If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I was asked the other day about water injection systems by Brian of GotEngines.com, about how effective they really are. Here is my point of view.

Water injection systems have been around in some form or another for 40 years or so. I remember them when I was kid in the ’60’s. I bought one for my ‘66 Corvette with the 427 cubic inch 4 bolt main 425 horsepower engine. Back then it was about getting more horsepower, not about fuel economy.

The only thing it did was waste my time and money. It did not increase my horsepower and we did not care about fuel mileage since a gallon of HI-Test (Sunoco 260-octane 107) was 30 cents a gallon back then. The only positive effect you will get from a water based injection setup is a good steam cleaning of your valves and piston tops.

Simply put, the water turns into steam as it is heated and combusted, then it steam cleans the entire combustion chamber. It is a real gimmick, you only need to have a combustion chamber cleaning every 50,000 miles, by a professional mechanic. And a can of fuel system and injector cleaner in your tank every 10, 000 miles is sufficient to keep the fuel system in top notch shape.

A quick story. Our Fort Pierce Sheriffs’ department bought about five of the new, expensive, sensationalistic, guaranteed to improve fuel mileage systems to try out last year. After only a few months, the verdict was in: the cars lost some fuel mileage and were less powerful. Needless to say, they kits were removed and deemed not a good upgrade.

GotEngines.com Blog is looking out for you. Watch out for the “snake oil” salesman. There are no magical ways to improve your fuel mileage other than a good old fashioned tune up and modifying your driving habits to accelerate slower and cruise to the stop light.