If anyone has misinterpreted my enthusiasm for a product which I have found to work on my car and I believe will work on other people's cars as "pushing" a product, then that is entirely your own doing. I have been and continue to be 100% open and honest about this and anything else I do to my car. Nothing more, nothing less.
Regarding claims that I have bashed the Snow or other alcohol systems in the past, I challenge anyone to back that up with any kind of fact. I will NOT make any excuses for my comments and I have NOT changed my opinions!
From a post in 2003 discussing fuel octane and detonation:
XR7 Dave said:
I would run 93. Before I tuned my car with the EEC tuner, I was having issues with detonation due to having removed the EGR. I was running a stock blower with a 10% pulley getting about 13 psi. I found that changing to Autolite 103 plugs gapped at .045" cured that detonation.
Then I went to an EEC tuner and started to increase timing. I found I got more power running up to 30 deg total timing. 31 degrees will detonate even with the colder plugs. On the advice of Brian H and a number of other people who have experience in this I backed the timing down to 28 degrees for pump gas but the car slowed down noticably at the track.
With the car at 31 degrees I noticed that the car was detonating again, and the addition of a 25-40% mixture of 107 octane stopped it but the car really wasn't any faster. Currently I run 26 at torque peak and 30 degrees at hp peak. I am running about 15psi on a 5% OD and it seems ok ( I run stock pistons etc). However, others who are running the stock spark plugs would disagree.
I believe that one of us was running up to 33 degrees with race fuel but it resulted in a melted piston. I don't think that race fuel really allows for that much more timing that it warrants it's use.
I think that spark plug selection is crucial to avoiding detonation in a competition motor. The 103's that I run are short tip and colder heat range than stock. It made a noticable difference in my car.
I guess my point is that we don't really run enough boost to warrant race fuel with the tune that the EEC has, and to retune the EEC to benefit from the race fuel significantly is not really worth it. People who have tried alcohol injection have had similar results.
Another thing to think about is that race fuel has different burning characteristics which results in a different a/f ratio. With the adaptive nature of the EEC, if you switch back and forth between the two you could end up running really lean at one point. Not sure if anyone really knows how long it takes the EEC to learn a new mixture. Not a nice thought IMO.
In this post I merely stated that
others who have tried alcohol have not had significant success. You can see in that post that I provided detailed information about my tuning experience the like of which NO ONE before or after has ever done!
From another post which discussed alcohol injection some time ago:
XR7 Dave said:
Boost. The M90 is designed to operate at 8psi of boost. After 18psi it becomes nothing more than a heat pump and ceases to function as a forced induction device. It is also a fact that as a positive displacement blower, the M90 does not perform well on a larger displacement motor. It just doesn't move enough air. It is commonly known that 18 psi is achievable on pump gas (with a proper turbo or blower) and 24psi is common on race gas. Alcohol injection will help achieve 21psi or so on pump gas.
Yep, I'm bashing alcohol injection alright.
And more recently in 2004:
With proper tuning an SC will not pull timing on the "top end". I think that if you have a combination all sorted out with predicatable and consistant results, it may be possible to add alchohol injection and pick up some useable performance. However, no one here can tell me for sure that they have their combination well sorted out enough to say that except for Coy Miller and - oh - guess what, he doesn't use alchohol injection any more either.
All too often people start throwing bandaides at a problem before they really solve the issue in the first place. I believe that most of the situations where you see huge gains from an alcohol injection system you have other problems that were not properly addressed that are being covered up by the alchohol. (this was in reference to the up to 100hp gains claimed for non-intercooled 5.0s).
In the past we have not been able to properly diagnose tuning issues as they came up. Now with a better understanding of how the EEC works combined with some better tuning tools we can actually tune an SC properly and the results are rather amazing.
Plus, up to now we haven't had the ability to run 20+psi meaning we simply have not had the need for a detonation suppressant. I know that my car (17psi) did not run any better on race fuel than it did on pump gas even when tuned with both fuels. Something to think about.
And finally this response from me (about 6 months ago) when someone asked if 60-100HP was possible with a Snow Performance kit.
XR7 Dave said:
You won't get that much out of the SC tuning with alcohol. Because we already have an IC, aluminum heads, a better combustion chamber than the 5.0, a knock sensor, and a computer that knows what to do with boost, there really isn't that much to be gained.
These quotes detail my position on alcohol injection systems over the past 2 years here at the SCCOA. In case it is not clear to anyone else, I have stated more than once in the above quotes how
others have had little or no success with alcohol injection. I would appreciate if anyone can show me that someone has had verifiable success with a kit other than the MAF controlled Snow Performance kit (which is NOT the kit that was being discussed in the post referred to above) on their SC.
I have tried my best to stay away from topics of which I do not have first hand experience and in that spirit I had previously contained my comments about alcohol injection to address what I had seen reported from people who had actually tried it. I did NOT make claims or assertions rooted in biases or opinions that I held because of some kind of vendetta against alcohol injection as Damon has stated.
By all means, don't buy the system if you don't think it will work and if anyone doesn't like what I have said or feels I am terribly in error then please, buy a kit from someone else. All I did was buy the system for myself, install it, test it and offer it to this group as a performance enhancer. That's all.
I have offered the kit with enthusiasm to some people whom I felt would really stand to gain from it. This was through a genuine desire to help these people out. I find it very disheartening that even the best intentions around here are met with cyncism and resentment from our members.
To answer Todd and Victor's questions: Until I have the chance to test a car at both altitudes, I will have no idea what kind of challenges you are going to face when changing altitude. That's my official answer. I have other ideas, but obviously they will only be fodder for more attacks so I will keep them to myself.
David