Back in October at Shift Sector's 1/2 mile event, I tried to run an aggressive (~ 24psi) GIAC file. Because the power was at or beyond the limit of the fuel capacity of the 997.2 direct injection fuel system, I was getting fuel cuts, particularly in 4th gear and higher. The file felt great until the cuts. I wanted to run the file again but the fuel cuts were something that needed to be overcome.


A possible solution to supplement the fuel system is to use the theory of a methanol injection system. I have used water/meth injection systems in the past for cooling and they have never worked 100%. In addition, I did not want to mess with safety from a fuel leak perspective. I only wanted a bulletproof and reliable system. I turned to vendor Emmanuele Design (Thomas Emmanuele formerly of GIAC) who put the following system together as posted on the Emmanuele Design Facebook page:


https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?...14462602017317


This system was completed only a week ago and so far the system is working perfectly. it's sprays when it should and I don't have to be worried about anything going wrong. I have yet to run it on the race gas file at a low DA but that should happen soon. If that works well, it may go to GIAC for further testing and perhaps even more power

 

Looks like just what you needed. looks clean. Time to go and break more hearts!
+1 For Thomas at Emmanuele Design!

 

Methanol injection is great. We have run it for years on the BMW Direct Injection platform with great success and we run it on both of our 997.1 and 997.2 cars. It seems your setup is Coolingmist based given that controller gauge? We moved away from that a few years ago and went exclusively with Aquamist HFS-4 on direct injection cars due to superior injection strategy, flow monitoring and failsafe setup.

After years of fueling with meth on the BMW direct injection platform we started to move away from it for larger power setups in favour of considerably more robust fueling via secondary port fuel injection in combination with the primary OEM direct injection.

Direct injection has huge advantages over port injection when it comes to combustion but when it comes to making serious power, higher redline, the window for injection starts to get smaller and smaller and eventually surpasses the limits of DFI as a fueling platform.

Here's a picture from one of last year's shows where we showed our port fuel setup for the BMW N54 motor, you can see the black OEM BMW N54 intake manifold attached to a machined spacer carrying a fuel rail for additional port fuel injectors:



Here's another angle:



This is no different that supplementing fueling with secondary fuel injection on 2000+hp builds where if a single rail was used there would be idling issues on very large injectors. Instead, you run a primary rail with decently sized primary port fuel injectors and add a secondary supplemental rail to add fuel necessary to fuel all the power a particular motor can make.

Let me know if any questions at all but this is in a nutshell what we're looking at fuel system wise on the 997.2.

Dzenno@PTF

 

That looks great PFT. That plus and engine and PDK build would be quite something.


I initially asked Thomas to use an Aquamist system but it was not 100% reliable on flow and the solenoid failed and tricked meth at idle. Not what I was looking for.


The system here is not coolingmist based but does use the coolingmist controller and failsafe. The Coolingmist controller is being used due to it's simplicity. It sprays using boost and is progressive based on whatever boost I want to start and reach 100% using the guage. Tuning hasn't begun yet so we have quite a bit more to do.

 

That's very odd that you had issues. There must've been a configuration issue and you guys could've emailed me or Jeff@Howerton Engineering about it. I'd be glad to help. Aquamist's injection strategy and flow monitoring is by far better than Coolingmists as they inject based on fuel injector duty cycle as well as boost. Aquamist's hardware also supports 100% meth. HFS-4 can also be configured to feed in the EGT signal on the 997s and configure that as part of the injection strategy as well. We haven't used that yet but it was interesting to see.

Main thing with meth, do you have a flow based failsafe and have you confirmed it dumps your boost in case of flow issues? Methanol systems are only as good as their failsafes

 

Yes it was odd and no Jeff Howerton could neither figure out why flow was intermittent nor could he figure out why the fail safe failed and was leaking meth at idle potentially causing hydro lock. He recommended a new fail safe so he shipped one out and it failed as well. But after discussion we agreed that a system based on magnets was too much of a gamble on a $30k motor.

We didn't start with and HFS-4...rather i had Thomas start with an HFS-2 controller I had for my M3. Jeff H worked with Thomas to rewire to flow with both boost and IDC as references and while Jeff was very confident it would work, well it didn't work all the time. Just very odd that it would work some of the time. If it was set up wrong it simply would not have worked at all. But that wasn't the case.

I could have just bought an HFS-4 and tried again. An easier solution was the Coolingmist controller/gauge and fail safe. It's a great interface for the user...shows boost and meth flow from 1 bar to 10 and allows me to turn it on and off and dial in start flow/max flow and was only $240. Heck a simple boost gauge alone would cost that much. The fail safe is much better in my opinion. The Coolingmist controller is less sophisticated than the Aquamist system as it only flows on a boost reference but that's an ok trade off when I'm trying to accomplish something a little different here. Most people don't get a water/meth system because they have a fueling limitation

The important part of this is my confidence in the system. Only steel braided lines, aircraft fittings, and crash-resistant fuel cell, and it flows when I want. Hasn't been tuned for it but might not need it who knows. That part is next.

