Pushing the limits is in the nature of every gearhead. How much cam can you run? How big of a carb can you get away with? How much compression will pump gas hold? Those aren’t just simple questions that can be answered with a vanilla response. Each engine is different and so when your combo is pushing the limits of a pump-gas street terror, every advantage has to be investigated. Played out and tested.
Talking with a friend recently, we were discussing the limits of pump gas and how his 12:1 compression 392 Windsor was just barely too much for the junky gas that now dominates the landscape. Pump gas was OK for cruising, but any full-throttle romps were now verboten. Just a couple of years ago, gas stations were still selling the good stuff, but now my friend has resorted to filling his ride with even more expensive race gas just to keep it happy. A call to Matt Snow of Snow Performance changed that.
The Snow Performance kit uses a quality made-in-USA pump that is pulsed by the controller. Push-connect fittings like those used in air brakes and airbag setups are easy to connect and have a super-sano eye appeal.
Water/methanol injection has been used since World War II to help heavily laden fighter and bomber planes boost their power by cooling the turbos and increasing boost. In piston engines, like the ones we’re used to, the fluid cools the combustion chamber and allows for greater cylinder pressure before detonation rears its ugly head. Snow had been using water/methanol injection since the early ’80s when he had a hot 12.5:1-compression Mopar street monster. He found that even with the good gas of the day he couldn’t keep from pinging, and it would subsequently lose power. Adding the injection brought the power right to where it should be, and he started manufacturing the kits for fellow racers. Soon word got out and the Snow Performance name became directly associated with providing a solution for the pump-gas blues. Sounds exactly like what our fine Ford friend was fending for.
Talking with Snow, we learned that they not only had kits for the late-model EFI-boosted combos, which seem to be more prevalent, but they also carry a muscle car naturally aspirated/carbureted version, which would fit perfectly. The kit comes with pretty much everything we needed to get started testing their claims of 10 to 15 horses over non-meth-injected engines.
Installation began by removing and relocating the radiator overflow and vacuum canister to make room for the methanol paraphernalia. Picking a spot to mount the tank that is easily accessible for refills can make life a little easier. Of course there are no rules saying you can’t gang two or three bottles together for extra capacity.
The first 90-degree day of the year might not have been ideal for the crew at C&C Performance in Carthage, Tennessee, and the owner of the cleanest ’79 Mustang Cobra on the planet, Don Jackson, to be out sweating in the sun to install the kit. Surely though it would be the perfect day to see whether the high latent heat of vaporization that the methanol provides would cool the combustion process enough to make a noticeable difference in power.
The Stage 2 Muscle Car kit typically uses a common 1-inch carb spacer with holes drilled and tapped in the sides to mount the injectors provided, however, since the car was already equipped with a nitrous plate and was hood-clearance limited, the decision was made to drill and tap into the sides of Don’s Vic Jr. intake manifold to mount the nozzles.
Some Snow customers use the factory washer fluid tank as a handy reservoir to store the water/methanol mixture that they refer to as Boost Juice. Jackson decided to relocate a vacuum canister to mount the Snow reservoir, pump, and controller all together in the left front corner of the engine bay. C&C also installed Snow’s low fluid indicator option in the tank, which was hooked up to a small LED light in the dash.
Sheetmetal screws are not for sissies. Don Jackson happily plowed through the inner fenderwell to mount the Boost Juice tank directly over the pump. There are also kits that allow for trunk mounting the reservoir for those wanting to keep their engine bay looking stock.
Plumbing the kit was easy, since it uses push-to-lock tubing and connectors. The only caveat was that the pump must be mounted below the reservoir, since it will only gravity feed to the pump.
After mounting the hardware, Jackson took charge of wiring the system. Good thing he is an electrician by trade—at least there were only a few wires that needed to be addressed. The intelligent control box uses a combination of rpm and manifold vacuum (or boost in some cases) to control when the pump kicks into action. Typically, it would be set to turn on only when the engine was at zero vacuum, indicating wide-open throttle. Mounting the injectors under the throttle blades as in Jackson’s case required the use of a solenoid (included in the kit) to keep the engine from siphoning the juice into the engine unintentionally.
A scene that typically causes that hair on your back to stand up: Drilling into the intake while still on the engine was the easiest way to make the system work. Packing the drill and the ⅛ NPT tap with grease and stuffing the manifold with paper towels and tape prevented any shavings from entering the runners. Whew.
Once the plumbing and wiring were done, we strapped Jackson’s red Cobra to C&C’s Dynojet chassis dyno for a little truth session. The boys started out making a run with the car in its normal state of tune, which included VP113 fuel and the timing hovering at 36 degrees. The car put down a respectable 361 rear-wheel horsepower through a C4 tranny and an 8.8 rearend spinning 255-series Mickey Thompson Drag Radials. That was with the aforementioned 12:1 compression, a set of ported World Products heads, and a 242/246-at-.050 solid flat-tappet cam. Your basic old-school combo good for low 7-second eighth-mile e.t.’s. For round two, we filled the injector tank with straight pure methanol for a back-to-back test. The dyno graph was almost identical except down maybe 2 horses total. That would indicate that the engine already had plenty of octane and the added methanol just made the engine a little rich.
For round three, Jackson disconnected the fuel line from his carb and ran the fuel pump, completely emptying his gas tank, only to refill it with run-of-the-mill 93-octane pump gas. Spinning the dyno drum again with the meth injection turned on showed power to once again almost exactly mirror the high-octane race gas. So far no big change. Curious.
The push-lock hose was teed into the injectors and routed far from any hot exhaust. Keep in mind that any mixture stronger than 30 percent methanol can be extremely flammable. Yeah, we ran straight medical-grade methanol. We’re cool like that.
For the final test we pulled the plug on the Snow kit and ran the engine on pump gas only. There was a slight bit of audible detonation as the engine climbed through its powerband, but we were all shocked once the dyno graph popped up on the screen. It had dropped 50 hp!
Apparently, the methanol injection had increased the octane the engine was seeing enough so that it performed just as well as the straight race gas. Wow, a product that worked as good as—no better—than claimed! Never before has being hooked on meth been a good thing. One thing is for sure though, with gas prices as high as they are, Jackson’s old Mustang couldn’t have chosen a better time to become a methanol addict!
Dyno Data Methanol Injection Test With Meth Without Meth RPM HP HP Difference: 4,400 294 279 +15 4,500 306 283 +23 4,600 314 290 +24 4,700 323 295 +28 4,800 330 300 +30 4,900 335 309 +26 5,000 341 310 +31 5,100 345 315 +30 5,200 350 312 +38 5,300 350 313 +37 5,400 350 316 +34 5,500 355 311 +44 5,600 357 302 +55 5,700 362 301 +61 5,800 360 294 +66 5,900 362 284 +78 6,000 362 284 +78 6,100 360 272 +88
