All of my experiments have shown that one shouldn't expect power gains with W.I. if fuelling isn't trimmed accordingly.
Otherwise you might get an extra thick protection margin against detonation, but that's it. Usually at the expense of power. That's what most people do, and that's what most 'tuners' do, so they give W.I. a bad name (useless, expensive, band-aid, etc)

They are still stuck in books from the seventies and eighties, or practices from days gone by.

I have seen significant power gains with water/methanol injection both in the summer and the winter so it can be done.
The concept works.

Watched one of the vid's from that site ! Most of what they say go's strait over my head. But i do kind of understand how the wide band is better than the normal lambda. Would this wideband lambda work with the astra's ecu ?

Is the MAF converter not going to be the way forward with WI on the astra ?

On the C20LET I had the ECU accepting the output from the AEM wideband.
Apart from it's own display of the wideband, it also had an output that could be set up to emulate the stock narrowband sensor. So the ECU was very happy. In fact it ran better than with the stock sensor, because the wideband moves quicker.

I watched the video several times before I absorbed everything properly - it was an excellent message for producing fuel efficient power. I was also very glad that they have mentioned WI as a replacement for fuel dumping.

I could not continue on the dyno with Mike's car as the air fuel ratio along the plot was a bit irregular. But I think Mike is tempted to getting the Innovate lambda gauge, I will then be a bit more comportable with what the a/f ratio is during the next tune. I still think the MAF converter is the way forward rather getting a full blow piggyback ECU, cost wise.

This is one thing which is very clear - trimming the MAF signal is a very simple way of leaning the air fuel ratio. I will contact Mike to find out if he want to continue.

Could you tell me how it failed? If you cab take a picture, it wil be much better.

How what failed?

Richard - after looking at the innovatve products I look for alternatives and found this:
http://www.zeitronix.com/Products/zt2/zt2.htm

It is the Zeitronix Zt-2 and seems to be a brilliant bit of kit and much cheaper too. What do you think of it? The user input can log any 0-5v signal so I was thinking about getting one of these to log knock:
http://www.thor-racing.co.uk/KNOCK_BLOCK_-LNK_KNKB.asp

I want to continue playing with the module. I fitted a new AFM today but it didn't feel like I got the power back. I logged the lambda (although only narrow band) and it stayed below 0.8, not sure how accurate it is. The second lambda sensor seemed to give fluctuating results (yes, there are two on this engine). I'll speak to Courtenays about this tomorrow. It may be that one of my lambda probes has gone funny.

I'll get the car running 100% before we have another go with it.

I think both item is good value for money. Will be interesting to to know the total after adding the options. The LCD display and EGT probe is a must. Boost sensor is not need in your case as you have a map sensor already, you can log it on the user 0-5V.

72 samples per second per graph divided by 7 channels means 10 samples per second per input. It would ne nice if you have a few spare inputs.

I know very little about knock sensors - the nice ones uses DSP chip to analyise the knock and the not so good ones just have a tunable notch filter. I welcome you getting some useful tools to help tuning your car. It is too dangerous to to tune without them or rollong road hours can mount up very quickly.

Let me know when thing are back to normal again. If you have the wideband, you can check you MAF sensor daily.

Richard - I am currently watching the videos on the inovative site. Err.... that thing is amazing!!! I think I.m changing my mind back towards this setup..... (3 more videos to watch!)

The gauge concept the this gauge is amazing - 16 million colours - function of the gauge can be changed in a matter of minutes.

Yes - very impressed with that! I may order a kit with the aux box, exhaust clamp and cary case. Loving the way that it gives you factors to correct lambda to the target so you can put it straight into programable ECUs!!! Some great features, and support on the forum seems very good.

How doe's that bloke remember all of his lines !?!

Will this upgraded lambda be essential to tune the astra with WI ?

He has a photographic memory.


I think it is essential to monitor the afr to get the best out of a tune.
If you like, I can superimpose the WI and no WI dyno chart and show you the difference M50/W50 effect on the power change.

That would be good. :D

Is there any product which we could replace the AMM with ? The astras standard AMM is absolute junk.

I'm working on this. ;)

How ?

I can't say, sorry.

Think my AMM has gone down now. I will have to get one tomorrow. :evil:

Any feedback on my install (in gallery section) would be apreciated.

They are really fragile,,,, :sad: :sad:

http://www.aquamist.co.uk/forum/gall...I-baseline.jpg


Can anyone comment and suggest any thing what was going on?

