if anyone wants a cheap solution ($20+or-) to chill their intercooler a little more this might be an easy solution. go get a universal window washer pump (from any parts place) and plumb a small bit of tubing into your window washer tank located right in front of the passenger front wheel well. drill a small hole high in the tank and fit the tubing tightly through the hole till it is in the bottom of the tank then head to home depot or where ever and pick up some of the small little spray heads they have for watering plants and a few little t's the hook them to. if you have a kit that leaves your front bumber brace in tact you simply fasten your lines to the bottom of that and aim them to spray down on the intercooler. then just ground the correct wire on the pump and and with the Z being drive by wire and no place to put a throttle switch on the motor, run your positive through the firewall and mount a micro switch to be activated by your throttle pedal instead. then wire to a ignition switched source and you are in business!! the washer tank has quite a bit of volume to it so unless you are going full throttle ALOT, you will not even be needing to fill the tank back up very often at all. just cheap insurance, and for $20 and a couple hours, why the hell not, lol.

 

I asume you mean by "cheap insurance" that this device would protect you from something? What would this protect you from?

 

detonation is caused by heat. it is the air fuel charge igniting before it is supposed to thus if it happens before tdc you will be looking at some broken parts if it is a high hp motor. sounds like alot of guys are loosing their motors to detonation, but the stock Z motor already having 10.3-1 comp stock and tossing boost at it, you are raising your cylinder pressures way up. more cylinder pressure, more power, but more heat also from that power. compressing air generates heat (touch the pressure feed line on a running air compressor) thus the reason for intercooling. if the right size intercooler is used you can dramatically drop your intake charge temp back close to ambient temps (outside air temp). but there is also a thing called heat soak, which is as the hot air passes through the intercooler it will heat up the intercooler making it less effiecient. might sound weird but boosted cars actually favor the use of nitrous just for the cooling effects it has on the incoming charge, but that can be a fine line as you are again raising your cylinder pressures which will create more heat once the mixture is fired. one of the best ways to do it is get a n2o bottle, put a purge valve on it and spray n2o across the intercooler and temps below ambient can be attained. but this is just a very easy cheap way to help with heat soak and drop the inlet temp a few more degrees. besides cooler air is more dense, so over all you might add a little safety and a few hp.
now lets see how many opinions form from this. i love a good opinion battle, but remember i only speak when i know i'm right, hahaha.

 

I think that's a great idea. And cheap too. One could put water/alcohol instead of washer fluid and add some ice in the bottle for the track.

I will consider this once I get the TT installed.

Thanks!

 

this wont do a bit of help for your engine temps. it might and i mean might lower your intake temps a bit but overall it wont save your butt if you have a bad tune. for a real alternative look into water/alcohol injection. that stuff will allow you to make some good power with lower egts.

 

yeah...how come nobody talks about water injection here??? you could run more timing/ lower egts / safety ....if anyone has played around with this- please share


TODD

 

i dont know why they dont, but its a huge thing with the mitsu crowd. you can run pump gas but get the same results as having race gas. AFAIK a water/alcy injection kit should cost no more than $400-500.

 

Yup I've mentioned this a couple of times as well and nobody chimes in. The only negatives I've heard is that some tuners do not like it because it adds complexity to the system and the possibility of a foreign particle getting into the mix through the alch injectors. My LS1 buddies all swear by it though and insist its necessary for a safe turbo setup. Makes sense to me, alch + water = lower combustion temp, lower combustion temp = the ability to increase timing/boost = more power!!!!!!

 

ya, it is not a mod to overcome bad tuning of course, but mostly to help with heat soak to increase intercooler effiecientcy. as far as you saying it will maybe help cool intake charge, do a test. hold your arm out the window while driving, then get your arm wet and do again. not to hard to figure that water is a much better heat exchanger than air alone. point i was trying to make is people are spending thousands on tt and supercharger setups and this is a very cheap easy thing to do.
water or alcohol injection has small cooling affects on the intake charge but it mostly gets it's benefits from the steam created by the firing of the mixture. it can help very much in helping detonation problems but, imo, that is an override for bad tuning and alot to gamble if you let the tank run dry and it is tuned with the water injection working properly. but like i said, that is my opinion.

 

i think you might be surprised at what is capable on water/alc injection. for ex. the 04 evo 8 is capable of about 370hp/360tq on stock turbo w/race gas and full set of mods (bolt ons +cams). a shop managed to get 420hp/515tq off the stocker with alcy injection and race gas. the i/c sprayer does help a little with heat soak, but its not that great. it came stock on my car the last 2 years and i have seen its capabilities.

 

I think alcohol/water injection is a better insurance. The kits are not that expensive, only $200-300. The water will help cool the combustion chamber, reducing the chance of knock, and the alcohol will raise the octane a little bit so you can run more boost before detonating. I have it on my car and I think it's they way to go.

 

I regularly use WI on my SC'd truck , works great. Basically it makes crappy 91 octane act like ~94. So you can tune timing/boost to take advantage of that. It also lowered the peak EGT by >200F. And when runnign a smaller puly has netted about 40rwhp and rwtq. I am considering a better version for my G once my LB and APS setup is done.

The main issue with a cheaper $200 WI systems is that they don't include any of the CYA smechanisms. You don't want to run dry /with a plugged nozzle under boost with an aggressive tune , since you can readily go boom.

So you shoudl really, really , really consider the CYA factor.
On my truck for example I run:
a) a pre-nozzle psi gauge (low psi means dead pump circuit, high psi mean plugged nozzle) ,
b) use the washer tank (which has a low level warning already)
c) use an MSD knock alert to warning of impending detoantion doom.

The most expensive and most comrehensive setup woudl be a Aquamist 2d or better system wtih a JandS knock alert to pull timing in the rare water stoppage event. But that system would easily top $1k.

 

WRT
"but get the same results as having race gas"

Well not exactly I have found that it boosts 91 octane to about an effective equivalent of ~94, not 100 or more.

 

what do you guys think about this diy intercooler sprayer?
http://www.dawesdevices.com/water.html

 

anyone?

 

simple and cheap! 2 words i like!!! hahaha.

 

I have an Aquamist WI kit on my 350z. Can anyone tell me what is a good solution to fill the windshield wiper bottle with?

 

(4) Bottles of Heet (yellow bottle) @ $0.97/bottle from WalMart (100%); and
(1) Bottle of distilled water (same volume at one bottle of Heet):

Yields Water/Methanol 80%/20% mixture. Lasts me about 2 tanks of gas before the warning light comes on. Able to run 91 during PHX heat without detonation. I'm currently running an Aquamist setup.

 

Get windshield washer fluid that is good to -20 degrees. It will be close to 50% methanol or just go and get straight methanol from Ace hardward and mix 1:1 with water.

 

I was told a 50% Methanol and 50% distilled water mixture was good by my tuner. Interested to know what everyone is using and where these items are purchased. Thanks for the info Joe.