Any motor heads here?

[Canonshooter]

Though I've been into competitive shooting for over 30 years (mostly hand gunning), first and foremost I am a major motor head.

My first car was a 1966 Mustang convertible which I acquired in 1970. It started life as a 289 2V automatic and ended up highly modded, 4-speed manual before selling it in 1973.

My current project car is a 2007 Forester XT (2.5 liter, DOHC turbocharged/intercooled flat 4), which I purchased new in 2007. It started out stock at 230 HP from the factory, which equates to about 175 HP at the wheels through the automatic trans and AWD system. The engine has now been extensively modified with a larger turbo, larger intercooler, 3 inch exhuast, ported and polished exhaust manifolds, low restriction intake and a water/methanol injection system. At my last visit to the tuner, it put down 274 HP at the wheels, which equates to about 365 HP at the crank. I took it to the local dragstrip this spring (before the water/methanol injection install and re-tune) and ran 13.4 at 104 MPH. I plan on going back soon (when the weather turns cooler) and expect to break into the 12s.

Other than the tuning and mounting tires on wheels, I do all of the work myself. Here is an assortment of photos of my Forester as it looks today;

http://www.canonshooter.com/photos2/fxt-22.jpg

http://www.canonshooter.com/photos2/fxtenginebay-2.jpg

http://www.canonshooter.com/photos2/hfs3-1.jpg

http://www.canonshooter.com/photos2/dynograph-3.gif

[dwhitehorne]

Sure, here is the thread. https://www.m4carbine.net/showthread.php?t=25571&highlight=motor+heads That Forester is definately a sleeper. A little more low key than mine:D David

http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i260/dwhitehorne/IMG_3073.jpg

[Business_Casual]

I'm usually a topic nazi, but when you have cars like that, start all the threads you want!

Is that orange a factory shade, by the way?

B_C

[99HMC4]

I like a little bigger tire on my ride. Heres mine and it will have a Viper GTS (02 FE) to share the garage real soon...:D
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e187/Hypercomp01/CIMG0046.jpg

[Canonshooter]

I can't make out the emblem on the '68 Chevelle - 396 I assume? There are a couple of 1970 454s around here in red that are magnificent too.

And the Hummer - gets you to some good shooting locations I bet!

[rob_s]

can we maybe get a mod to merge this one into the gear heads thread?
https://www.m4carbine.net/showthread.php?t=25571&highlight=gear+heads

I think it's pretty cool that we've had one car thread for quite some time.

[dwhitehorne]

I'm usually a topic nazi, but when you have cars like that, start all the threads you want!

Is that orange a factory shade, by the way?

B_C

Yes, it is the factory 69 color refered as Hugger Orange for Camaros and Monaco Orange for Chevelles. Car was orginally Forrest Green with a white top.

It was originally a 375hp SS396, but the original motor (block) is long gone. I still have the crank. Currently has a 454 block with my old 396 crank (AKA home made 427). M22 and Currie 9" in the back. It is really fun when the light turns green at the toll plaza;) David

[Mark71]

I never would have thought that I would be saying this, but your Subaru Forester looks good!

:cool:

[Alex V]

I never would have thought that I would be saying this, but your Subaru Forester looks good!

:cool:

Agreed lol

Not sure I understand the water injection part. Meth I get, many turbo/blower LS1s use it. But water can not be compressed, how is your motor supposed to use that? Im gathering you think its for cooling. I have heard of one other person talking about water injection but he was thought of as the villiage fool in a group of knowledgable car guys down in NC.

I would sugest doing the meth, not anything to do with water.

wanna compare dyno graphs ;) lol

No turbo's or blowers here... But more than twice the displacement lol


Either way, car looks awesome! But why is your torque peaking so early and then dieing off... Almost looks like a dyno from an automatic car with a large torque converter. Do you have a HP/Torque vs. Boost graph?

[Canonshooter]

Agreed lol

Not sure I understand the water injection part. Meth I get, many turbo/blower LS1s use it. But water can not be compressed, how is your motor supposed to use that? Im gathering you think its for cooling. I have heard of one other person talking about water injection but he was thought of as the villiage fool in a group of knowledgable car guys down in NC.

I would sugest doing the meth, not anything to do with water.

wanna compare dyno graphs ;) lol

No turbo's or blowers here... But more than twice the displacement lol


Either way, car looks awesome! But why is your torque peaking so early and then dieing off... Almost looks like a dyno from an automatic car with a large torque converter. Do you have a HP/Torque vs. Boost graph?

A good read on water injection can be found here (http://www.audiworld.com/tech/eng80a.shtml). Basically, even just water alone has a cooling effect on combustion temperature that can help turbo-charged engines avoid detonation. Water injection was commonly used on supercharged WW2 aircraft engines, which allowed for more agressive timing and higher power output.

The addition of methonal raises octane even higher, allowing for higher boost and more ignition timing advance. Some guys mix their own using straight methnaol (highly toxic stuff) and distilled water. Running 75% meth raises octane to around 105, which allows for some very agressive tuning! There is not much HP gain from 75% to using straight meth other than a huge increase in fire risk.

I'm playing it safe (and being lazy) - I'm injecting -20 degree F cheapo windshield washer fluid. It is about 32% methanol and the rest is straight water (with a little blue dye). This is the equivalent of about 98 octane in combination with 93 octane gas.

Since the water/meth is replacing some of the fuel, the F/A ratio is leaned out. My injectors were maxed out before the injection system at 98%, now they hit 88% maximum duty cycle.

The system I'm using - Aquamist HFS3 - has an elaborate fail-safe system that measure flow through he jet. If there is any deviation in that flow the system automatically cuts boost to save the engine from certain destruction.

The car was dynoed on a Mustang dyno. The large spike in torque is indeed from the torque converter. If my car was a manual, my torque would have been down around 315 ft/lbs and my WHP closer to 300. If I was to be tuned for 75% meth, those number increase by 10 to 12%.

Thanks for taking a look and for taking time to comment!

[Alex V]

A good read on water injection can be found here (http://www.audiworld.com/tech/eng80a.shtml). Basically, even just water alone has a cooling effect on combustion temperature that can help turbo-charged engines avoid detonation. Water injection was commonly used on supercharged WW2 aircraft engines, which allowed for more agressive timing and higher power output.

The addition of methonal raises octane even higher, allowing for higher boost and more ignition timing advance. Some guys mix their own using straight methnaol (highly toxic stuff) and distilled water. Running 75% meth raises octane to around 105, which allows for some very agressive tuning! There is not much HP gain from 75% to using straight meth other than a huge increase in fire risk.

I'm playing it safe (and being lazy) - I'm injecting -20 degree F cheapo windshield washer fluid. It is about 32% methanol and the rest is straight water (with a little blue dye). This is the equivalent of about 98 octane in combination with 93 octane gas.

Since the water/meth is replacing some of the fuel, the F/A ratio is leaned out. My injectors were maxed out before the injection system at 98%, now they hit 88% maximum duty cycle.

The system I'm using - Aquamist HFS3 - has an elaborate fail-safe system that measure flow through he jet. If there is any deviation in that flow the system automatically cuts boost to save the engine from certain destruction.

The car was dynoed on a Mustang dyno. The large spike in torque is indeed from the torque converter. If my car was a manual, my torque would have been down around 315 ft/lbs and my WHP closer to 300. If I was to be tuned for 75% meth, those number increase by 10 to 12%.

Thanks for taking a look and for taking time to comment!

I assumed it was a manual based on the photo of the interior [center console] looked like a gated sifter to me...

Still not convinced on the water injections... Like I said, I have seen plenty of cars with Meth injection. Three Corvettes both hitting over 1000rwhp, 2 being twin turbo on a forged 346cid motor and 1 with a single turbo 427, as well as 2 supercharged corvette making over 800 rwhp, not to mention many cars with blowers and turbos making 500-700 hp and so on. None have water injection. Then you can point to all the fastest drag radial turbo cars, full chassis race cars making well over 1500rwhp on huge 98 or 101mm turbos, running deep into the 7s some in the high 6's none have water injection. I have been around drag racing for close to 10 years, have seen many 9,8,7 second turbo cars, and have never seen any one of them with water being injected into the combustion chamber.

