Landracing Forum
Bonneville Salt Flats Discussion => World of Speed-specific stuff => Topic started by: rfross on July 12, 2011, 10:36:53 PM
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My 2007 GMC Canyon runs on pump gas which is legal for the 130 Club.
The rules state NOS, Nitro or alcohol is not allowed. Given that, if I want to add water/methanol injection in a 51/49 ratio, respectively, is that allowed? The fuel would still be pump gas but supplemented with a water/methanol mix.
Thx
Bob
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Bob, does the vehicle have a turbo? why are you wanting to run water injection with a little alcohol?
Beyond all that, contact the USFRA, my bet is water injection is allowed.... they just don't want fuel qualified cars running 130 club.
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Methanol injection would not be legal for the 130 Club
Gary W
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Bob, does the vehicle have a turbo? why are you wanting to run water injection with a little alcohol?
Beyond all that, contact the USFRA, my bet is water injection is allowed.... they just don't want fuel qualified cars running 130 club.
It doesn't have a turbo or supercharger but I've done some computer tuning and the supplemental injection of a water/methanol mix through the intake tube will permit the computer to advance the timing more as there will be little to no knock. I haven't purchased one yet but I'm looking at a Snow Performance kit:
http://snowperformance.net/ (http://snowperformance.net/)
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You know Bonneville is at 4200 ft... you can advance the timing based on altitude without water and alcohol... but you would not need to add alcohol to make the system work.
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You know Bonneville is at 4200 ft... you can advance the timing based on altitude without water and alcohol... but you would not need to add alcohol to make the system work.
I've been thinking about just plain water, too, but then the benefit of the injection is not as great as a mix. And at that point the benefit/cost ratio isn't as good as if I could run the mix.
The system I'm looking at is a little over $400 and compared to that price point I can spend a quarter of it on improving my intake with a low mounted ram air scoop. It wouldn't be as good as an injected mix but it would be better than what I've got now.
I'll look at purchasing bits and pieces of a home-grown fully manual water injection setup that I can fire with a flip of a switch rather than a control unit tied into the MAF sensor like the ones on the commercially produced kits. A small nozzle, pressure tubing, pump, a reservoir and a manual switch is all I need as long as I remember to turn it off at the end of the run. Maybe even go as far as a full throttle switch to activate the system.
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Seems like you could just run the typical 10% alcohol infused gas most stations already sell along with water injection and do the same thing no?What am I missing here?
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I'm confused (what's new).
How much would you pick up by running the alcohol?
How much difference would it make in the limited 130 Club?
And why would it matter?
What part of alcohol is not considered fuel?
Stan
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Stan -
The water/methanol mix combined with regular grade gasoline provides as much as 116 Octane. Within limits, the computer on my truck will throw in as much spark advance as it can. If knock/detonation is not detected then it will keep advancing the timing until it is detected although there is probably some top limit built in. It's not unrealistsic to expect another 10 to 20 horsepower using W/M on my engine.
Bob
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I believe this came up a year or two ago and the ruling that was applied was that alcohol, no matter how it is injected is still a fuel. Makes sense to me.
Pete
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Who is going to check?
DW
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There ya' go! What difference would it make? To who?
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I can see Pete's point. NOS is injected separately from the primary fuel and is not allowed so following that guideline injecting water/methonal separately would be identical and if treated the same, not allowed.
But as DW and Stan note, will it really matter once I get through tech inspection? The tank, pump, etc can be hidden away out of sight of the inspectors and given that, will it really matter? The W/M mix is not flammable by itself and is not a safety concern in the mix ratio of 51 water/49 methanol. It makes a great windshield washer fluid at that ratio, too.
But now that everyone knows about it in a public forum, the tech guys will probably be lookinng for me come September!
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Seems to me, that if you have to hide it to get into the 130 club, your efforts might best be used to do it legally!
JMHO
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Cheating sucks
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I never gave it any thought that even with W/M injection that I would make it into the 130 Club with my four-cylinder truck. I'm thinking that the absolute best case would be 120 MPH given the power that it makes. But there is no rule that says I can't inject plain old H20. Hmmm...
And to Glen and JMHO - I don't think that I would be too happy with myself if I did cheat so no need to worry about that!
