[[email protected]]

My name is Richard Lamb and part of Aquamist team, I am available to discuss any
water/methanol injection related concepts and Aquamist related applications.

There has been a great deal of discussions lately on this forum and someone on this forum
has prompted me to participate here and contribute something useful. For any sales questions,
EdgeAutosport will be the folks to ask as they are our authorized US dealer.
I need some questions to get me started so if you have any, please post here.

**********


Click on image below to download user manual and ST specific wiring diagram here:








Lists of some unique capability of Aquamist, not offered by other systems:
1. Fittings: .......... Aquamist's unique Compression tube fittings that do not leak over time.
2. Spray jet: .......... All designed and manufactured in our own machine shop.
3. Fluid pressure: .......... Constant pressure setting through out the injection cycle. (deadhead at 160psi)
4. Turbine based flow monitoring/failsafe: .......... Sensor is designed from ground up and manufactured in house.
5. IDC based: .......... Aquamist reads fuel flow to ensure it matches engine load in all gears accurately.
6. Delivery method: .......... PWM-valve, controlling flow similar to the OEM fuel injection system
7. True linearity: .......... Only PWM-valve system can guarantee true progressive delivery.
8. Only Aquamist: .......... Supply the entire package to guarantee full system integration.


Doing the right thing:
installation tips and recommendations

Aquamist is not expensive when you see this listing:
The price/performance comparison chart

​

 

[ST3 4 ME]

Welcome Richard, glad to see you made it on here.

I am currently in the middle of making a manifold spacer function as a port methanol injection. Is there any benefit to running a 100%(neat) methanol over, say, 70/30 mix with distilled water? I am looking at it as more of the octane booster to help me achieve a target hp rating of 470.

 

[[email protected]]

Yes, took some time to organise this and be registered.

Two factors that will affect your application on methanol concentration. Ecu's ability to trim fuel and sparking energy.

Can you give be some ideas of both? This topic is quite involved.

 

[ST3 4 ME]

Yes, took some time to organise this and be registered.

Two factors that will affect your application on methanol concentration. Ecu's ability to trim fuel and sparking energy.

Can you give be some ideas of both? This topic is quite involved.

this is out of my realm of knowledge, so sadly I dont know how to answer that. However I see @Bugasu is here. he has a very good understanding of ECU function

 

[Bugasu]

Richard,

I'm highly considering WMI as an addition to my setup, and your controller simply looks to be one of the best on the market.

My main question is this:
I really like the idea of IDC based injection, but on this car one of the things utilized by the ECU is LSHL (low speed, high-load) fueling, which I believe is primarily used to prevent LSPI (low speed pre-ignition)

During this low RPM section (under 4000RPM), Ford ECUs inject gasoline twice with the same pulse-width (I don't know how it's timed 100% though). If I use your system, how does the IDC trigger work? I have concerns that if I set it too low, the system will trigger during normal driving when my pulsewidths are similarly low but I'm only doing a single injection. Like wise, if I set it too high, then I don't inject during the LSHL period and will only do it after 4000RPM?

Do you have a solution for this, or do you consider it better in this regard to use a manifold pressure based sensor?

Thanks,
Steve

 

[Bugasu]

this is out of my realm of knowledge, so sadly I dont know how to answer that. However I see @Bugasu is here. he has a very good understanding of ECU function

The ECU will trim up to +30% richer and -25% leaner automatically.
Dwell is currently un-adjustable for us, but timing is fully and completely controlled.

I would assume most people would combine this with a tune, and as such will adjust their fueling and timing to benefit most from the system.

 

[EdgeAutosport.com]

Good to have you on here Richard!

 

[[email protected]]

Richard,

I'm highly considering WMI as an addition to my setup, and your controller simply looks to be one of the best on the market.

