Sure, drag me into it... ;)
>From the water injection point of view it's true that there is little
difference between ambient temp water and ice water. From the point of
view of charge-air cooling, there will be a significant difference in
the power made if you can get the air temp down to let's say 40 F as
opposed to having it near 100 F (for argument's sake - I don't know what
the ambient temp will be on the salt flats).
Injecting water upstream of the turbos is very hard on the impellers,
even if the mist is finely divided, and I'm not sure how the charge-air
cooling is changed by the water being introduced prior to compression as
opposed to afterwards (it's not obvious to me that the cooling effect
would necessarily be the same, even if the mass flows and temperature of
the water and air going in are the same - it's been too long since I
learned anything about thermodynamics). If you're running any kind of
serious boost (even 8 PSI is probably in that ballpark) then a
windshield washer pump is going to have trouble providing the pressure
head required to spray water through a nozzle, unless the pump can work
with a boost-referenced inlet pressure.
The humidifier on my home furnace has an electrically (24 VAC)
controlled solenoid nozzle, and it handles house water pressure on the
input - I think that's about 40 to 50 PSI usually. I don't know if that
would deliver the kind of flow rate you're looking for, but it does
atomize to a very fine spray.
Theo
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