Has anybody heard anything about ERL's Aquamist water injection system? Is it worthy of a buy?
Here's a lil description from ERL's website: aquamist is ERL's latest generation of water-injection equipment.
The main function of these systems
is to suppress detonation caused by
high temperature and pressure developed within the combustion chamber when the effective compression ratio has
been taken beyond the auto-ignition point by either a turbo or a supercharger. Water, with its high latent heat content, is extremely effective for controlling not only the onset of detonation but also the
production of oxides of nitrogen in
the modern leanburn engines.
ERL's latest products are designed with great care to ensure each system meets the highest standards of both electronic and mechanical reliability.

http://www.aquamist.co.uk/

What do you guys think?

 

Have one on my SC'd CRX. Not active at this point. Does reduce temperature, but you have to be careful about how you set it up. Need to get good distribution of the water vapor. On a turbo car it's a bit simpler. You can inject before the intercooler and get pretty good results. Some cars have seen rather large gains, but its different in every case. For about $500 its a pretty cheap system to try out if you're interested.

UL

 

Not to sound dumb, but I remember reading somewhere about a system similar to this used to increase gas mileage on cars.

 

I saw a system like this in use on a turbocharged 280 ZX motor. The owner claimed it helped reduce charge temperature and the chance of detonation. He also warned that it was "a very bad thing" to run the reservoir out of water when on the throttle. Like UL said, sounds like it would be interesting to try it out.

 

this is not the same, as for the system working, it's most useful on boosted applications.

 

Coral,

I would assume, then, that the guy had tuned his engine right at the edge...tuned it under the assumption that under WOT he had spray. Once you run out, suddenly your intake charge warms up and you run into detonation issues. If the system was tuned assuming the system wasn't there, you could run out of water without issue.

 

Yes, how it works really depends on tuning. You see, water injection tends to slow down the combustion process as well as cooling the mixture. So you can usually run more timing with the H20 (in fact, you kind of have to or you can lose power depending on setup). For optimal setup you usually want to lean the mixture a bit since the H20 takes up some space otherwise occupied by O2.

In reality, you don't have to tweak all those things to get some benefit. On an S2000 turbo kit, I don't know that just water injection would make a big difference if you didn't run more boost. Maybe 10-15 hp, and it might be safer too, so for $500 it wouldn't be a bad deal.

On my CRX I utilized the stock windshield washer fluid reservoir. This held nearly 3 quarts of water and was good for at least one tank of gas, even if I was spending time on the track.

UL

 

You can use the same kit to spray methanol too, to make the power come later in the crank cycle, giving more torque.

I've been thinking of getting this installed, but I still need my damn computer to be able to advance timing and lean out the fuel mixture!

The effects on NA cars are meant to be pretty small, but I am guessing that if it lets you lean out the fuel that little bit more and advance timing a little more, then you will get better mileage and better power. For $500 you can't knock that.

Oh, BTW I think aquamist are recommending a 10% water/fuel mix for NA cars, and 20% for turbo cars. That means for a NA S2000, you'd need about a gallon of water. (Most the time I fill up, I take about 11 gallons) and for a turboed S2k, you'd need a two gallon drum in your boot.

 

I found a couple of photos of the car I mentioned above - it's a 240 Z with a highly modified 280 ZX turbo motor. You can't see the water reservoir, but you can see the turbo that gives the engine 450+ hp (according to the owner) . So MacGyver, I guess it was tuned pretty much to the edge!

 

Only if you spend the whole tank driving at full throttle. Water injection is only used at high loads, WOT stuff. Unless you're at a track day, you won't need nearly that much water since most consumption is done at part throttle.

UL