My main question is this:
I really like the idea of IDC based injection, but on this car one of the things utilized by the ECU is LSHL (low speed, high-load) fueling, which I believe is primarily used to prevent LSPI (low speed pre-ignition)

During this low RPM section (under 4000RPM), Ford ECUs inject gasoline twice with the same pulse-width (I don't know how it's timed 100% though). If I use your system, how does the IDC trigger work? I have concerns that if I set it too low, the system will trigger during normal driving when my pulsewidths are similarly low but I'm only doing a single injection. Like wise, if I set it too high, then I don't inject during the LSHL period and will only do it after 4000RPM?

Do you have a solution for this, or do you consider it better in this regard to use a manifold pressure based sensor?

Thanks,
Steve

Thanks for the your kind comment.

This LSHL is very interesting, I have not come across this over the years, however, it is quite common on diesel engines. For whatever the reason it is for, pre-ignition or emission. This is new to me. Did Ford explain why? I can only assume the same amount of fuel is shared with two shorter duration pulses to maintain correct fuel flow.

The aquamist system detects the duty cycle % of the fuel injector signal, multiple injection events will not cause error reading. I had the pleasure of spending many hours per day for the last three weeks on OseaD's car. It was for a different reason, I was tracking down the source of an interference with his help and patience.

During those sessions, we configured the aquamist controller to display fuel duty cycle %. He took some videos and the fuel idc is extremely smooth and progressive under different engine loads. So the answer is, we have no problem decoding the Ford's LSHL system.

Boost based only flow control may not be the best way to inject water/methanol in my opinion. Without the RPM and IAT information. It will not represent true engine load. Depending on your view on how important it is to match fuel flow. That will be another topic to discuss. What do you think?

 

[[email protected]]

Yes, took some time to organise this and be registered.

Two factors that will affect your application on methanol concentration. Ecu's ability to trim fuel and sparking energy.

Can you give be some ideas of both? This topic is quite involved.

The ECU will trim up to +30% richer and -25% leaner automatically.
Dwell is currently un-adjustable for us, but timing is fully and completely controlled.

I would assume most people would combine this with a tune, and as such will adjust their fueling and timing to benefit most from the system.

This is good to know the upper and and lower limits. So running 100% methanol (expensive) at M30 (M/F ratio) will not cause over fuel your engine.

M70/W30 is not a bad mix unless you need the methanol to dump up the OE fuel injector capacity when you run big turbos.

 

[[email protected]]

Good to have you on here Richard!

Thanks for representing aquamist.

 

[[email protected]]

The ECU will trim up to +30% richer and -25% leaner automatically.
Dwell is currently un-adjustable for us, but timing is fully and completely controlled.

I would assume most people would combine this with a tune, and as such will adjust their fueling and timing to benefit most from the system.

We won't have issues overfueling the engine on most single nozzle setups. There is a delay to the STFTs responding but overall the OEM ECU can easily accept 10-15% - perhaps 20% more fueling without needing fueling adjustments in the tune for it. Beyond that you will need to be a little careful how you bring in the extra fueling as it can cause some oscillations in the AFRs and OEM fueling as it adjusts to the sudden onset of extra fuel.

I think the scope of keeping WMI fueling within 20% of total additional fueling is reasonable and simple. Beyond that you'd have to start adjusting the OEM fueling side of things and since this car is speed density it is a little trickier than scaling down the MAF.

 

[Bugasu]

Thanks for the your kind comment.

This LSHL is very interesting, I have not come across this over the years, however, it is quite common on diesel engines. For whatever the reason it is for, pre-ignition or emission. This is new to me. Did Ford explain why? I can only assume the same amount of fuel is shared with two shorter duration pulses to maintain correct fuel flow.

The aquamist system detects the duty cycle % of the fuel injector signal, multiple injection events will not cause error reading. I had the pleasure of spending many hours per day for the last three weeks on OseaD's car. It was for a different reason, I was tracking down the source of an interference with his help and patience.

During those sessions, we configured the aquamist controller to display fuel duty cycle %. He took some videos and the fuel idc is extremely smooth and progressive under different engine loads. So the answer is, we have no problem decoding the Ford's LSHL system.