Bob
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It is highly unlikely that you would need anything more that just plain water injection. Water methanol mix is not really necessary until you get up to pretty high cylinder pressures.
In studies done by NACA on high performance aircraft engines using water injection during WWII they found that with water alone you could develope 1.52x - 1.41x the power you could produce on gasoline only at a fuel air mixture of between 16:1 and 12.5 to 1 AFR.
The primary reason they used methanol (and sometimes ethanol ) mixed with the ADI (anti detonation injection) was to prevent freezing of the mixture at 30,000 altitudes over Europe. The addition of methanol only improved performance substantially over water only at very high boost and at fuel air mixtures far away from normal max power mixtures.
Larry
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Thanks for that level of detail, Larry. It's pretty helpful.
Bob
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Why not buy some race gas from the ERC trailer?
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A second reason to visit Rick Gold in the ERC trailer is t-shirts. His shirts (for sale) are almost always the most colorful ones on the salt. And if you don't need one that says "2011" - he sells last year's and previous years at a good discount. They're a nice splash of bright color on drab winter days.
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Why not buy some race gas from the ERC trailer?
That's a really good question, and an option, Gande. Do the fuel vendors usually have a high octane unleaded available at the event?
Since I didn't pay attention to the fuel rig last year, do they have the capability to fill your tank or just a portable container?
Bob
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A second reason to visit Rick Gold in the ERC trailer is t-shirts. His shirts (for sale) are almost always the most colorful ones on the salt. And if you don't need one that says "2011" - he sells last year's and previous years at a good discount. They're a nice splash of bright color on drab winter days.
You can never own enough cool event T-shirts! Thanks for the tip, John.
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You can get your tank filled at the fuel truck. Don't know about the unleaded.
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Go to the ERC site and review the gasoline properties. Rick brings enough flavors to make your add-on irrlevant. Also Rick is a goldmine (pun intended) of information that he freely shares with you. Give him your specifics and he can provide the blend you need.
http://www.ercracingfuels.com/ercCustomBlending.htm
Further, "advance" is not a miracle drug. In many cases you could lose power. You are moving the peak-pressure-point and that can have a deleterious effect on the engine. That is a subject for a completely different thread. Bottom line “alky” is fuel in every racing association in the world. No matter how you introduce it into the engine you are now running a fuel class . . but you would probably run slower that using one of Rick’s blends.
The WWII information was factual and interesting. To add to it, all of those aircraft engines had a bore size larger than 5” diameter! Other than redundancy for safety, that is another reason they used 2 plugs per cylinder. Wide bores have different detonation characteristics. These are very complicated issues but the use of alcohol injection in one environment doesn’t guarantee beneficial results in a completely different environment. Although, you seem to understand your EMU and are quite knowledgeable some testing on a chassis dyno will surely give greater insight.
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As I remember ERC has two unleaded fuels at Bonneville -- 100 and 104 "MUL-B". Rick can fill your tank or a gas container and seal either one. If you have a can sealed, remember that you are allowed to open the seal for fueling your race vehicle only when you've got an official watching you - so he can certify that everything was sealed before you began the refueling, and then can reseal the things after you're done. We had to go through all of that rigamarole when we were racing the little 250 bike with a 3 quart fuel tank - which is not enough for two runs. Worse - we qualified at WoS one time and the weather was going bad. When we got back to the start line/tech area, headed for the fuel truck, Jim Burkdoll told us to get right back in line to run the back up run. "We need fuel", we told him -- and then the merriment began to get us some gas and back in line before the rain hit. We made it - and the trophy is on the mantle.
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As is pointed out in another post by this person, as he is running in the 130 club line, all this is moot. No record. No record seal. pump gas or ERC gas. Just run it.
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I had an email exchange with Rick Gold of ERC and he indicated that one compartment of the tanker will have 106 Octane unleaded. So this time around I'll run that and won't spend any time on the water injection idea which saves me time and money. Thanks for the contact info everyone.
Bob
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Hey Rich;
Was it your 327 that had the 130 mile an hour harmonic balancer? :wink:
Steve
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That was Dennis Barker.
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OOps my bag.
Steve