Norrs' Water/meth Injection Install

[norrs]

So I live in Darwin and it is fricking hot! My car just hates it. There is also no E85 in Darwin. My car was built and tuned in Sydney and when it hit the Dyno here it had lost a heap of horses (half were probably from the first dyno being generous).

Anyway I heard about Water/Meth injection and dudes using it in Mackay and other hot places. It seemed rather popular in the US and the UK but not so much here. I even see BMW are now injecting water in their new M4, anyway, some of you would have seen this thread:

http://www.fordxr6turbo.com/forum/topic/35425-watermethanol-injection/

After a lot of research, discussion and procrastinating, I finally decided to bite the bullet and install a Water/Methanol System.

I thought I’d go for the best and get an Aquamist HFS-3. Buying direct from the UK was killer with shipping. I ended up purchasing it from http://howertonengineering.com/ in the US.

Jeff Howerton has been brilliant with advice throughout the process and very patient with me asking him a million questions before and after the purchase.

The first problem I came across was that I couldn’t get enough flow from one jet. I ended up settling on two 0.9mm jets.

I also decided to buy one of their tanks because it came with the pump mounted internally all wired up with fuses and sh*t. It was already in the optimum position. It also looks neat and has an internal fan blowing on the pump. I got this one:

http://www.howertonengineering.net/products/2-Gallon-Twin-Tank-Enclosure.html?page_context=category&faceted_search=0

So all the stuff rocked up in Feb 2015

I then spend a number of weeks asking further questions of forum members and Mr Howerton.

I decided to go with bungs rather than tap the aluminum pipes. I knew a mate for school who is handy with a welder. He did this for a carton:

Next was the wiring for the tank that I was mounting in the boot. The advantage of the Aquamist system is that it has a valve near the jets that opens and closes to pulse the flow. It therefore allows the pump to prime the system and keep it pressurised. Therefore even though you have the tank wayback in the boot, flow still stops and starts very quickly. There is also less dribble as there is only about a foot between the valve and the jets.

I decided to mount the tank on the drivers side as the fuel tank filler for the car takes up space in the passenger side so the drivers side had more room.

I ran the 6mm Teflon tube down the passenger side through the bung in the boot and followed the fuel lines. I put the tube inside corrugated electrical tubing. The job was a real pain in the arse in my tiny garage, a couple of car stands and a jack. One thing I learned from the experience was that the shield thing that goes around the fuel tank, also holds the fuel tank up. I undid it while under the car to get the tubing through and it fell on me. Lucky it was only half full and I had the strength to push it off me (amateur mistake). Anyway, the tubing turned out to be too short and I had to buy another 1m to finish the job (probably because I crossed it over in the boot and ran down the other side of the car.

I then ran the electrical and data cables down the drivers side (inside the car). I mounted the Computer for the system below the tissue box area as it needs to be able to be accessed when fine tuning the system.

When it came to actually installing the tank, I noticed that under the boot on the drivers side there is the heat shielding. After seeking further advice from forum members, I worked out that it was a major head ache to reinstall this after removing it. I ended up deciding to use steel self-tapping roofing screws. I figured if they can hold my roof on in a cyclone I could probably hold the tank in temporarily till I came up with a better solution. (I now have a better solution as I have only just learned that rivet nut guns exist. I now own one and will be installing 6mm nuts soon so I can bolt it in.)

Anyway here is the tank install

The led light allows you to see the water level. It was wired into the boot light.

Next was the fast acting valve (FAV). I had limited options with my intake setup (herrod). I decided to mount the FAV on the ecu bracket. It needed to be somewhere with little heat and not to close to electromagnetic fields. After the FAV the tubing reduces to 4mm. I then split it with a push type Y piece. It turned out to be a piece of crap and leaked so I used the Howerton steel T piece which doesn’t fit as well but it doesn’t leak.

Here is how it was fitted

I put some ebay sheath stuff over the tube to protect it a bit from heat and abrasion. Oh and I needed a right angle bit to get the vertical jet to fit.

The next bit was wiring the system computer in. Power was easy, but I also needed a signal from injector pulse wire. I spent ages trying to find a source near the ECU but it was too hard, too many wires, no room etc etc. I therefore decided to just tap into one of the wires near the injectors themselves.

Once that was all done then I had to purge the lines, then do testing of the system with the jets out the car.

I then had to check the progressive flow. I taped the jets to my phones windscreen mount stuck on the outside of the car. I then drove around like a dick with water spaying all over my windscreen. It worked though.

