Ever heard of this?

larry cad wrote:

notsobigjoe wrote:
I've never heard of this type of conversion. When I lived in upstate NY a friend of mine ran something on his snow plow truck that injected water into the fuel, I don't know anything about what happened but I remember him showing me. I find this stuff interesting not as the effect that the user intends "whatever that may be" but just the scientific inventing end of it. I thought it was interesting and am passing it along for comments.

https://www.truckcampermagazine.com/camper-tech/misadventures-in-grease-camping/

B-52s and other military aircraft have been using water injection into their "diesel" engines for years. Here is a KC-135 with "wet" takeoff

Was that at U-Tapao in Thailand? I was 4 miles off the end of the runway and 3 miles to the side. I was part of the construction crew that build and man'd the Loran C Station the USCG built there in the summer of 1966.

notsobigjoe wrote:
I've never heard of this type of conversion. When I lived in upstate NY a friend of mine ran something on his snow plow truck that injected water into the fuel, I don't know anything about what happened but I remember him showing me. I find this stuff interesting not as the effect that the user intends "whatever that may be" but just the scientific inventing end of it. I thought it was interesting and am passing it along for comments.

https://www.truckcampermagazine.com/camper-tech/misadventures-in-grease-camping/

B-52s and other military aircraft have been using water injection into their "diesel" engines for years. Here is a KC-135 with "wet" takeoff

Propane injection would wake up a Cat 3406 mechanical hauling 140,000lbs 63,500kg on thin winter diesel at 20 below in a head wind in the dark.

ajriding wrote:
Injecting water vapor or even water mist into the air (the main fuel for combustion engines) will help give the cylinder a more even burn. The water (mist or vapor) turns to steam and helps spread the gasoline molecules more evenly inside the cylinder, so when the combustion happens the fuel is ignited all inside the space instead of just concentrated in one area. This gives a more complete burn and does provide a little extra power.
It uses a lot of water and is a big hassle, so most found it was not worth the time.
The downside is that water could find its way into the crank case and that is a bad thing.
The upside is that it steam cleans the pistons and cylinder head pretty good.

I had a throttle body injector on my first truck and before an oil change I would use a spray bottle to spray a water mist into the air intake (looked like a carb pretty much) until the engine loped. It took a lot of spraying to make the engine care. I did this for the steam cleaning effect. Old mechanics used to do this. I changed the oil right after so was not too worried about water, and if any small amount did get in the crank case it would evaporate pretty quick on the next drive.

With my fuel injected truck now I do not do this as there is no way to easily spray water in without going past sensors and the intake tube is long. Not that it is a big deal as you suck moist air in the rain anyway. Just too much trouble to get the spray very close to the cylinder for me to bother with.

I did not do this on the diesel, but it would have the same effect.

He did use it for the extra torque now I remember. He would plow huge lots and needed the power. I also remember he was pretty religious about the oil change as he put hundreds of miles on the truck in any given snow storm. He did not do it in the summer months.

Injecting water vapor or even water mist into the air (the main fuel for combustion engines) will help give the cylinder a more even burn. The water (mist or vapor) turns to steam and helps spread the gasoline molecules more evenly inside the cylinder, so when the combustion happens the fuel is ignited all inside the space instead of just concentrated in one area. This gives a more complete burn and does provide a little extra power.
It uses a lot of water and is a big hassle, so most found it was not worth the time.
The downside is that water could find its way into the crank case and that is a bad thing.
The upside is that it steam cleans the pistons and cylinder head pretty good.

I had a throttle body injector on my first truck and before an oil change I would use a spray bottle to spray a water mist into the air intake (looked like a carb pretty much) until the engine loped. It took a lot of spraying to make the engine care. I did this for the steam cleaning effect. Old mechanics used to do this. I changed the oil right after so was not too worried about water, and if any small amount did get in the crank case it would evaporate pretty quick on the next drive.

With my fuel injected truck now I do not do this as there is no way to easily spray water in without going past sensors and the intake tube is long. Not that it is a big deal as you suck moist air in the rain anyway. Just too much trouble to get the spray very close to the cylinder for me to bother with.

I did not do this on the diesel, but it would have the same effect.

It might be worth the trouble for some, who have access to used cooking oils.
20 year ago I drove Powerstroke 7.3 and Mercedes diesel sedan with mechanical injection pump. They were good candidates for veggie, so I researched the subject.
Found UK Mercedes owner who drove on straight cooking oil and installed special fuel heating module, using standard Glow Plugs for heating. That worked for him, when combined with cardboard covering his radiator on cold day. Shall I said that cardboard did not make good impression?
Other member set some old water heaters on his property to make bio diesel. That was stinky business and don't do it if you have neighbor closer than 1/2 mile away.
At the time I bought few barrels of 100% biodiesel and run it on those vehicles. Power loss was pretty noticeable, but smell of French Fries was actually nice.
But the source of bio dried out and since most of my fill-ups at the time were far away from home, I figured it out not worth the trouble.
YMMV

This gained a bit of popularity about 15-20yrs ago (people have been doing it for far longer...the original diesel engine was designed to run on peanut oil).

It was very popular with older Mercedes diesels. Newer motors often couldn't accommodate it.

Biggest issue is if you go back 20yrs ago, fry oil was a waste product. Restaurants paid people to take it away. So if you showed up and syphoned off a few gallons, no one cared.

Then as oil prices went up, the market shifted and companies were paying restaurants for their used oil. Suddenly, it was theft and bins were locked. Sourcing waste oil became a problem.

Additionally, to be legal, you need to pay fuel tax, so even the claims of buying oil from costco aren't entirely legitimate. If you get caught running what is essentially "off road" fuel, the fines are pretty hefty and their back seat tank is fairly obvious and attention grabbing if they get pulled over.

A fun science experiment but really not worth the trouble.