Water injection makes a comeback

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The only people yet "conditioned" to use these systems are the people that would have had them installed anyway.

Expecting Karen across the street to add water/meth to her Honda won't happen before the ICE is dead.
 
BMW/Bosch has had growing pains with this system. Of course it's not as bad as the instances of coolant* leaks in the air/water intercooler.

*The induction system has its own coolant system for the air/water intercooler.
 
Originally Posted by rooflessVW
The only people yet "conditioned" to use these systems are the people that would have had them installed anyway.

Expecting Karen across the street to add water/meth to her Honda won't happen before the ICE is dead.


The OPE referred to DEF. If Karen drives a diesel, she doesn't have a choice.
 
Originally Posted by zrxkawboy
The OPE referred to DEF. If Karen drives a diesel, she doesn't have a choice.

Outdoor Power Equipment?

Yes, the OP mentioned DEF, but that too is going away for your average car. Mainstream diesel is dead, and there will never be mainstream water/meth injection.
 
There are a few ways to recover the water from normal operation. First, the air conditioner often produces significant water from the evaporator. Second the exhaust contains significant water and it's not all that difficult to extract and filter.
 
Originally Posted by Cujet
There are a few ways to recover the water from normal operation. First, the air conditioner often produces significant water from the evaporator. Second the exhaust contains significant water and it's not all that difficult to extract and filter.


The Bosch system requires distilled water and contains ultra fine solid block filters.
 
Originally Posted by Cujet
There are a few ways to recover the water from normal operation. First, the air conditioner often produces significant water from the evaporator. Second the exhaust contains significant water and it's not all that difficult to extract and filter.

Good luck making that much water in the winter time up here when the air is super dry.
 
Originally Posted by StevieC
Originally Posted by Cujet
There are a few ways to recover the water from normal operation. First, the air conditioner often produces significant water from the evaporator. Second the exhaust contains significant water and it's not all that difficult to extract and filter.

Good luck making that much water in the winter time up here when the air is super dry.


Don't need water injection at low temperatures. Engines already have higher thermodynamic efficiency due to colder ambient, and the air density allows for more air to be compressed by the turbo and crammed into the cylinders without exceeding the EGT limits.


Seems like a gimmick though.. Who actually wants/needs this extra horsepower? We're not talking about big rigs or aircraft engines that may legitimately need a burst of extra power..
 
There's one engine that will not have carbon issues.

Water injected engines look like they have been scrubbed internally with a fine toothbrush. Shiny as the day built.
 
Originally Posted by pitzel
Originally Posted by StevieC
Originally Posted by Cujet
There are a few ways to recover the water from normal operation. First, the air conditioner often produces significant water from the evaporator. Second the exhaust contains significant water and it's not all that difficult to extract and filter.

Good luck making that much water in the winter time up here when the air is super dry.


Don't need water injection at low temperatures. Engines already have higher thermodynamic efficiency due to colder ambient, and the air density allows for more air to be compressed by the turbo and crammed into the cylinders without exceeding the EGT limits.


Seems like a gimmick though.. Who actually wants/needs this extra horsepower? We're not talking about big rigs or aircraft engines that may legitimately need a burst of extra power..


Dry winter air would have an impact on moisture from the A/C but not on moisture from the exhaust. It's academic anyway since any system that uses straight water would freeze solid when the vehicle is shut down below freezing.

Water injection usually uses a 50/50 mix of water and methanol as this prevents freezing.
 
Originally Posted by Virtus_Probi
Maybe water injection would help kill LSPI?
Distilled water instead of dexos1 Gen 2...


Water injection would certainly keep intake valves and piston crowns clean on DI engines.
 
Back in the 70s the auto parts store I was at ran a dozen vegas for delivery vehicles. All had the edelbrock water injection kit on them. Most of those vegas were the 75-76 models with iron sleeves and most went over 100k before engine fail.
They injected water thru the air cleaner lid into the carb throat.
 
Originally Posted by Mitch
Back in the 70s the auto parts store I was at ran a dozen vegas for delivery vehicles. All had the edelbrock water injection kit on them. Most of those vegas were the 75-76 models with iron sleeves and most went over 100k before engine fail.
They injected water thru the air cleaner lid into the carb throat.



I ran a ton of Pontiac engines for street/strip use and had an Edelbrock Water Injection unit on all of them. Only sprayed the secondaries, an extremely adjustable device with duration vacuum adjustment on the electronics and various orifice sizes to use.


Worked like a charm and let us run the timing WAYYYY up!
 
Originally Posted by DoubleWasp
There's one engine that will not have carbon issues.

Water injected engines look like they have been scrubbed internally with a fine toothbrush. Shiny as the day built.


I've always been told that a shiny, clean piston/bore is also pretty much a guaranteed system of HG failure that's allowing coolant into the combustion chamber.

MG engines are known for "hot spots" in the combustion chamber that collect carbon that in turn causes dieseling, and I've temporarily fixed more than one with stubborn run-on by aspirating a cup or so of water through the distributor vac advance line. I use that particular line because it's small enough in diameter that it limits the amount going into the engine at any one given time. You'll usually get a "blast pattern" around the tail pipe of carbon along with voluminous clouds of white fog, and the exhaust often smells like a campfire that you poured water on for a few minutes afterwards. None the less, that followed by an adjustment to the mixture and/or timing will often give a permanent fix to run-on.
 
The BMC engines (a small number of which were MG) had a plate on the rocker cover with a whole lot of Riccardo patents for the cyl head. The point in the heart shaped combustion chamber was the culprit, and we sometimes used to grind the point off and smooth it out. In later years the factory copied the idea, but thousand of mechanics who used that method were never compensated for their smart thinking.
 
Originally Posted by Silk
The BMC engines (a small number of which were MG) had a plate on the rocker cover with a whole lot of Riccardo patents for the cyl head. The point in the heart shaped combustion chamber was the culprit, and we sometimes used to grind the point off and smooth it out. In later years the factory copied the idea, but thousand of mechanics who used that method were never compensated for their smart thinking.


Needed to get the squish/quench clearance to under 0.030" for that to not become a glowing hot spot.

Sir Harry got it right....factory got it wrong.
 
A lot was to do with fuels, most British cars in the late '40's, early '50's were designed for the promised high octane fuels, and so they ended up running lower compression than designed for a start. Mechanics when I was an apprentice said they used to use 2 headgaskets on the Austin A40 (first of the B Block) to get the compression low enough for our even worse fuel in NZ, squish measured with a wooden ruler. Harry designed for an ideal that never happened. At the end of their design life in the late '60's, the British engines were making good hp, and then hit the brick wall of emissions.
 
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