Thread: Water Vs. Meth
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Old 24-06-2010, 03:15 AM
Howerton Engineering
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Default Re: Water Vs. Meth

This question is sometimes a loaded one as there are so many variables you can make nearly anything work. I'll offer up my experience and you decide what it's worth.

100% water is good for preventing pre-ignition. It cools the combustion chamber and physical parts helping to eliminate hot spots. It also absorbs some of the peak heat during combustion helping cool everything as well.
Add too much water and you will blow out the flame front causing mis-fires. My basic description is, using 100% water you need a lot of "heat" By heat I mean boost and or compression. Using water on a low compression and moderate boost motor can be tricky.

100% methanol is good for adding real octane numbers and cooling the inlet track. Methanol will evaporate to a lower temperature int eh inlet track than water lowering the effective IAT. (We can argue about wet vs dry bulb temps but that's another subject). Methanol burns cooler and slower than gasoline helping cool the EGT's as well. Many tuners will find it's easier to make quick power on straight methanol, as the greater BTU release, increased octane, lower IAT and EGT all lead to power increases.

Some folks swear by straight water and some straight methanol. I've found it's pretty application specific.

AS for getting and mixing. Many people run 50/50 for the combined attributes of both liquids, and relative ease of procurement. 50/50 can be bought from some of the methanol suppliers. Other folks will research the best windshield wiper fluid they can find in their area. It can be found in 20-50% methanol concentrations. Try to find some with as little dye, and no detergents as possible. I know in CA finding it without detergents is hard.

Remember, if you get tuned for say 30% meth, you can generally go to higher concentrations later without damage, but if you are tuned for 50/50 and run straight water, you will run lean.

Hopefully this helps. I try not to ramble on this stuff but there is a lot of info to digest.
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