel mixture, which will cause a power loss when it becomes too rich.

Yes, the calculation for octane rating is fairly complex, but the octane calculation for the blending of two fuels isn't - it's simple algebra.

Wrt to your safety concern with methanol: gasoline is also very toxic and corrosive to some materials - but we handle it with minimal problems. The current coming from home electrical outlets is extremely dangerous, but we've learned how to deal with it. It all comes down to taking the right precautions and common sense.

Cost should not really be an issue, since small quantities are being used, and only when WOT, high-boost conditions occur. In day-to-day driving, how often is that?