Boost based only flow control may not be the best way to inject water/methanol in my opinion. Without the RPM and IAT information. It will not represent true engine load. Depending on your view on how important it is to match fuel flow. That will be another topic to discuss. What do you think?

Right. I totally agree that boost doesn't provide the full picture, and I love the idea of using IDC.

I do not know the full specifics of Ford's LSHL system (or even if that's what they truly call it. I got the terminology from Cobb!). I did some testing with Braden[email protected] on enabling/disabling it to see if we could notice any difference or possible fueling benefits. He would probably be the most knowledgeable about the situation, but I hate bugging him too much as the less I bug him the more he can do his actual job Our results were basically that it doesn't help any to disable it, and they have it for a reason. I suspect it's for soot buildup or pre-ignition, as the LSHL off tune does seem to have some soot puffs come out the back of the car. This would lead me to believe that it's timed very close to the spark ignition, similar to how a diesel uses a close pre-injection (and post injections) to tame soot buildup. While diesel ignites from compression, and we from spark, it would have the same effect of having a cool even fueling in the cylinder end gas to help prevent excess unburned fuel pockets causing soot buildup. It also has the added benefit of injecting cold fuel right when a pre-ignition event would happen, which is what I think might be the primary purpose.

I would think it would directly cut pulsewidth in half, but it could be that is just how the ECU side reports it.
Without LSHL turned on, the pulsewidth and load curve match beautifully, as seen here.
With it turned on (the norm), you can clearly see the "halving" it does, implying two injection events, as seen here.

I don't know if this is what the actual pulsewidth going to the injectors looks like though, but I'd assume they match up. I suspect as long as we set the threshold at about 3.5ms we'll be okay though, especially if we already got a guinea pig (thanks @OSeaD!) that's tried it out for us

We won't have issues overfueling the engine on most single nozzle setups. There is a delay to the STFTs responding but overall the OEM ECU can easily accept 10-15% - perhaps 20% more fueling without needing fueling adjustments in the tune for it. Beyond that you will need to be a little careful how you bring in the extra fueling as it can cause some oscillations in the AFRs and OEM fueling as it adjusts to the sudden onset of extra fuel.

I think the scope of keeping WMI fueling within 20% of total additional fueling is reasonable and simple. Beyond that you'd have to start adjusting the OEM fueling side of things and since this car is speed density it is a little trickier than scaling down the MAF.

Makes sense. I'd suspect (based on the Aquamist guide) that using a 0.7mm or 0.8mm single nozzle would be sufficient for a big turbo setup with headroom and a 50/50 mix.

I'd assume that a tune based on 50/50 would have the spark map in the high load cells adjusted to account for the cooling/octane bump we see, but for the fueling we simply rely on the feedback to remove what I assume is the richness we would see from a setup?

 

[OSeaD]

Just wanted to chime in and let everyone know we finished the trouble shooting yesterday and I've mixed my first batch of 50/50 today. Going to run at least a tank full before I log any data. I'm currently running a tune from Panda that's not for meth but Matt will be working with me as we make adjustments. I'm full stage 3 and last Dyno numbers were 280/370 from the Panda tune. I've currently got the 1.0mm nozzle installed without a reducer and was planning to see if this would work before I installed the .7 or .8 reducer. Hoping with proper tune, ill see around 310hp on the stock turbo with this addition. Please feel free to chime in and if anyone needs help with the install please contact me. I now know this system inside and out (literally) and would love to see this system on more ST's. This is without a doubt the most advanced system on the market as far tunability (is that a word?) but the down side is I have no experience or other members to pull from that has used this and already figured out the best setting for our platform. I'll be keeping you up to speed as we proceed.

 

[[email protected]]

I would like to extend my thanks to you for being so patient during the last three weeks of tracking down the interference issue. Most people would have given up.

