Excerpts from Article

Continued from this Dyno Database entry.

DAY ONE
Yesterday, our goal was to establish a solid and repeatable baseline (we threw out the lowest outlines). And then to enable the Procede tune and PWM Meth system. At this time, all the Procede did was meter methanol spray and adjust ignition advance as a function of measured methanol flow. No changes were made to AFR targeting. In the end, we came up with these results:

Analysis
Properly metering methanol as a function of Throttle angle and Airflow was key to keeping the DME happy and code free. If methanol is injected like an on/off switch, the DME will trigger various fuel control codes. Caused by having to react to big AFR swings at meth spray onset. So by injecting progressively (via Aquamist PWM valve), the DME sees no such plausibility issues. The extra meth naturally provides a big cooling advantage, dropping measured inlet air temps (IATs) by approx 20 deg C (35 deg F)! Just spraying meth alone picked up approx 10whp at high RPM (not shown). But that is only part of the story. Methanol also increases octane much like running race fuel. This allowed us to run 4-6 degrees more ignition advance, getting us right to the point of maximum thermal efficiency or Min Advance for Best Torque (MBT for short). This is where every engine "wants" to run. However, real world constraints (temp and octane) usually prevent this. This is why a stock "420bhp" m3 doesn't really make 420whp on the road. It also explains why stock baseline dynos, from car-to-car/condition-to-condition/octane-to-octane can vary from 320whp to 350whp. Methanol allows us to "tune" the environment which, in turn, allows us to tune the engine the way it wants to be tuned for maximum. And do it more safely than just trying to tune conventionally (ie, making the tune more aggressive without running meth or race gas, etc,.). So, at the end of the first day, running methanol and the extra ignition advance gave us not only big power gains, but also made the power perfectly consistent and 100% immune to heat soak. Which means that power gains in worse conditions will be every greater. But even in these temperate conditions, we saw gains of: