Paxton or Turbo Boosted Progressive Water / Methanol Injection Kits

[Sean Roe]

Water / alcohol / methanol injection is nothing new. The functionality, benefits and risks are also nothing new. There are a LOT of people doing it right now and it’s getting really big in the diesel truck market. Seems to have some additional benefit related to the turbo.

As far the question of where to put the nozzle, we suggest just forward of the throttle body. The nozzle fogs / mists the water and you want it within a couple inches of the inlet.

For a reservoir, yes, you can absolutely forgo the larger reservoir and use a smaller one, like the windshield washer bottle (that’s exactly what we do on the Ram trucks, which also have a low level indicator built in). On an application where you’re using a small amount of spray, the smaller reservoir would work just fine.

The benefits and how the system is used are pretty straight forward. You have a lot of flexibility here. If a car is running well, but you want the system for the benefit of cooler on a hot day when you’re out playing, or racing, you'd run low pump pressure so that it’s only flowing a very fine mist. A scenario like that would be about what I’d expect on a stock Paxton car. With the boost being progressive on that style SC and the W/M system we make being progressive, you could easily set the system to activate at about 4-5 psi and have the benefit of cooler air up top, where it’s most important. One thing I noticed on testing a Paxton SC Viper kit (I did buy a brand new kit and install it so I could see what I was up against), their cooler is pretty efficient at the beginning when the air hasn’t been too hot, but it does warm up pretty fast and the power drops off accordingly (I’m not saying to no gain, just that it drops off because the air gets hotter due to the cooler system being kind of small relative to how much heat it has to transfer after the first cold pull). A water / WM system in this case would be used mainly to maintain a performance level and provide some gain / safety at the upper end with cooler air / pistons.

If you really want to max out what you can get with a W/M system, you can run more pressure and turn up the ignition advance. Big gains can be had there. The water does a great job of allowing you to increase timing. The risk there is, the driver has to pay attention that the system is working. You could use a knock sensor setup with visual indicator, which wouldn’t be a bad idea anyway if you have a lot invested in maxing out your engine’s performance.

One really cool things we’re looking at right now is mixing the system with NOS. Our progressive controller can also fire off a NOS solenoid, which allows the NOS to ramp up and stay steady, versus come on and not adjust according to engine RPM. When most NOS systems come on, you see this big hit of power and it tapers back at higher RPM. The problem in that is that you have a variable amount of air moving (the engine always moves X cubic inches per revolution, but the RPM’s are increasing), but a fixed NOS nozzle flow. So you get more NOS to air at lower RPM and less NOS to air at higher RPM. You also have to take timing out with NOS. Using the W/M controller to fire both the W/M pump and the solenoid at the same time is allowing us to keep all the timing advance in (for more power) while also ramping in the NOS (making a better curve and not such a violent hit at the beginning). When complete, we’ll be able to run bigger jets than most can now because we’ll be pulsing them low at first and more at higher RPM. The upper end gain will be much bigger.

Anyway, that’s a quick post and a bit rambling (sorry). I have a lot going on and do get pretty excited about what we can do with this stuff J.

Regards,
Sean

[Bobpantax]

Thanks for the data Sean. Helpful.

[MacManInfi]

I can vouch for the Paxton loosing power after just a few seconds of boost. I saw a 30 rwhp loss on the dyno during back to back runs.

Quick question. Does the Paxton kit, or stock computer pull timing due to high intake temperature? If so, then it seems like you'd want to install the line before the air temp sender.

It would also be cool to install the line before the air temp sender just so I can see how much cooler the temps get (via scangaugeII).

One last thing, where does one buy Methanol?

[plumcrazy]

you might just wanna use WATER to COOL then ?

and on a dyno is different from actually running on the street. on the street there is a TON of air coming in the fascia to help cool it down. i have NOT noticed any drop in power in MANY back to back pulls on the street. but could also be the DLM cooler and pump ?

[Sean Roe]

Originally Posted by MacManInfi

I can vouch for the Paxton loosing power after just a few seconds of boost. I saw a 30 rwhp loss on the dyno during back to back runs.

Quick question. Does the Paxton kit, or stock computer pull timing due to high intake temperature? If so, then it seems like you'd want to install the line before the air temp sender.

It would also be cool to install the line before the air temp sender just so I can see how much cooler the temps get (via scangaugeII).

One last thing, where does one buy Methanol?

Yes, the stock PCM removes ignition timing advance as the IAT increases. You're correct in thinking that the nozzle should be upstream of the sensor.

Methanol can be purchased at some places that sell race gas. It's also the contents of the product called Heet (gas dry). You could also use the Snow brand "Boost Juice". However, water is cheap, easy, plentiful and works.

[MacManInfi]

Wow, great info. Thanks for the reply. I ordered one of these kits. I'm stoked. Can't wait to put it on!

[plumcrazy]

and plain water is always mixed to the exact same ratio...lol

thats what i like about plain water for just cooling

[MacManInfi]

Got my kit over the weekend. Nice work! Nice wiring harness, instructions, etc. Well done.

Have a question though, if I install the nozzles into the silicon intake tubes, how do they seal air tight and not back out under boost? Silicone sealant maybe? Something else?

[MacManInfi]

Found an answer to my own question. Saturday night I finished the install. Drilled a small hole in each intake tube which was just barely big enough to get the head of the nozzle in. This made a really tight fit around the small neck of the nozzle (before the threads start). Put a little high-temp silicone sealant around the neck and installed them. They're in there really solid, and the nozzles don't protrude too far into the intake tubes. Everything went smoothly per the instructions. Fantastic kit, great job Roe!

[plumcrazy]

dang that looks sweet. nice going and nice looking engine

[kverges]

Aquamist makes an inline FLOW meter for W/M injection systems that could be retrofit to actually see water flow. Even then, however, if you hade a loose fitting or leak, water could be flowing, just not into the engine.