Is Toluene a better rout then Wanter Injection?
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Is Toluene a better rout then Water Injection?
I have looked and i see people saying that Toluene is good and that its bad. Then also i am seeing people glorify Water injection and then others that are saying its ****. So I am curious if i should just mix Toluene with my 91 octane crap gas or get water injection? Or even just stick with mixing 100 with 91 to get like 94 octane? Any foodback will help. 
Last edited by pinkman123; Oct 21, 2004 at 05:04 PM.
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From: Southern California
Hi pinkman,
IMHO, Neither mixing toluene nor water injection are perfect solutions.
Toluene
- Mixing this to increase octane requires you to carry 1-2 gal of toluene in your trunk so that you can gas up as required. I.e., more crap to fly around during your 1g turns.
- Increase fuel cost. ($5-$10 / gal depending on where and how much you buy.)
- Storing the bulk toluene in your garage? (Storing 55 gal drums of toluene in my garage would really suck.)
- Delivery of the toluene, I’d need a truck with a barrel lift to load and unload the 55 gal drum. Or pay extra for delivery, or pay extra for the 5 gal cans.
+ Safe octane boost.
+ Higher energy content then gasoline, might give you better gas mileage.
+ Higher octane should allow your engine to run a little leaner and more advance timing, should give you more power and better gas mileage.
Water Injection
- Require complex setup to tune for best power. Too much water and you have a power loser, too little water and you have knock. It would be a little bit of work to tune your water injection, air/fuel ratio and timing to optimize performance across RPM and load.
- Larger upfront cost for water injection equipment, tunable ECU or piggyback computer and the cost and time to perform the tuning.
- If your air/fuel ratio and/or timing is aggressive, and you have a water injection system failure or just run out of water… BOOOM.
+ Cheapest way to control knock in the long run if properly implemented.
+ Better knock control should allow you to tune your engine to run leaner and with more timing, this should give you more power and better gas mileage.
Personally, I plan on (hoping to) installing a water injection system in my EVO next year. But I only plan on fairly limited injection rate, leaning out the a/f ration a little and advancing the timing a little. Basically, hoping to stay within what the ECU can do to protect the engine by retarding the timing when it senses knock. This way, if my WI system failed, the car will just lose some power. Additionally, I plan on having separate WI and non WI maps pre-loaded on my EXDE piggy back computer so that I can switch if the WI system has a problem.
IMHO, Neither mixing toluene nor water injection are perfect solutions.
Toluene
- Mixing this to increase octane requires you to carry 1-2 gal of toluene in your trunk so that you can gas up as required. I.e., more crap to fly around during your 1g turns.
- Increase fuel cost. ($5-$10 / gal depending on where and how much you buy.)
- Storing the bulk toluene in your garage? (Storing 55 gal drums of toluene in my garage would really suck.)
- Delivery of the toluene, I’d need a truck with a barrel lift to load and unload the 55 gal drum. Or pay extra for delivery, or pay extra for the 5 gal cans.
+ Safe octane boost.
+ Higher energy content then gasoline, might give you better gas mileage.
+ Higher octane should allow your engine to run a little leaner and more advance timing, should give you more power and better gas mileage.
Water Injection
- Require complex setup to tune for best power. Too much water and you have a power loser, too little water and you have knock. It would be a little bit of work to tune your water injection, air/fuel ratio and timing to optimize performance across RPM and load.
- Larger upfront cost for water injection equipment, tunable ECU or piggyback computer and the cost and time to perform the tuning.
- If your air/fuel ratio and/or timing is aggressive, and you have a water injection system failure or just run out of water… BOOOM.
+ Cheapest way to control knock in the long run if properly implemented.
+ Better knock control should allow you to tune your engine to run leaner and with more timing, this should give you more power and better gas mileage.
Personally, I plan on (hoping to) installing a water injection system in my EVO next year. But I only plan on fairly limited injection rate, leaning out the a/f ration a little and advancing the timing a little. Basically, hoping to stay within what the ECU can do to protect the engine by retarding the timing when it senses knock. This way, if my WI system failed, the car will just lose some power. Additionally, I plan on having separate WI and non WI maps pre-loaded on my EXDE piggy back computer so that I can switch if the WI system has a problem.
