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Why don't OEMs use water injection?

5K views 12 replies 8 participants last post by  MainFrame 
#1 ·
I stumbled upon this article about the Oldsmobile jetfire. Hooniverse Obscure Muscle Car Garage – The 1962-63 Oldsmobile F-85 Jetfire | Hooniverse
I had heard of it since it was the first production car with a turbo, but never knew it had a water / meth injection system. Here we have a cheap simple method to make our cars more powerful, cheaper to run, and more reliable. The difference in gas savings alone justifies the cost, yet nobody is running it in the wrx community nor are the OEMs. I have a devils own progressive injection kit on my mr2 and other than the company's customer service it rocks. I understand the drawback on aftermarket systems is fear of running out of fluid or having a failure at full boost. But couldn't manufacturers make these systems safe with all their engineers and money?
 
#2 ·
I've be wondering about that one for a while.
Why don't car makers use them?
You would think a well designed system would really be a huge stand out feature for the manufacturer.
With the Mustang, Camaro, and Challenger sporting those big horsepower numbers, you would figure a water/ meth injection system would help cars like the WRX achieve big stock horsepower and torque specs.
It would definitely be amazing for a manufacturer to adopt this type of technology, for the mass market of performance vehicles.
 
#5 ·
I see people doing builds with it all the time. I honestly imagine more OEM's don't do it because MOST people just want a car they can get in and drive A to B without special additives or fuels. Off the top of my head, the ONLY vehicle I can think of that requires something other than fuel are newer model Diesel trucks with the whole DPF setup and Exhaust Fluid that has to be added.

It's probably more liability than anything, " Ohh, here's another blown up WRX, they didn't fill up the methanol tank." Of course companys could build in a failsafe, but then the price just goes up.
 
#6 ·
I feel it's the same reason my old F-150 ecopoop didn't come with a catch can (as it was desperately needed) from the factory. People as owners are lazy and don't want to have to fill/empty something under the hood. I can imagine if Ford had put catch cans on the trucks and people didn't empty them, what a mess that'd be!
 
#7 ·
What a cool article. I think of myself as pretty well versed in automotive history when it comes to 50s, 60s, and 70s cars, but I had no idea that Olds existed! I knew the Corvair pretty well as my dad used to have one. But I have to say, that car is pretty sharp looking.
 
#9 ·
Right, that is what I use, and I can't see that being too much trouble for performance car owners to deal with.

I know it would be a tiny bit more liability for the OEMs, but failsafes could be built in easily. Really any turbo system is a liability, and look around, every oem has at least one turbo car. Also just think about what the OEMs could charge us for this. Just turning up the boost 3psi should yield 30 hp give or take, and do it safely... Essentially the difference between sti and wrx hp figures. Of course the sti has all kinds of additional enhancements too, but what would folks pay for 30hp? What would an sti sell for with the same hp as the wrx even with all the other enhancements? I'd say meth systems could sell for triple the cost of what it would take to build them into cars and would still be considered a performance bargain. And putting a gallon of windshield washer fluid in a tank is not hard at all. Hell they could even triple the size of the ww fluid reservoir and tap into that for the system.

As for guys using this on wrx builds, I would say that while some are, these systems are way under utilized in our community. I think it has a lot to do with how easy it is to pull power out of our cars without it.
 
#11 ·
I'll admit I am jealous of e85 states. I'm not sure why it doesn't exist around here but the copious amounts of easy horsepower would be sweet! E85 as a fuel for cars for the masses makes no sense to me though. From what I understand producing it is a net energy loss and it is something like 85% as efficient as gas.
 
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