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Mods for water meth and not blowing the engine.

1882 Views 30 Replies 8 Participants Last post by  Snox801
I'm sorry to make yet another post about mod list but I've been lurking on the forums for a bit since I bought my 17 about 6 months ago and relatively few are with water meth in mind. A close friend of mine who is a much more experienced builder swears up and down by water meth and I gotta say I'm convinced. A bit of background, I bought the car with 72k miles in Maryland. My father was a mechanic and MD has a pretty strict rust inspection so after looking over the car and talking to my aforementioned friend (who actually works for Opus) I decided to buy it. I just couldn't say no after that test drive. To put in bluntly, I'm head over heels for the car and have been itching since day 1 to do some of my own modifications to it. This is my daily and the first car I've ever had in my name.

After a small incident with a deer I cracked my radiator and needed a new bumper; the Mountune rad was basically a no brainer and I happened to catch a sale so I said screw it and ordered the FMIC as well. My original plan was to slowly buy all of the components for the B7 kit and tune it once I was done, after that I'd buy a water meth kit somewhere down the line and retune it. After some more digging around I've realized this plan isn't the brightest. Aside from the filter an intake doesn't really do much and neither do hot/cold pipes. Additionally it doesn't make much sense to pay Mountune for a tune and then pay for another tune with water meth (which I don't think they do), especially when water meth kits are one of the cheaper components I've mentioned. I think I'm still going to buy an intake, as that CF Cobb intake just looks too good but I might hold off on hot/cold pipes for a while.

This brings me to my other line of questions. How much can I realistically make before I risk blowing up my engine? 100mph pulls are pretty hard to do where I live and I mostly just give it the beans a couple times during my drive somewhere (can't be flooring that **** with these gas prices). I want to track it but there aren't any close to me and they're pretty expensive so MAYBE 1-3 times a year. So basically, my engine wouldn't get treated too harshly. That being said am I even going to reach danger zones with bolt ons and meth? I don't particularly want to get into fuel upgrades and I really don't have interest in doing a turbo swap atm. The B7 kit claimed about 380whp and 425wtq iirc, my buddy talked to a couple Ford master techs and they said that should be fine as long as I don't beat the hell out of the engine and that torque is really going to be the limiting factor. I'm unsure how much meth is going to boost those numbers but I've been told it's not really about gain so much as leveling out and extending my peak power. I've also seen some talk about tuning more for HP than TQ but given our engine I'm not convinced you can swing them too much either way.

So has anyone here done FBO + meth? Have you had any problems with your engine? Can I even fully utilize these upgrades without fuel upgrades? Should I look into reinforcing my cylinder wall? I plan on talking to both Randy and Adam as I've seen these are the main two trusted by everyone on here but I'm unsure if they even mess with meth kits. Also a RMM and Recirc valve are definitely still on the to buy list if that wasn't clear. Is there anything I'm missing?

Side note: After that deer incident I've also been looking into lightbars. Currently looking at either a 20in curved double row lightbar from Black Oak or the 30in. I posted on the lightbar mega thread but I've not gotten any responses so if anyone also happens to know anything about these it'd be much appreciated! My main concerns are if the 30in would fit "flush" in the front bumper and how much they'd realistically block airflow from the big mouth inlet if I ever decide to pick one up.
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Caught the last 5-10 mins of an "Engine Masters" episode on Motor Trend this AM. It was a comparo on tuning an engine for different fuels (116 octane, E 85, Methanol and a couple others). What stood out was the brief discussion on how effective methanol was as a power producing intake charge "coolant" (see Snox's comments above) especially for boosted motors; compared to the other fuels tested.
Hhhhhhmmmmmm???????
My CAT temps get as low as -3 deg C depending on ambient temp
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Alrighty. So last winter I made the move to WMI. Where I live we don’t get e85, and all the gas stations only sell 91, except for chevron which some sell 94. As per stratified who’s local to me, our 94 is like American 91 at best. I was getting a lot of ‘bad tanks’ of fuel being tuned on 94 and far too often I was having to swap down to the 91 tune I also had for safety.

mods: intake/filter, FMIC/piping, catless DP, exhaust, plugs/coils, BOV etc.