I then installed the jets and got to work on the gauge. I already have a tripod so no room left. I’m not that keen on having a tissue box gauge (as I have an FG F6) so I just bodgied up my phone mount again to affix it to the windscreen. Just zip ties for now

Then had to set the parameters for the gauge and the system. I set the trigger as 43% of the Injector duty cycle (as is default). I then had to take the car out to a private road to do repeated runs where I was adjusting the parameters on the gauge until basically it shows the correct flow and if there it too much or not enough then the failsafe is triggered. I was surprised how hard I had to gun it to get it to trigger. I could have had it trigger off the boost (from signal from the MAP sensor) but I was too scared to tap into that signal as I was worried it might throw out the data going to the CPU.

The next thing was wiring up the failsafe. This was a problem as the system is designed to work on aftermarket ECU’s where you can change between maps when something goes wrong. For a car that flashes the ECU, my only option for the failsafe was tapping into the wastegate solenoid. Basically the signal from your ECU to the wastegate solenoid runs through the HFS-3 first. When something goes wrong it adjusts the signal to the wastegate solenoid so as to open the flapper and purge boost.

As you can see I tapped into the white wire, ran it back to the HFS-3 and then back to the solenoid. Well I currently have the failsafe turned off and the wastegate solenoid seems to work normally for now.

So then after a couple of weeks waiting for meth to arrive, I was then off to the tuner… Nope false start, tuner had to cancel (herrod update), so booked in again, nope tuners wife goes into labour, third time lucky…. Nope tuner is sick. Anyway I did finally get in to see him and I was happy to find out that he had played with water injection in the past.

He gave me a tune without the injection system turned on. I got 326rwkw. This was the same reading I got when he ran up the BTA tune some months earlier. That was apparently 386rwkw in Sydney but 330 in Darwin. It was a little lean for our heat, hence the new tune. 330 is obviously the limit for my mods with our heat as the local tune and BTA tune hit the same mark.

Anyway, then we turned the system on, adjusted the timing and boost and got 367rwkw.

The tuner was amazed at how much the intake temps dropped with the system turned on. He kept the fuel at a safe level but that led to it running rich once the water meth kicked in. The flame out the back of the car caught us both by surprise:

He left it rich as there is no proof the failsafe works properly yet.

Anywho, there was one problem. He couldn’t do a lower boost tune. For some reason he couldn’t reduce it to 12psi. He thinks it might be the actuator not actually being set to 12psi (that’s what I understood it to be). He thinks it may have been adjusted to a higher setting. Anyway I need to look into that.

So that’s my story. Gazzanats is next month as will be offstreet drags so I’ll let you all know how I go.

Thanks heaps to ralph Wiggam, Captain Retard, BJC and the others on here who have helped me with what must have sounded like odd questions from time to time.

[Ralph Wiggum]

Awesome work dude, and nice gain from the system.

FWIW to make the tune "safer" your tuner should be able to pull timing and boost and add fuel based on intake air temp. So if you do run into an issue the car can protect itself.

Also with the wastegate fail safe if you where to install an additional solenoid on the vent port of the wastegate and cycle this closed when the failsafe activates it will prevernt the stock system bleeding off boost from the actuator.

[JVK]

Good job Norrs. This is a great writeup from start to finish with all the info,pics and results.

They should make this a sticky.

[norrs]

Also with the wastegate fail safe if you where to install an additional solenoid on the vent port of the wastegate and cycle this closed when the failsafe activates it will prevernt the stock system bleeding off boost from the actuator.

I'm not sure I follow. Are you thinking of an idea of how to avoid the failsafe dumping boost. The system allows me to bypass the failsafes by jumpering a connection on the circuit board. This is what I have done for now until I do some testing.

Or were you saying an alternative to cutting the wires to the oem solenoid was to have a second solenoid manipulating the oem one?

[Ralph Wiggum]

Stock solenoid vents boost to prevent the wastegat opening. If you block this vent port with another solenoid that is open to atmo when the failesafe isn't activated but closed when it is will cause the boost pressure to be directed back to the actuator regardless of what the stock solenoid is doing.

Will give you a failsafe tjhat doesn't involve upsetting the ecu's wiring or control of the boost solenoid.

[JETURBO]

Hey mate great write up and well done on a big install with genuine results !

[norrs]

Yep got ya now Ralph. That would have been a better way to do it. Actually I probably still should do it that way. I'll have a look into it.

[IT15ON]

My mate has been looking into WMI as an E85 alternative as it is not available in country areas too, thanks for a great write up. Looks like you well and truly got a result for all the hard work!

What do you think the total cost of parts was in the end, shipped over here (before tune)?

[norrs]

Mate you are looking at like $2000 it's expensive but it's the best kit in the world by far.

[timwds]

Great result Norrs!

What ratio of water to meth are you running and did you do much experimenting with meth ratios on the dyno?

Cheers