Hey Klamps.
Yes a 'cooler is easy to setup. But dont be scared of water meth injection as it's not hard to set up either.
Water / meth for cooling involves.
1 x Pump
1 x Reservoir for fluid
1 x Nozzle
1 x pressure switch
1 x fuse for pump
and maybe 1 x manual override.
Mount pump. Run pressure hose up to plenum. Fit 0.7mm dia nozzle (use any water spray type for industrial applications - theres heaps available in the plumbing industry). Fit Hose to nozzle. Mount pressure switch in Inlet tract between 'charger and maf/map sensor. Set Pressure swithc to come on at 5 PSi. Mount reservoir. Run feeder hose from reservoir to pump. Fill reservoir.
Thats it really. I've done all the hard work on this in terms of research so i can share a few things I found out.
Mosly people mount spray nozzles in the inlet tract, before the plenum. On a Ecotec, this might result in water condesning / collecing on the inlet tract wall and running down the inlet into the back of your charger. Not good. So my plan is to mount it directly into the lid of the plenum. Mount it in the plenum lid, just behind the butterfly opening, in the middle of the 6 ports. Not above the ports, mount much closer to the throttle butterfly than the ports.
When you buy a nozzle, buy one with about a 90 degree spread.
Nozzle sizing - allow for 10% of your total fuel flow, as water flow. so if you inject 360 cc's per second of fuel at 5000rpm, make sure your injecting 36cc per minute of water. What your actual flow of fuel is will vary from build to build, so don't assume 0.7 dia is the right flow rate for you, but it's a decent start point for a 3.8L v6.
Don't inject at 0PSI boost - hence the pressure switch. at no boost, you have no real performance happening. In fact, your not being serious about accelerating until you hit about 5 PSI boost. This does 2 things. 1 - limits the use of your water meth mix - your not always injecting. You may get 5000-10000km between water meth mix refills. 2 - Prevents the engine from bogging down due to a quench affect caused by the water. This is directly related to air temperature. 'Chargers of any sort heat air when compressing it. So by waiting until you have boost on board, you are waiting for the air to get hot before cooling it. This means the water stays in suspension rather than condensing on your cylinder head walls.
There are heaps of advantages to water meth injection, and a few downsides. Heres the bad and the good.
Bad -
Water injection is not as efficient as intercooling in terms of heat removal. you can get a Delta T of 25-30 degrees when intercooling in a real good setup. Water meth will give 15-22 temperature change (reduction)
You will have to refill your water meth tank occasionally.
Good -
Water meth injection will keep the engione cleaner. Water is somewhat abrasive, and will help remove carbon and carbon deposits from from intake runners, cylinder heads, combustion chamers and exhaust ports. It essentially provides a tiny amount of steam cleaning every compression stroke.
It allows for massivley shorter air paths between charger and heads. This results in better throttle response, less parasitic losses in terms of pressure and air flow, less friction between air and intake path walls, more accurate tuning of air to fuel ratios, less lag (turbo-charger applications only obviously), and more even / less turbulent air flows in the plenum as a result.
When working with a system like the Water cooled Raptor system, which is only something like 70-80% as efficient as an intercooler, if you add water meth injection, you end result as a combined system would be 130-150% as effective as a well designed and implemented cooler.
When adding methanol in your water, you can actually reduce the impact of the water quench effect on combustion. Methanol absorbs water - imagine a sponge. Methanol is the sponge itself, but it can absorb a heap of water as well. When the methanol is burnt in the combustion cycle, it releases the water as stem. The net result is 2 stages of cooling. Water cooling air in the plenum, and water cooling the late part of combustion and exhaust cycles.
*** It is important to remember that both Intercoolers and Water / Meth injection, need to be designed and installed properley to be effective. more people have done intercooler systems than water meth, so intercooler kits are readily available.
Water meth cooling can also be used without a charger.
And theres a reason why water meth injection is popular in drag racing.
Enjoy
looks so much better now, thanks ASR!!!!!
