I wonder if the puddling would be due to too much water/meth being sprayed. The new system he was using is the more modern AEM system that atomizes very well (I know Chris). It is the same one I am using and, to my knowledge, do not have puddling issues. How would I be able to determine if that, in fact is a challenge. The only difference is that I am not using the OEM Y-Pipe like he is. I am using the SRM Y-Pipe, so the location of the nozzles are equally the same length from the throttle body and have zero additional bends other than where the legs merge into one.

Again with the fueling issue. Are you saying better quality gas or better fuel pump and better injectors? If his tune did not have advanced timing, using the w/m as an octane booster, how would better quality fuel be the fix? Better fuel would allow for more timing, but in a high IAT setting, wouldn't the ECU be pulling timing as it is? We as a community need to ensure we are showing some sort of proof of concept when we are making accusations so 2, 5, or 10 years from now, someone can use these brain storming threads as quality research.

Some users here are well known as knowledgeable by the masses, but if users are new and trying to research, that reputation may not transfer....

 

This is good information. It does lead me to more questions though. What were the ambient temps when you saw 130* sustained IATs? I would argue that if ambient temps were 110*+ the IAT would be much higher on this car's setup. If a car is tuned for only fuel, then w/m is added solely for cooling properties, and no additional timing was added, could one assume it would work as designed and be significantly more safe?

What were the power/torque numbers on the motor you popped and at what RPM were you making too much power for the stock motor? I would assume that the XR1000s are large enough to put the higher torque/hp numbers high enough in the RPM range to be safe. Again, this is an assumption. If they are not, what is the "safe" zone for power vs RPM range and what leads you to that determination? (remember, I have plans to do this exact thing on my stock motor) I was under the assumption that 700 whp/tq is safe around 4k RPMs on the stock block. I can accept it if I am wrong.

 

yup I was joking with him that we should turbocharge a lawnmower and they might be adequate for that job
exactly, some cylinders look pretty healthy, and well, #2 and #5....
I think he's pretty safe power-wise for fuel and bottom end as its VERY pulled back on torque and top-end while pretty strong isn't going for hero stuff...solely poor distribution of meth(and therefore AFR's). But believe he's given me green-light for some rods to keep the bottom end safe now.
Everyone forgets what these engines accept as a usable duty cycle on injectors, think what guys are getting out of stock injectors... but the safety margins are very thin is the boost control gets skewed on the big turbos
He does have BIG swirlpots/injectors on the meth ~550cc, but its the intake design and nature of a 'dry intake' design vs a 'wet intake' intake design
Can monitor with EGT or AFR sensors in each exhaust runner if truly getting a system dialed in
Bad distribution means the overall AFR's might read well on the widebands but some cylinders are rich and some are lean
The solution is ditching the meth or getting very scientific on its setup (won't happen lol) and getting quality IC's on it and then datalogging it a bunch

 

Played with this on diesels some years back; although the power gains were very impressive, just wasn't practical to pull a cube of it around when you wanted to go through the mountains.

 

Gents,
I ran the XR980s on a stock ECU for two full track seasons with 40+ hard track hours. I've run them in the summer at +5000' altitudes in +110F ambient temp for 30 minute sessions with coolant temp at +220F and oil temps at +260F. Under these conditions, the IATs reached +170F even with Marston Aerospace 4.0" Intercoolers. These were literally hellish conditions that you will never ever see under street use. With that said, we had zero detonations issues or any other anomalies during the operation of the engine. There was no meth used. You can see the engine run under these conditions in the clip below with engine data displayed. This motor was on stock ECU / Cobb 1.3 bar at 780whp / 600wtq and a 91/100 fuel mix. It was not babied and never had a single issue, not once. It was flawless.

