I haven't washed my truck all summer.

Put it on a dyno and list your numbers with and without the juice. If yours makes an extra 30hp I'll bet my 4lb. pump makes an extra 29-and-a-half hp.

 

It's more about intercooling than horsepower; mine's a non-intercooled truck and it's the alternative to a finny leaker. Going up a grade with the water I run out of power around 120 without going over 1250 degrees; without it I'm at 1250 around 100. I don't care if it'll give me more power off a little throttle blip, it's the only way I can make power for anything longer than 20 seconds, and I'm not making any respectable power to begin with.

The higher pressure water does let less water go farther. On my 300 HP stock engine it's mostly a waste, but I'm not planning on having to do it again no matter what grows off the side of my exhaust manifold in a year or two either.

 

Look, I'm not trying to minimize your wow factor or the effort and ingenutity here. I give it high marks simlpy from the "just because we can" perspective. But at the end of the day you could have basically the same effect for alot less time and effort with a conventional system AND banked most of the money spent there towards whatever you plan on growing out your manifold.

 

A little 150 PSI pump runs out of poop around 2/3 GPM. I have the 150 PSI pump come on for the first two stages, the high pressure comes on and the little pump turns off as a third stage. There is no doubt that the high pressure has a greater effect than the low.

 

How much $$ and time in the electronics do you have?

 

Unnnnngh?! A properly built truck might use a gallon or more in 12 seconds down the dragstrip. But that would be a completely different subject.

I don't know how much water you are dumping into that thing, but it looks like waaaaay too much. I remember the chocolate milkshake thread from 1st Gen. If you ever get enough fuel to go along with it and make some real power you will probably end up lifting the head. Or worse, if you don't just spin the bearings from water in the oil.

Unless you are planning on rebuilding it from the ground up with studs, lower compression, the fueling/breathing to match and the driveline to support it, your big water system amounts to a supremely under-matched showpiece atop the rest of the truck.

I believe the OP was wanting to know about building something practical on the cheap.

His "lift pump" represents the majority of the cost for a basic conventional system put together on your own. Better 250psi models are available now for $119:

DevilsOwn 250psi Water/Methanol Injection Pump: eBay Motors (item 140395646489 end time Sep-26-10 12:16:40 PDT)

It looks to me like he's got more than that in wiring.

 

So the gist of what you're saying is that my $100 pressure washer on a $200 inverter controlled with $200 worth of electronics is impractical compared to a $1000 Snow Stage III kit because it works too much better.

I know that the 150 PSI pump putting out as much as it can doesn't work as good as the 1000 PSI pump putting out nowhere close to as much as it can. The system isn't undermatched to the truck, the truck is undermatched to the system, but a non-intercooled engine with a crappy turbocharger can use quite a bit of water to cool it down.

The time I watered the oil down was after burning around 50 gallons of water over around 500 miles of driving around 75-95, and that was all on a 150 PSI pump. It seemed like it was really just froth out the dipstick tube; there wasn't any more oil than usual that came out of the crankcase and it didn't look any more watery than usual. Water gets in oil at a steady rate as part of normal combustion, a minute here and there and it'll just boil out but I'm yet to be convinced of any advantage to continuous use of water, but I'm just happy that it lets me run for more than 10 seconds at a time at 20 PSI outside of my turbo map without melting a piston.

 

Everybody who's ever done work or research in this area knows the kits from Snow, Coolingmist et al are extremely overpriced. The controllers are the main culprit and they are completely unnecessary for an effective, basic system. I believe this was probably the root of the OP's original question/concern. I also doubt you'd be where you are with yours if that were not case, would you?

 

Wow what a set up beagle. I dont have the room for all of that wiring.