The cause of the unstable meth flow reading on the gauge was due to the one wire. This wire shares the same bundle with the two injector signal pickup wire. It has not been this problem on many di systems until the Focus ST platform. As we all know, the Di technology development pace is super fast, new injector drivers are being introduced every nano second. We are just play catch-up all the time.

Since this wire is for third party stand-alone usage only, some after market piggyback used this signal to monitor water/meth flow, using their own specially written software. For the majority, it is rarely or never used.

So I asked OseaD to cut a track on the HFS4 controller so this wire is internally severed and can no longer bring in any induced spikes. Unfortunately is took three weeks to discover this. Screening and grounded the cable externally did not help as the interference was induced internally. It was a great relief is was finally found.

During this three weeks, OSeaD and I have gone through every part of the system, even disassembling the water pump to check for debris trapped in between the diaphragm. OseaD is now a fully qualified aquamist system expert, not by choice, but just happened. He will be updating the the thread below more frequently due to the recent issue. Please go to this thread for highly detail account of the aquamist install.
http://www.focusst.org/forum/focus-st-performance/31038-aquamist-hfs4-install-help.html

Meanwhile, I stay put and remain here, continue to contribute. If I don't know the answer, I will not fudge. I will do my best. So ask away.

 

[[email protected]]

Right. I totally agree that boost doesn't provide the full picture, and I love the idea of using IDC.

I don't know if this is what the actual pulsewidth going to the injectors looks like though, but I'd assume they match up. I suspect as long as we set the threshold at about 3.5ms we'll be okay though, especially if we already got a guinea pig (thanks @OSeaD!) that's tried it out for us

Here is a video during one of the many tests we did on OseaD's car. The gauge is set to display captured IDC instead of flow. Notice it read the iIDC nicely as you hear the engine note progresses. No sign of jitter during the double/single pulse transitions. It is a bit unsteady to drive the car and taking video at the same time. But you can see the gist of it.

 

[[email protected]]

Does anyone know the response time the ECU make fuel trim adaption when you suddenly dump a 20-30% meth into the engine. This is quite useful to know this so we can configure the system to phase in the meth gently.

 

[[email protected]]

Welcome Richard, glad to see you made it on here.

I am currently in the middle of making a manifold spacer function as a port methanol injection. Is there any benefit to running a 100%(neat) methanol over, say, 70/30 mix with distilled water? I am looking at it as more of the octane booster to help me achieve a target hp rating of 470.

Sorry to have taken so long to give you a credible answer. It is a short one, you can run both without and ill effect.

100% methanol injection will always work, providing you go crazy. There is a danger point when the air/meth ratio is near the stochiometric region, if there is a misfire during the valve overlap period, it will ignite the entire incoming mixture and blow your inlet tract apart.

Running 70/30 is safer as the water molecule will from a barrier to minimise a painful backfire.

For lower fuel/methanol ratio, it doesn't happen because the methanol charged air is not as easy to ignite until it reaches Air/meth ratio of 6.6/1.

 

[ST3 4 ME]

Sorry to have taken so long to give you a credible answer. It is a short one, you can run both without and ill effect.

100% methanol injection will always work, providing you go crazy. There is a danger point when the air/meth ratio is near the stochiometric region, if there is a misfire during the valve overlap period, it will ignite the entire incoming mixture and blow your inlet tract apart.

Running 70/30 is safer as the water molecule will from a barrier to minimise a painful backfire.

For lower fuel/methanol ratio, it doesn't happen because the methanol charged air is not as easy to ignite until it reaches Air/meth ratio of 6.6/1.

That just convinced me to go 70/30. Really don't want to pull pieces of an intake manifold out of the engine bay.

 

[[email protected]]

Do you know the flow capacity of the ST injectors I can work out some ball park figure if this information is available.

 

[ST3 4 ME]

Do you know the flow capacity of the ST injectors I can work out some ball park figure if this information is available.

I don't know the flow but IIRC the pressure is something like 1800psi.

Mountune has a set of injectors available so I am assuming they know the stock injectors specs.
@Bugasu
@[email protected]