Water Injection: meme or truth?

please explain how more water will affect my engine, when fuel combustion creates water in the first place?

I think you have a minimal understanding of engines

the air/fuel mixture is compressible. water is not so easily compressible. you're going to blow your engine through the hood, our through the floor because of the pressure it encounters while trying to compress water.

I highly doubt that, given my stock 8.5 or 9:1 compression and loss of compression via 260,000 miles of runtime

it doesn't inject near enough water to increase compression noticeably

Blasting that shit with steam might help clean deposits off the valves but I'm not convinced it does anything special.

from what I've read it reduces knocking and might increase gas expansion upon detonation, so I was just curious to see if it does make a difference

it definitely does clean, for the forst several miles it smelled like hot shit burning

I can definitely believe it reduces knocking but the gas expansion sounds iffy. I wonder if the water might slow the expansion of the combustion enough that it reduces torque, particularly at high RPM. I would also worry about running all that steam through the catalytic converter (if applicable). It would probably clean it but it might start to corrode inbetween driving sessions.

My engine is anemic to begin with, but known for being very torquey at low rpms, so I'm hoping it would benefit overall

I'm not too worried about the cat, its 23 years old so I imagine most of the noble metals are gone out of it by now

Snow Performance

Water/Alcohol injection has many benefits

OP is doing the redneck version of this

I've got water injection on my Toyboata 1VD. Shit goes great guns. The pump is regulated at 150psi with a 625cc nozzle and an older progressive controller. With water alone there is a noticeable benefit but even at 15% methanol it's fucking happening. My charge air temps plummet and the power increase is very noticeable.

A 1VD isn't a SBC but still, I'm a fan.

sounds nifty, I'd do a progressive controller, but I wanted to start off with something 100% mechanical.
I'll have to toy with changing the water composition now that you bring up methanol, but that'll be after I get some kind of baseline

This is nothing new.
>Cleans combustion chamber
>Reduces knocking
>May help due to expansion when heated

I have a 1920s engine that has this even.

funny you say that, I have a model A, and the vacuum fitting on the manifold was looking like a prime spot for water injection, since it doesn't use it for the original windshield wiper anymore

Even an aspirated engine should feel a good whack from mixing methanol with the injection water. Just keep it under 50% by volume and it is quite safe. Over 50% and the mixture becomes flammable and will emit vapours at room temperature.

At 50% though my big upgraded clutch is very fucking unhappy. It's a massive hit when you can finely atomise 50/50 water meth.

sounds like something to try
I have some atomizers I was thinking about using in the future, but I am too lazy to grab a 12-24v converter right now.

Looking at the price of controllers, I'll probably wait till a used one shows up somewhere

Might sound alright until you get water in your oil