Damn - that is really bizzare!!

I agree. - more weird with I could paste the 13:1/afr trace onto it.

Richard

Ok, am I am going to think out loud here.

When tuning a turbo engine, you want to fuel in relation to the torque, not the horsepower. So, at high torque areas, you should runng a bit rich and as the torque drops, you can move the mixture to a lambda of around 0.85.

If you look at the graph from 2800rpm to 4000rpm (B to D) you can see that with WI the mixture was richer at this point and too lean without it. As a result, there was more power with the WI.

The extra rich mixture at the top end (G to J) is impacting on the torque hugely. As you can see, the WI was making it too rich because of the methanol content (was running 50/50). The run without WI got better results at the very top end. I think that if the graph went up to 6800rpm (limit) we would have seen it rise further.

I really can't work out what is going on sections E to G. It is possible that the AMM was not giving consistant results to the ECU and was fuelling differently on each run. Or maybe the cooler inlet charge helped keep the mixture leaner for longer when WI was running.

Richard. I will be recieving $1200 worth of kit from Inovate Motorsport in the next few days. I'll run some tests and log MAF, MAP, Lambda and RPM to produce some more graphs.

Oh - lambda is not effected by WI, the results for lambda is always correct as all it does is measure oxygen. AFR is not reliable as the stoichometric value of the fuel (due to the methanol) changes. AFR is a produce of the lambda mulipied by the stoichometric value of the fuel used, so you need to know this. If you stick to lambda figures you always know where you stand, even if you run methanol.

so 300lbft at 3000rpm need the same fuel as 300lbft at 6000rpm. Is that what you mean? :wink:

why does it go richer than 0.85 anyway?

lol - obviously you I meant Lambda, I guess I should have worded it better.


The Courtenay maps aim for 0.79 lambda for safety. A bit too safe I think though. Also, don't forget that the AFM was playing up a bit (we think).

Even lambda.
Why exactly would it have to be different?
Higher torque usually indicates better 'breathing' in that range, higher Volumetric Efficiency. More oxygen molecules per revolution.
So if fuelling adjusts to this, it will pair (say) 20% more fuel molecules to make up for 20% more oxygen molecules.
Lambda is just the ratio, it stays the same :wink:

The extra heat that might need absorbing in the combustion chambers (we're talking high-boost applications here) will be absrobed by the Water.
That is the whole idea behind this forum, isn't it? :D

we've already been through this, and it is 0.85 that we want in this case.
Their 0.79 is a good choice for a non-WI setup.

Yep - I will be aiming for 0.85 when I remap my car.

I'm saying this because I did several runs on mine on a hub dyno with various AFRs (I can adjust it on-the-fly)
Running rich 10-11:1 did nothing for power, and WI actually reduced power.
It's when you reach 12.5:1 that it starts to work properly.
It gets better at even leaner figures :shock:, but you may want to play it safe at this stage :cool: .

If you have you car maped for WI, will the engine run lean if the WI tank run dry ?

No, because I will have two maps which will be switchable. The low level sensor on the tank would automatically change the map to the safe version which will be designed to run without WI.

I take it this wont be on a standard ecu ! Will it ?

It will be a piggy back ECU on the standard ECU.

http://www.aquamist.co.uk/forum/gall...eline-lean.jpg

Here is all three dyno pulls of the day. The power didn't seem to suffer after the ramping up period. The engine seemed to enjoy running on WI +M only. Wonder why putting all those fuel there in the first place. We should have been brave and run the last pull all the way to red line.

I will get a time scale plot from Gary to ensure the RPM scale is matched to the previous pulls. The above picture is only a guessed fit.

I am sharing the same thoughts - it would be so nice whenyou have got your Wide band sensor, an in-car dynometer to take all the guessing game away.

Amazing how afr affect the torque reading - only running a small amount of water/methanol relatively.

Richard

Mike, got your toys yet?

Richard

Hi Rich. Yep - got the toys. Not had much time to play though. I still think there is an issue with the car, so I will be getting it checked out soon. I'll let you know when the car is ready to try again.

I have seen an astra turbo with an EGT sensor in the manifold (with in car guage). Would this help the trimming device and the dds3 ?

Although you can expect detonation when EGTs become excessive, you can also have detonation with EGTs in the 'normal' range for that engine.
So the EGT signal is not the best single indicator out there.

ashtal, what has happened to your pictures?

Account was closed. i will send them to you if thats ok ? Or do you know of any other hosting sites for pictures ? If not can i have your email address.