Wild Water Injection

Scheid Diesel’s Electric Water Injection Kit on a 1,000hp Race Truck

- Jason Sands

Water injection has been around nearly as long as the diesel engine has been in existence. Instead of intercooling, injecting water into a diesel engine can be used to control combustion and exhaust gas temperatures through a phase change. Known as the latent heat of vaporization of a liquid, when water turns to steam it sucks heat out of the air, which in a turbocharged diesel engine can be quite hot. 

As the horsepower per liter of an engine increases, it creates more and more heat. In stock applications, intercooling and proper turbo sizing can control exhaust gas temperatures without any issue, but if you’re the type of person who can’t leave well enough alone, temperatures can become a major issue.

MELTING PARTS WITH 1,000 HP

Cole Dow has a very quick 9-second diesel race truck that was having EGT problems. With the amount of nitrous he was using (0.063, 0.085, 0.087, and 0.110-inch jets on a Nitrous Express progressive controller) he was seeing exhaust gas temperatures that were off the charts. His 1,600-degree pyrometer would be buried just after launch, and at the far end of the track the needle had wrapped all the way around back to the “0” mark. Not only were EGTs off the chart, Dow also would only get a few runs in before he would melt the center out of the turbo housing, melt the exhaust wheel, or both. Since replacing turbos every few runs wasn’t in his maintenance budget, he decided to do something about it.

600PSI WATER INJECTION