Fish'nCarz said:
I'm no expert (ask anyone) but I think you gets hydrolock because water don't burn like gas does.
Couple of thoughts here on pouring any liquid into the intake of an engine. First It sounds realllllly risky, period. That said the normal fuel feed to an engine Carb or FI is a liquid, gasoline or diesel. The trick is to vaporize, boil, evaporate,gassify,or flash.... most of it before or while it gets compressed and to control the flow rate so that you don't have liquid in the cylinder at or near TDC, less one should hydrolock and blow the engine to the nearest graveyard. A good thing would not it be!
I was astounded to recently hear about using a water mist in the intake feed of a running engine (First I had heard of it) to clean up the combustion parts and areas, but after some reflection I can see how it could be very useful in small carefully controlled quantities.
First it has nothing to do with dissolved oxygen in the water. Not enough O2 there do anything significant. Second the following is from a Chemical reaction enginering perspective and some knowledge of changes that water undergoes when you heat and compress the p$ss out of it!
So here goes:
Water is a polar molecule, and oil and gas and probably most of the seafoam ingredient(s) are mostly non-polar (yes ethanol is polar and there may be some polar alcohols or ketones in the seafoam and there is now ethanol in the gas). Oh, also diesel fuel has nitrogen based (partly polar) proteins (amino acid functional groups) in it which is why it makes such and excellant cleaning solvent.
Some soils (polar soils) are far more soluble in water, as they are more polar, than they are in nonpolar oils and fuels.
Next, water tends to split into H+, OH-, H and OH free radicals in increasing amounts as the temperature and pressure increases. At combustion temeratures the water, if used in carefully limited quantities may be at a supercritical fluid state where it is no longer a liquid or a gas (it has a density above the super critical fluid state where the gas and liquid densities are the same). There is actually a patented hazardous waste incineration technology that feeds hazardous waste organics like PCB's into high temperature high pressure water reactors (at 450 F and 400 PSI as I recall) where the split free radical water components literal burn the chlorinated organics into stuff like HCl, and CO2.
Think of it this way, the water forms OH free radicals that react with unburned solid carbon deposits, producing an easier to burn, volatile C-OH alcohol.
Interesting to note here that it may (does) run rough as that carbon burns off, which also happens when gas gets contaminated with water. Also note worthy is that methanol and other alcohols as well as ketones like MEK (a polar ketone) are found in some fuel injector cleaners.
Lastly, I have heard on occasion wild stories about engines that added traces of water to the fuel feed, purportedly burning water to increase gas mileage, so now I am wondering what happens to the mileage and combustion expansion energy release when a small amount of water is added? They do make steam engines after all!???? Be intersting to do some thermodynamic calculations on the energy released as the water turns to vapor at combustion pressures and temperatures.
Anyway, back the topic, the question then is how to SAFELY control the water or seafoam, or ATF or snake oil blend feed rate and not blow up or damage the engine!
My thought would be to do it more slowly (and therefore more safely) by adding a soluble emulsion mix of blended DI water (20%), alcohols (30%), ketones (10%), aromatics like toluene (20%), and polyalcohols like a Glycol ether (20%) Ingredient in 409 and fantistic cleaners) and then add like a pint of that snake oil mix to about 4-5 gallons of gas in the gas tank, then run it at a fast idle (2 to 3000 rpm) for about an hour. Then top off the tank with a full load of good gas and drive it while it finshes cleaning the injectors, carb, and valves, etc. By soluble emulsion I mean a formula that would totally dissolve and disperse the water in the fuel blend.
I once ran a few gas tank fulls of pure MTBE (recently outlawed fuel additive, now replaced with 10% ethanol) Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether in the gas tank (back in the early 80's, talk about high octane!) and it cleaned the hell of out my old dodge engine. Unfortunately it ate the rubber in the carbs float neddle assy and flooded the engine after about four tank fulls. My 6 quarts of oil turned into 8 quarts before I figured it out. :bawl:
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