I went with the AEM v3 kit and a boomba throttle body spacer, and I also added the aem solenoid to control the spray.

i have yet to have it on the dyno. Even if I didn’t gain any power from it, the datalogs with wmi are extremely consistent regardless of the base fuel. I usually do either 50:50 or something 40:60 water methanol.

you can spend your money on boost juice but that’s expensive af. You can get 3.78L of winter washer fluid (if You get the -35°c version it’s usually 60:40 water methanol) but the dyes and soaps can clog the nozzles filter. The real tip is to go to your local hardware store in the paint section and buy methyl hydrate, which is 99% pure methanol. Mix at home with water and you have cheap clean reliable mixtures without paying the premium for ‘boost juice’.

last summer I had back to back track days during the crazy “heat dome”. Both days were 42°c ambient air temps, tarmac was 60°c so track temps were very hot. The coolant and oil temps never went past half on the gauges. Charge air temps were slightly above ambient. I never got any warnings at all, and the car was being pushed to the limit.

Tire Wheel Sky Vehicle Car

Gauge Finger Measuring instrument Bicycle accessory Automotive tire

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You can see the ignition correction low is -.79, but +4.00 which is great. Doesn’t show here but by redline absolute timing is about +15°. You’ll see the high charge air temp is just from sitting in the pit lane, but check out the 55°c and that’s at maxing out the stock turbo.

only issue for track days is the 1 gallon tank is not big enough. I got my warning light for low fluid about 15 minutes in to each 20 minute session, that’s with the 500cc nozzle. I think I need to raise the threshold of when it was spraying so the mid-boost part throttle, I don’t need it really whereas heavy load WOT iswhere it really helps.

do it. Do it.

Tire Sky Car Plant Land vehicle
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Fyi the solenoid is there to prevent fluid entry into the intake when the system is shut down, I went for a snow performance check valve instead.
Spray control is handled by the aem controller depending how you set the min and max dials.
Mine is set to 10psi start and full spray by 25psi
Correct. The solenoid prevents bleed out while the intake is under vacuum. But [from what I remember] the AEM system the pump is always running at a low pressure, then when you hit boost and the controller triggers the pump to turn up more.

a check valve can open whether the pressure is coming from the pump, or vacuum from the intake as the flow is the same direction regardless. Honestly the solenoid should be included in the kit and not just an option.

i don’t remember exactly what my settings are, but as per the email from stratified it was to start spraying at 12psi (the max starting for the aem controller) and full spray by 18psi
The snow check valve is a lot more advanced than just a basic check valve, I’m also changing my fluid sensor to a float type since the aem electronic are rubbish.
Ive also dropped the aem nozzle jet and fitted a snow performance low profile 500cc nozzle which is mounted 6 inches pre throttle in a cp-e methcharge cold pipe. Works great with good clearance from the radiator shroud.
I would also recommend hooking up the failsafe, I did a how to on here on how to hook up to the stock BCS, again works flawlessly

I mix meth to 70/30 by volume which is about 60/40 by weight. You need a higher proportion of meth to water since meth is nearly 30% lighter
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Worth re iterating to anyone here too, mixing meth is dangerous, do not breathe the fumes or mix near or around ignition sources, wear decent gloves too as meth burns ferociously with no visible flame!!
Caught the last 5-10 mins of an "Engine Masters" episode on Motor Trend this AM. It was a comparo on tuning an engine for different fuels (116 octane, E 85, Methanol and a couple others). What stood out was the brief discussion on how effective methanol was as a power producing intake charge "coolant" (see Snox's comments above) especially for boosted motors; compared to the other fuels tested.
Hhhhhhmmmmmm???????
Hmm what? The latent heat of evaporation of methanol is 1100 kJ/kg while water’s is 2256 kJ/kg. What this means is methanol is piss poor at removing heat compared to water 🙂
the water and the meth should both have temp lowering properties, meth static temp is quite low like petrol. Put your hand on a container of pure meth you can feel the lower temp
Odd thing is when you mix it with distilled water the container will get quite warm. After mixing (chemical reaction) has occurred the temp becomes a lot cooler eventually
Hmm what? The latent heat of evaporation of methanol is 1100 kJ/kg while water’s is 2256 kJ/kg. What this means is methanol is piss poor at removing heat compared to water 🙂
No that is not true, although water removes more heat it takes a much longer time to do it.
At one point someone posted the nasa report that states this. So it hard to say if it’s better in the short time we have with it in the intake.
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I assume this is also why I’ve never had heat issues with my car like others. Always sprayed meth.
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