[bradb55]

That Forester is sick man! I love when people step outside the box. I tried to get my wife to get one but she went with a 2008 VW Passat 2.0t. She loves it, so thats good. There is tons of aftermarket parts for it, but will wait until the warranty is gone.

I really like your ride. I wish I had time (and funds) to step back into a project thats not a daily driver.

[Canonshooter]

That Forester is sick man! I love when people step outside the box. I tried to get my wife to get one but she went with a 2008 VW Passat 2.0t. She loves it, so thats good. There is tons of aftermarket parts for it, but will wait until the warranty is gone.

I really like your ride. I wish I had time (and funds) to step back into a project thats not a daily driver.

Thanks Brad!

Alex, perhaps the large displacement, all-out race cars do not benefit from water/meth injection. For our small flat four street cars, we certainly do gain many benefits. The system took plenty of time to install and to get set up. Now that the ECU has been tuned for it and I have all of the fail safe settings dialed in, it has been a worthy upgrade.

Here's a lousy cell phone video of me at the local dragstrip this past summer. My ET was about .2 seconds faster than the 'vette I was lined up with;

FXT vs. 2003 Corvette (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q26PsiMhVpM&feature=player_embedded)

And, living up here in the snow belt they're a blast in the winter too!

http://www.canonshooter.com/photos2/fxtsnow-4.jpg

[Alex V]

Thanks Brad!

Alex, perhaps the large displacement, all-out race cars do not benefit from water/meth injection. For our small flat four street cars, we certainly do gain many benefits. The system took plenty of time to install and to get set up. Now that the ECU has been tuned for it and I have all of the fail safe settings dialed in, it has been a worthy upgrade.

Here's a lousy cell phone video of me at the local dragstrip this past summer. My ET was about .2 seconds faster than the 'vette I was lined up with;

FXT vs. 2003 Corvette (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q26PsiMhVpM&feature=player_embedded)

And, living up here in the snow belt they're a blast in the winter too!

http://www.canonshooter.com/photos2/fxtsnow-4.jpg


Youtube blocked at work. Will check out on my phone during lunch.

Either way, good luck! As Brad said, its awesome to see people thinkg outside the box when it comes to making cars faster.

Still don't see the water injection thing tho lol. Meth, sure, it burns, but water don't compress lol

Why not just run race fuel? 104 octane, hell, you can get C16 [116 octane] just take out the cats because it has lead in it. All the Vettes I mentioned making 800+ HP run C16. I had myc ar tuned on 104 one time, did not do sh*t. So I switched back to 93.

Should be back to the track in a week or two. Need to buy new slicks but I keep spending money on gun parts lol.

[ShortytheFirefighter]

Alright! Good to see another Subaru owner on the board.

I've got an 02 WRX wagon running around 285hp that I've been running for the last few years. I work medical support for a few of the rallies around here and I rallycross mine whenever I get a chance. I live in MN so we get plenty of snow as well, they're a riot in a blizzard. I like mine because it makes getting to the station that much easier and safer. The wagon just makes it a sleeper.

[Canonshooter]

Still don't see the water injection thing tho lol. Meth, sure, it burns, but water don't compress lol

Neither does gasoline (or methanol). Most liquids are not compressible.

The water/meth is highly atomized (just like the gasoline) when it enters the combustion chamber and in my application, accounts for about 15% of the "fuel" entering the cylinder under maximum boost.

In a forced induction engine, as boost increases so does the potential for detonation. Even in the cars you mention, the way this is handled is by adding more fuel to cool the combustion chamber. In my car under maximum boost, about 10% of the gasoline being injected was used only to carry excess heat out of the combustion chamber. This fuel does not burn as there is not enough oxygen to support its combstion. My A/F ratio at maximum boost used to be 10.9/1.

Water can carry many times the heat as compared to gasoline (specific heat of a liquid), so instead of injecting fuel for cooling purposes water is used. It enters the combustion chamber as a highly atomized mist (just like the fuel) and upon ignition, turns into a gas (steam). When water (mist) turns to steam, it absorbs a boat load of heat energy and carrys that heat away on the exhaust cycle.

