I heard someone talking about water injection. At first, I thought they were talking about wet nitrous injection, but later I found out that it wasnt. What is water injection then? I think I have been mislead from the little amount of info I have heard. To me injecting water into your engine doesnt sound like the healthiest thing for it. I have heard of bad consequences with water in fuel. Someone help me!

 

Whats happening is people are taking straight water or rubbing alcohol/water mix and at high rpms injection water, just like you thought.


Why? Under boost or naturally aspirated, people find that they wanna add juat a little more timing to the equation to gain that extra few hp, maybe a little gain may be a lot, really depends on your engine combination. They also realize that by upping the timing and gaining the added hp they also get predetonation or pinging, not wanting to let go of that extra hp and back the timing off or run expensive race fuel, they set up a water injection system that shoots water into the air fuel mix through the intake, eliminating the pre detonation.

Actually there are two other positives to doing this, not only will you gain hp and tq by pushing the limits of your engine but you will gain hp and tq due to the cooling effect the water has on the air/fuel mix. Another bonus, you ever see a cylinder that has had a coolant leak, that piston will be as clean as a whistle, so in effect you will clean out your combustion chambers to a certain degree by doing this. If you let your engine lug at idle and shoot water in it then you could cause some problems, depending on the amount but this is all done at decent rpms so there isn't a problem. I clean my engine by getting the idle up to 2000 rpms and spraying a mist of water into the carb, haven't had a problem yet, not really and different than how one might go about using an engine cleaner that you suck into the intake via vacuum hose.

Hope that helps.... later

 

Thanks. I was wondering about that. I know that injecting water at idle could make your engine freeze up, but now it makes more sense.

 

Years ago, Holley and others actually made Water-Jection kits.... havent seen (or heard of) em in years tho