 

any meth system is to much of a gamble on a 30k motor. it's a bandaid.

given how our manifold is designed and pulsation of air in it, i don't see how you can get an equal amount in all cylinders.

 

It really sounds like the HFS-2 controller wasn't configured properly for your DME. Outside of the CM hardware the rest of the kit that had custom fabrication in it by Emmanuelle (lines, tank, etc) really sounds and looks to be of quality.

We wouldn't even suggest the HFS-2 on these cars being bottom of the barrel functionality wise and not made to sense injector duty cycle on a DFI setup like the HFS-4 does. We're running with the HFS-4 on our shop car without a single issue and have tested the failsafe to dump boost in case of a meth flow issue as well as tank running low. On the HFS-2 on your car I'm thinking it may have been related to the way your controller was configured to pick up the MAP (boost) signal and it simply didn't have the right scaling set up for your car given it came from your SC M3.

We ran with the CMGS VC-2 setup (their top of the line kit at the time) for 2 years. Coolingmist's solenoid fittings would always end up leaking on us very shortly after getting it fixed, their flow sensor didn't put up with heat well in summer and the hardware didn't support methanol blends higher than a 50/50 mix. When you're supplementing fueling with meth you tend to go with larger nozzles and having to inject 50% water which doesn't combust is counter productive to making power. People tend to go with 50/50 mixes believing its safer than 100% meth but in fact if you do a simple test with an open flame to a cup of each of them both will equally light up and are equally safe/unsafe when it comes to catching on fire with an open flame.

At the end of the day, its whatever you're most comfortable with and what you feel works best for you. We're simply sharing our years of experience being OCD with methanol on the BMWs and eventually moved to secondary port fuel injection with actual PI fuel injectors, rail, fuel pump, FPR, lines ensuring even fuel distribution on higher HP setups using more conventional fuel control.

 

Agree. To a point though its fine to supplement with meth as long as 1) you've got a great failsafe and flow monitoring you can trust 2) you're not going overboard pushing power while supplementing with meth 3) you can log knock (timing corrections) across the motor and not just cylinder 1.

 

As awesome as it is that you're able to push this baby to it's limits, I think my limit stops here ... Too much risk involved with a system that is not 100% proven reliable. I applaud you for having the ***** to explore deeper to crank out more power, but I think I'd be too ***** to go with something like this. Please update us on how things progress. I'd love to see how this system works, and if so, how much more power you can crank out of the stock turbo's. Good luck!!

 

Jeff was convinced we could get the exact same signaling from the HFS-2 as the 4. But maybe in the end it was too complicated for its own good.

Like you I was doing meth systems on multiple 335's and my M3. The most important take away from all that is safety. The out-of-the box meth systems are all crap unfortunately but they are cheap and people like cheap. The hardware (tank, filters, lines fittings) created by Emmanuele Design to address these shortcomings wasn't cheap. The theory of spraying progressively in the Y pipe is not a great solution agreed - and your point about distribution is well taken and that was known before starting this project.

But remember, there is already a 997.2 GIAC/meth car that traps 136+ and pulled off 10+ consecutive 9-second 1/4 mile passes in one day running a meth system. And I am running the same GIAC file. So the car may be smarter about keeping fuel trims and AFRs dialed in despite uneven distribution.

Haha thanks man. I'm certainly not going to have it tuned so that it is dependent on meth flowing. That would be dangerous! If the fuel supplement here works, I would not be turning it up to crazy levels. 650-ish wheel is plenty for this platform. I just don't want fuel cuts in the middle of an airstrip race. Plus, too many 3.6's have bent rods and I want no part of that.

 

How will you monitor distribution? Is Giac providing you with a logger to monitor knock across the motor? I think you should try and get one of those to review how well your car is running for peace of mind.

 

Sounds good. The car hasn't gone to GIAC yet for analysis. That's next!

 

PTF & Motiv both use the Port Injection kit on the N54 (and likely the N55)... The interesting thing is Motiv has also upgraded their track car to a Motec M142 standalone. Once again this is a benefit of going standalone, but the Motec now controls the OEM Direct Injection and the Supplemental Port Injectors.

Now they don't have to worry about CAN integration, but for customer setups Motiv uses an AEM EMS to manage to Port Injection system, independent from the OEM DME tune done with COBB. Since you're in CA, I wouldn't be surprised if BBi could fab something up for you (if they don't already have something), and either have them or GIAC develop a custom, higher performance tune.

 

Hey ,
Well I have 997.2 turbo with bigger upgraded turbos and ran aquamist hfs4 to support fueling and more octane , it ran perfect with zero issues

Did you log your car to check the fuel system limitation ??