Hello all! My fiancee and I introduced ourselves over in "The Hangout" area of the forums, but I thought I'd come over here and say hello to the Rocky Mountain region. We just bought an '06 GG MR a couple weeks ago, and we absolutely love it.
Now, in an effort to find some better fuel, I began calling around to a few local places that were listed, by various outdated webstes, as supplying 93 octane and up. At one point this morning I found myself on the phone with Snow Performance of Woodland Park, CO. As you all probably know, they do not actually sell fuel, but they made a pretty good pitch about their water/meth injection unit. They were able to tell me about the benefits of using water/meth injection: HP gains, greater longevity of stock internals, better fuel economy, etc...
My questions are these... Can I run meth on stock internals? Is there anything I should be doing even before thinking about meth?
I am one of the few Evos locally that runs alky injection daily and while racing. You can use meth or alky, so there's no reason to differentiate between the two, although be sure to remember that you can't run one then switch to the other, because they will require completely different tunes.
Anyway, alky injection provides us with a great alternative to race fuel that can be used 24/7 to extract max power out of our stock turbo. It is also great for use with bigger turbos so that you don't have a big lag monster that is only being fully used when on race gas at the track. On a big turbo, race fuel will have more power potential than alky, but on our stock turbo, the differences are minimal. I like being able to run 26+psi daily on alky and go straight to the track without changing anything. However, it is preferable to run race gas, if possible, because alky injection poses risks that race gas does not have.
If the kit fails, you could lose the motor, and meth is toxic. Snow has a failsafe on their kit to help save the motor in the event of a pump failure, but I can't say it's 100%. My kit doesn't have a failsafe, so I just keep the size of the nozzle, the aggressiveness of the tune, the overall boost, the ramp rate of the alky, and the max alky flow all at a minimum to give me a margin of safety while still enjoying my increased power.
I don't think you should worry about or consider alky until you have all the bolt-ons, and then you could revisit it. IXs can make _plenty_ of power on straight 91oct...
Ok, yeah... The part of Snow's pitch that caught my attention was longer life of stock internals and better fuel economy while delivering more power. Anyway, its not something I would run out and have done tomorrow.
I don't know anyone who gets meth for extending the life of the engine internals and increasing fuel economy. My fuel economy certainly was not improved, but it is true that the alky/meth steam cleans the engine internals. However, some think that the meth breaks down o-rings and such, but I haven't seen evidence one way or the other.
That's cool. I think I'll be more interested in a driving/racing school before water/meth injection. And hell, I'll probably look into a package such as the one bearing your name before that...I'd love to get some first-hand experience before increasing power too greatly.
...oh, and I definately want to get the stock gauges swapped with the stereo. It drives me nuts to have to look so far from the windshield to see my boost guage, grrr.
I also run the SMC Alchy kit. I love the power I was able to extract with a 50/50 Alchy/Water mixture. I do not have a failsafe but will look into that into the future, but If I were to do it again, I would get a system with a failsafe built in. 27 pounds on the stock turbo is really fun.
It's an easy swap. I think we even have a writeup here on EvoTuners. You can do it yourself with no equipment other than a screwdriver.
I'm having some difficulty finding the writeup over here on EvoTuners...I'll keep looking, heh. I have no doubt I can get the stereo out, but I'm not sure how to go about removing the panel around the gauges...it should be fairly straightforward, though, so no worries.
Kdogg, try 42 Draft Designs website. they sell the kit to swap the gauges with the radio. hell, i did it and i don't know the difference between a straight head and phillips screwdriver...well, thats not true, but you know what i mean. LOL
Kdogg, try 42 Draft Designs website. they sell the kit to swap the gauges with the radio. hell, i did it and i don't know the difference between a straight head and phillips screwdriver...well, thats not true, but you know what i mean. LOL
We don't need a kit in this case. We're talking about doing the direct swap on MRs that already have gauges.
If you do injection, you're not going to do water anyway. You're going to do alky or meth, and yes, it's best to do it after all the bolt-ons and cams.
definatly wouldnt touch it until after i had cams and all the other stuff.
i have heard about water injection and i was kinda confused cause i couldnt figure out why you would be set up to run meth/alky and run water instead. thanks for clearing that up
Some people are restricted to only using water injection in some cases like SCCA competitions (no alky/meth), and others just simply want the water injection to cool the intake charge and have no need for the supplemental fuel and raised octane. On Evos, we typically go straight to alky or meth, because it's a huge benefit far beyond water.
Ok, yeah... The part of Snow's pitch that caught my attention was longer life of stock internals and better fuel economy while delivering more power. Anyway, its not something I would run out and have done tomorrow.
Thanks!
K
I don't know if it's entirely true about extending the life of your internals, but it does keep them cleaner. As for mileage, I have absolutly no idea. The people who use this usually can't keep their foot off the gas.
Warr, what's your mileage like on a conservative month?
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