Injecting water into a rich a/f mixture is not a good idea

[Revhead]

Originally Posted by Richard L

Not so long ago, a user of our WI system has lost some 40+ WRHP during a dyno tuning session, not surprise to know that he was quite disappointed. Only after a few months later and have discovered that his engine is tuned to run an a/f ratio of around 10.5:1.

I would really like to hear from anyone if they have suffered the same experience?

I wonder if the tuner's intention was to get extra power by fitting the water injection alone without optimising the other engine's supporting hardware(ie increasing boost). IMO, the tuner may have thought the water injection as a pure power adder(ie nitrous).

I may be wrong here but the reason one(for me) would run a water injection is to maximize the whole setup(run as much boost, compression ratio, ideal ignition advance..etc) with commercially available fuel.

Bottom line, if mapped for the WI then fuel has to be reduced due to the water occupying the space normaly occupied by air, that means if the water is NOT working the lean running results. Given the above then ign can be advanced to take advantage of the cooler charge.

I agree...or increase boost.