Since we have gone to the Motec set up with the XR1000s, we have datalogged the engine extensively during the writing of the M150 ECU mapping process. We have run the engine under load up to 180F IAT and again have suffered no detonations issues with proper tuning. Bottom line, to have a safe system, you NEED adequate fueling AND proper tuning. ADEQUATE fueling will encompass a large enough fuel pump (TiAutomotive 535 or BKS1001) and large fuel injectors (IDC1300x). I would also highly recommend a way to monitor fuel pressure to let you know if or when you are running Into potential issues. With no fuel pressure feedback, you are running a bit of a game of Russian roulette. Datalogging fuel pressure after the fact is good but that's too late if you've already melted the engine due to detonation issues. A 5.0 bar FPR is also advisable as that will give you a bit more margin over a 3.8.

Regarding fuel manifold distribution, we have actually found the OEM distributor to be surprisingly good. #2 and 5 were generally a bit "noisier" but that is largely due to the fact that the knock sensors are directly positioned above these two cylinders. Again, I would recommend against Meth. If you want to spray anything, I would spray the IC cores as they do on the 91GT2RS and run a 91/100 mix. For a stock block 3.6 with the XR980/1000s, I would recommend a target of 600-650whp at 1.2-1.3 bar which will give you 550-600wtq and you will not have any issues. Limit your torque to 550-600 on a stock 3.6. We run a 900whp/600wtq map on my built 4.0 as the default file. Our highest torque map is 700wtq. It's NOT about hp, it's about torque.

Use a low restriction intake and exhaust. Finally, use a tuner you can trust. If they tell you 750cc injectors are proper, politely thank them and look for a new tuner. There are only 2 tuners I would trust to tune the stock ECU for these turbos, Harvey Epstein (Boostcreep) or Sam (Bydesign). Dyno tuning is a MUST in order to get an optimized tune. Getting tuning done based on a datalog of a 3rd gear pull is whole inadequate. If you follow these steps, you will sidestep landmines like you see in this thread. Good luck....

 

Will now sleep easier.

 

I would have to go back and look at the logs, but I can get an answer for you re: ambient temps. It was July/August in the northwest so probably in the 80F-85F ambient, but I can confirm that for you when I get home and can pull up the data.

If no timing is added or boost added or fueling compensation is added for meth, it will be safer of course. There is still some risk which doesn't make it 100% fool proof- any ECU's fueling/timing corrections for lean/rich conditions and IAT based compensations will register what the meth is doing and adjust accordingly- this is true on either standalone or stock ecu, although with a standalone you can block the corrections if methanol is active. So your meth is injecting in the legs of the y-pipe, cools the charge post intercooler and this now cooled air goes past the IAT sensor. The IAT sensor sees cooler air charge because of the methanol and changes the timing to suit the IAT it is registering because it doesn't know methanol or water or whatever, it just knows temperature. So your timing may be more advanced than optimal- Then the methanol goes through the cylinder with the fuel and burns in the combustion process and the O2 sensors detect the extra fuel mass being burned and the ecu adjusts the fuel trim and sends less fuel via the injectors since the O2 can't tell the difference in what was burned it only knows "a fuel" was burned and it's now a touch richer than expected. So now you have ECU adding some timing, or at least not removing any timing, for the given IAT range and removing some fueling since the O2 can't tell the difference, but now you have unequal cylinder to cylinder distribution because of the intake manifold design so some cylinders are burning hotter and getting less fuel and there is no timing compensation active... get where I am going with this? There is some room for bad things to happen.

