Posted by T.O.O. on May 07, 1998 at 20:08:20:
In Reply to: T.O.O.'s SC posted by body on May 07, 1998 at 19:29:16:

Although the advantages of water injection are well documented, we've not been able to see any worthwhile gain. You must remember that our manifold configuration is very different from the JR unit, where after snaking through many tight turns, the charge air leaving the blower must make a right hand turn before it "sees" the intake ports.
Our system has an inlet tube that you can see through, the blower is reworked to lower temps., and our manifolding places the blower outlet so there's a straight shot at the ports (and our plenum chamber is also correct in shape and volume). So if you add the temperature reduction from less restrictive intake, and direct blower to port flow, you've not only improved efficiency dramatically from a flow standpoint, but since there's a lot less energy spent from pumping losses, the temperatures are very low for the boost #'s we see.
I'm currently working on a compact intercooler which will fit between the blower exit and the manifold entry which will present as close to zero loss as possible, while cooling the charge in a very short distance. The prototype unit I have now works well, however, the manufacturing technology used to produce the unit is still under development (the intercooler was simply a test to see if this process could build a part so intricate that it can not currently be produced any other way....it's like stereo lithography, but it grows parts from the materials you select...it makes real parts, not simply "models". As this program is highly proprietary, I can not discuss it with you, however, if you study some on the various ways of "Rapid Protyping", and then assume that you can use a similar system to grow parts from as many materials as you wish...as long as you program where they're to go, I think you'll see that there's a technology almost complete that's going to make it possible to make "anything", and there's no finish machining necessary since tolerances of 1/100,000" are already possible. I suspect that in ten years, large and small manufacturing companies will have no machinery at all, simply these growth machines. Sorry I strayed from the subject...this stuff is what I feed on, and we're fortunate that we're able to serve as testbeds for it.
The distance between the blower out let and the cylinder head is only 8", so the runners are "short" and there's barely room for injector nozzles. We will not stop the program to efficiently intercool, and I'll keep you posted.
.................................T.O.O. .............................................