[The Alchemist]

I'm the friend the OP was talking to. I'm looking to add water/meoh in order to keep my chamber temps under control while making upwards of 700+ rwhp. I have an LS1 motor, and #7 cylinder has a notorious issue with being hotter than the other cylinders due to logistical issues with the cylinder head and how the coolant flows through the block and into the heads. I was having a technical discussion with someone who kept saying to run 100% meoh as it cools better than water, but I disagreed with him stating that meoh cools 'quicker' since it has a lower evaporation temperature, but once the chamber mixture is ignited, the meoh only serves to add to the latent heat in the chamber, where the water will help to control the chamber temperature through the combustion cycle far better than running 100% meoh.

I was a formulation/qc chemist at Sunoco early in my career as a chemist, and I remember experiments testing the combustion chamber temps with regards to different air/fuel ratios as well as different octane levels in the gasoline. Unfortunately, that data is still at sunoco. So I was looking to see how the different ratios of meoh/water impacted combustion chamber temperatures. If you can keep the combustion chamber temps under control, the need for elevated octane levels decreases. Knock/pre-ignition is impacted far greater from chamber temperature than cylinder pressure, ie compression ratio or boost pressure. So keep the temperature in check and you can run more compression, more boost, more timimng and less octane.