Power numbers- I did all of the tuning on 92 octane E10 Washington pump gas, then switched to 100 octane for track days without changing the tune at all, for reference. My first dyno run right off the street saw the carwent to 608 ft lbs by 4700 rpm and crested 700 whp at 6000 rpm before hitting the torque limit I had set and going into safety mode at 6200 RPM, it would've probably hit 800 whp right out of the gates if it didn't hit the limiter and I got a full pull on it. By the end of the day, the car made 711 whp and 590 ft lbs and brought it in very soft. The torque stayed below 500 ft lbs until around 4500 rpm and ramped up to 590 at 5500 rpm and held virtually flat until my redline of 7000 rpm, making the peak power right at redline. I raised the redline to 7200 and allowed the torque to taper off between 7000 and 7200 down the road, but other than that, that is the tune the car was running when it blew up- it may have made 20 more hp by revving it out a little more, but I did that to get a little more speed in gear for track use. Failure was due to a slight overboost that slipped through all the parameters I had set up, in hindsight I could've easily prevented it if I had known what was going on, but I hadn't ran into the car behaving like that on the dyno or the street, and it happened on the first track outing with this setup on the 3rd or 4th lap so I didn't even have a chance to review logs before the damage was done. Car ran perfectly until the second it didn't. No signs of detonation on disassembly from what my builder said, no lean condition in logs, no crazy IATs, was running race gas at the time, just too much boost for a few seconds per lap in a condition that I hadn't tested in and it torched the head gasket and took the head, cylinder housing, one of the liners and chain guard with it.

I wouldn't go near 700 ft lbs on stock rods. I aimed for 600 ft lbs or less, and keep it tame below 5000 rpm and said whatever power it makes with those settings, it makes and I'll drive it and be happy until I'm ready to build it. The engine doesn't really care about hp, it is the torque that you need to be mindful of, and where it makes the torque. My rods were bent when they came out, but I think that is the case for everyone who has ever ran tuned K16s on these engines, and it was not the cause of the failure nor did I have any signs of that before the engine was disassembled. Passed leakdown and compression check with acceptable numbers about 3-4 weeks before it blew up. I was monitoring everything and trying to stay on top of the health of the engine since I didn't want to do a build yet, I'd spent a long time getting the car running as well as it was and wanted to not touch the car for a year or so outside of maintenance. I'd recommend aiming for making your torque ramp in above 5000 rpm and not get too crazy below that, but you dont necessarily have to be as conservative as I was (I was still running high 5s 60-130 on pump gas even with the conservative torque, with full track aero and the drag that comes with it). I also track my car so I wanted some cushion on torque and not to be at the ragged edge so I figure 600 or below should be fine.

I talked to many people before coming to that number for my torque target, read even more and I've seen people talking about 700+ ft lbs on stock engines, but I have to ask- do these guys drive these cars around at this level, or is it just to make a dyno number and then turn it down? And if they are driving around, are they pushing the car or just putt-putt to the coffee shop and back, because if you never put your foot in it, a 700 ft lbs stock motor will last forever. Every one I asked agreed that 700 ft lbs was rolling the dice every time, 650 was probably a safe number, so I went 600 to be conservative. I think I'm going to keep targeting 600 with my built engine for what it is worth, but maybe let it come in a little sooner, and obviously carry it to a higher rpm since I'll have that capability. Even built engines don't last forever in my experience from other platforms and the car was plenty fast for me as it was.

 

just for the record, fueling and timing, and tuning were not the issue on this one guys...it's the meth added on after; logs were good prior and no bent rods etc
Not going to say who did the tuning but isn't a tuner issue... don't run meth.

 

This is the kind of data I was after. Thank you for your in-depth explanation.

 

Always happy to share what I've learned.

As far as the datalogs from the day I mention about the IATs- I have a few of various temps as it changed through the day, but the one I will refer to is from 83F in a late afternoon session, and I take my ambient readings from the dashboard thermometer.

On each lap the car would peak around 180F every lap after the warmup lap and would cool off to around 145F-150F over the lap before heating up again on the long start/finish straight. So the car was running happy in the 150-180F IAT range for 20-25 mins at a time for 7 sessions per day basically- the morning sessions were a little cooler, but not a ton. This was on K16s that I was absolutely beating the crap out of, so much less efficient turbos than the XR1000s. I dont have enough data with the XR1000s to say much about the IATs there, and I also began experimenting with a water sprayer on the intercoolers setup (like the 991 GT2) around the same time I switched to the XR1000s.

 

There's a solution to this problem: AIRFORM intake distributors

 

So pretty.