I decided to install a water/Methanol injection system on the solstice. On direct injected engines like these, the fuel is injected into the combustion chamber instead of the intake rail. This means there is never any fuel flowing across the intake valves. This causes excessive carbon to build up on the valves. Adding the water/meth injection system not only will help with performance, it will keep the valves clean.
There are several things that water/meth injection does to help the performance of a boosted engine.
1) It lowers the intake air temperature through evaporative cooling. Cooler air means denser air, meaning more oxygen and better combustion.
2) The Methanol is a combustible fuel and raises the effective octane of 93 fuel to nearly that of race gas, 110 octane. This means a richer mixture and can support higher levels of boost without running lean.
3) The water absorbs heat and turns to steam. This does two things, it cools the exhaust gas temperature, and increases the cylinder pressure, creating more HP.
4) All of these things on their own will not increase performance. However, they allow for a more aggressive tune that can result in more HP.
I decided to go with AEM’s kit because it has a very good controller and several safe guards built in. I prefer to buy most of my items from DDMWorks. Dave and Ivy are great to work with and they know their stuff.
While I was under the hood I decided to install the Polished Stainless Engine cover I bought off of the forums. Below are some videos of the injector install and some photos of the engine cover.
AEM Water Methanol Injection Kit
Every wire connection was soldered and heat shrinked. Every wire bundle is protected with wire loom. The controller is accessible from the glove box with enough of a loom to reach the dash area for tuning. However, once set, the only thing needed is the status led and that along with a switch to arm and disarm the system is mounted near the shifter. The reason I want to disable it, is that I have a Trifecta tune for running this water/methanol setup and I can turn it on and off. When it is off, the water/meth needs to be off.
I use a Bluetooth ELM 327 OBDII interface along with Torque running on my smart phone to monitor and log AFR, Knock Retard, Knock etc. So far my initial tests show that the new tune from Trifecta is spooling faster and holding boost, without dropping the AFR’s to an unsafe level with the kit on.
Engine Cover
Under the plastic cover is an insulation pad. It’s primary purpose is to keep the oil warm on cold starts for emission purposes. I removed it.
After install of engine cover.