Alcohol Injection

[Ess Vee]

The manual says it requires 93 octane fuel, here in socal we only have 91.

To fix this problem, we could just fit an alcohol injection system. Is this suitable for the boxer engine?

Thoughts?

Thanks,
Nathan

P.S. For anyone who may not understand what this is, click here. It's pretty much everything you need to know. Methanol injection is great for cars with high compression ratios (who may also be using a turbo setup). Generally, it makes the car run cooler, safer, and allows more room for higher boost.

[bakerr6]

no reason to, they have made the vehicles to where the performance will not be affected based on 91 octane. Now if you went down to 89 or 87, I believe it would cut the timing back some, which could change the driving style of the car

[Ess Vee]

Originally Posted by bakerr6

no reason to, they have made the vehicles to where the performance will not be affected based on 91 octane. Now if you went down to 89 or 87, I believe it would cut the timing back some, which could change the driving style of the car

Still, 105+ octane DOES sound nice

[serialk11r]

Some people ( @Allch Chcar ) are apparently already working on E85 conversion...they might be able to tell you what components of the fuel system would need changing with a higher amount of ethanol in the fuel. It's possible that nothing needs changing, then you could probably mix the fuel up to like 20% ethanol for example to increase the knock resistance.

[Ess Vee]

Originally Posted by serialk11r

Some people ( @Allch Chcar ) are apparently already working on E85 conversion...they might be able to tell you what components of the fuel system would need changing with a higher amount of ethanol in the fuel. It's possible that nothing needs changing, then you could probably mix the fuel up to like 20% ethanol for example to increase the knock resistance.

Much appreciated!

[Allch Chcar]

Originally Posted by bakerr6

no reason to, they have made the vehicles to where the performance will not be affected based on 91 octane. Now if you went down to 89 or 87, I believe it would cut the timing back some, which could change the driving style of the car

Read the manual, it says it reduces power(unknown how much) and may knock lightly/occasionally on 91 AKI octane. 91 is the minimum not the recommended AKI octane, I've had to go over this a few times...

Originally Posted by serialk11r

Some people ( @Allch Chcar ) are apparently already working on E85 conversion...they might be able to tell you what components of the fuel system would need changing with a higher amount of ethanol in the fuel. It's possible that nothing needs changing, then you could probably mix the fuel up to like 20% ethanol for example to increase the knock resistance.

Alcohol or water/alcohol injection doesn't involve the fuel system. It's placed in the intake tract to cool the air like a 5th injector. I don't know too much more about it besides that people usually run windshield washer fluid which is part water/methanol.

[serialk11r]

Originally Posted by Allch Chcar

Alcohol or water/alcohol injection doesn't involve the fuel system. It's placed in the intake tract to cool the air like a 5th injector. I don't know too much more about it besides that people usually run windshield washer fluid which is part water/methanol.

Yea I know, I was just suggesting that it might be possible to just up the ethanol content in the fuel slightly to achieve a similar (possibly better) result.

[bakerr6]

Originally Posted by Allch Chcar

Read the manual, it says it reduces power(unknown how much) and may knock lightly/occasionally on 91 AKI octane. 91 is the minimum not the recommended AKI octane, I've had to go over this a few times...



Alcohol or water/alcohol injection doesn't involve the fuel system. It's placed in the intake tract to cool the air like a 5th injector. I don't know too much more about it besides that people usually run windshield washer fluid which is part water/methanol.

while that is true in the manuals, the california cars are already programmed to be able to be smog legal in CA, which includes maintaining the stock tune for 91. What this means, is that even if a cali car has access to 93 octane, it will still perform the same

[arghx7]

Minimal benefits on a naturally aspirated application.

[serialk11r]

Originally Posted by bakerr6

while that is true in the manuals, the california cars are already programmed to be able to be smog legal in CA, which includes maintaining the stock tune for 91. What this means, is that even if a cali car has access to 93 octane, it will still perform the same

Being smog legal is very different from having max performance.

[Sonex51]

If I was going to add alcohol, I'd probably want to just add it to an almost full tank of gas rather than add a new injection system of any kind. Fortunately, I'm also at slightly higher elevation most of the time and I'm just going to xFingers that it won't matter.

[lordtakuban]

Hopefully, this clears up a few things for people about alcohol or water/meth injection...

You generally don't use them on NA cars. Their main benefit is in a boosted application as a sort of chemical cooling and it also effectively raises octane. To use it, you drill a small hole in the intake pipe just before your throttle body for the injector. You have a reservoir to hold the fluid to inject (more on this later), and a pump and a controller. The controller can work based off of MAP or MAF. So you technically *could* use it in an NA car, but you won't get much benefit from it.

I, personally, use the Snow Performance Stage II kit with a low level indicator to help me not forget to keep the reservoir from becoming empty. This is on my MR2 Spyder that is Turbo'd. It's a pretty solid kit and comparable to the AEM kit or other's sold as there isn't a whole lot different you can make such a kit. Maybe the quality of injectors could be different between them?

Now about fluids. Anyone putting windshield washer fluid in place of methanol is either very ignorant or just plain stupid. "oh it works. I didn't hear any knock". BS. It is not the same. If you want to run something that cheap, then you better tune for something that cheap so you'll get basically zero gains. If you want to actually inject the real deal and get the performance benefit out of it, inject the right stuff. Think about it this way, if windshield washer fluid was equivalent to Methanol, then why doesn't it erode your paint when it hits the body of the car?

Basically, if you're too cheap to put the right fluid in a kit, then don't buy the kit to begin with. Last time I bought a 5Gal drum of VP Racing M1, It cost a little under $40. And that 5Gal drum will last you for months (Unless you're doing track days or racing very regularly). I choose to mix mine with distilled water to try to avoid any contaminants that might foul up the injector, but you could likely use regular tap water. I know Snow performance sells their "Boost Juice" which is a HUGE ripoff, but it has that "cool" red color. Methanol is clear like moonshine and so is water. So what is in the boost juice?

... Anyway, I'll just end the rant about bad injection practices here. Hopefully, this post was informative for some.

[Ess Vee]

Thanks for that lordtakuban!

From what I understand, a turbo/supercharger setup might not work as optimally without a methanol injection setup because of the already sky-high compression ratio. You'd be able to run higher boost levels with the benefit of chemical cooling that methanol injection gives.

Gotta definitely keep an eye on that reservoir though. I can't imagine anything good with an empty methanol reservoir. I'd just keep a backup quart in my glove box, or somewhere else in the car that's hidden.

[Mitch]

I'll just leave this here: http://fluidmotorunion.rpmware.com/f.../i-466580.aspx