The net result is that with the added cylinder cooling, more boost/ignition timing can be used to increase HP. Additonally, the A/F ratio can be leaned out, creating even more power without increasing the risk of detonation. In my case, my A/F ratio went from 10.9/1 to 11.4/1 under maximum boost.

In the dyno graph below, the only difference is the addition of the water/methanol injection, spraying -20 degree washer fluid (30% meth, 70% water). As you can see, there were substantial gains throughout the RPM range in both torque and HP, and this with low meth content and a conservative tune;

http://www.canonshooter.com/photos2/dynograph-3.gif

The system is comprised of a reservior (in my case, I used the stock windshield washer tank), a constant-speed 160 PSI pump (bypass type), a "fast acting valve" that pulses open/closed to control the amount of flow (just like a regular fuel injector) and a nozzle which is mounted on the outlet of the intercooler just upstream of the throttle body. The system is electronically controlled by monitoring injector duty cycle (wired into the ECU). Once I hit about 7 PSI of boost, the system enegerizes and begins spraying, progressively more up to maximum flow at maximum boost (20 PSI in my case).

The controller is also wired to my boost control solenoid. If the flow sensor (part of the fast acting valve) detects an out-of-range flow condition (too much or not enough flow), it immediately opens the boost control solenoid and drops boost to "waste gate pressure" which in myy case is 7 PSI. This is in combination with the action of the ECU, that immediately dumps more fuel in the event of knock (more fuel cools the cylinder to fight off detonation). There is always some risk with water/meth injection but the Aquamist system I used is well designed and has good built-in failsafe measures.

No doubt, water/meth injection is a bit of a hassle to install and requires proper tuning to gain any power. It no doubt works better in some applications than in others. Turbocharged Subarus seem to benefit pretty well from it.

Now that I've lived with the system for a while, I may be tempted to go with a 75% meth mixture and go back for a re-tune. Then again, I think I've pushed my driveline hard enough!

More pics for us hopeless motor heads;

This is the gauge display of the system on the right (the main controller is tucked up in the console). Bar graph at top shows amount of low when system is active (above 7 PSI). W.Injection ready light and then low reservior warning light (which also kicks in failsafe). The black button on the right is used to shut off system and run on waste gate pressure (7 PSI boost). The potentiometers on the bottom are used to set up the failsafe - minimum flow set point in the event of a blocked nozzle or broken line between pump and valve, maximum flow set point in the event the line ruptures or falls off between the valve and nozzle. If flow is out of range, failsafe engages. Boost/vacuum gauge on the left;

http://www.canonshooter.com/photos2/hfs3-2.jpg

Float switches installed in windshield washer tank. Top one is an extra that I installed to indicate tank is half full, bottom one trips system into failsafe (low fluid);

http://www.canonshooter.com/photos2/hfs3-3.jpg

Front right side with bumper removed. here you see the washer reservior and the Aquamist pump. The output line of the pump runs from here to the fast acting valve under the hood;

http://www.canonshooter.com/photos2/hfs3-6.jpg

Fast acting valve under the hood. Inlet line from pump, outlet line to nozzle. This valve also includes the flow sensor;

http://www.canonshooter.com/photos2/hfs3-10.jpg

Nozzle assembly installed in outlet connection of top-mount intercooler;

http://www.canonshooter.com/photos2/hfs3-8.jpg

I hope you find this long-winded post interesting!

[Canonshooter]

Alright! Good to see another Subaru owner on the board.

Likewise!

[Alex V]

Interesting indeed. And like I said, don't get me wrong, I was just saying that I have not seen water injection in any boosted car and I have seen plenty. As said, from 11 second stock motor bolt on turbo cars, to fully built 6 second race cars. From 6psi to 30+ psi. many have Meth injection, none that I have seen have water.

Only reason I brough it up was because of my experience.

I am not saying what you are doing is wrong. Just seems odd based on my experience.

Fire risk aside. My friend drove his 8 second turbo C5 from Florida to NJ with a windshield washer fluid tank full of Methanol. lol Its a 1000+ HP car on full boost and meth. No real problems running strait meth and clearly, it makes power.

Good luck!