water injection in Ford engines

[djfordmanjack]

We have been talking about water injections with my friends. One of them has a 300 cui L6 ford engine that has screws/provisions in each intake channel, that look like they could be water injector pipes. I remember readying an article once about water injection in truck engines in earlier times (40s, 50s?) but can't remember that right. I think it was about old 337 Flathead truck engines. or maybe Y blocks ?
water injection is for cooling the compression chambers and increasing octane numbers of fuel. I reckon it would be used on supercharged engines. Does anybody of you remember anything like that on Ford engines or remember how the arrangement worked ?

[canadian_ranchero]

i was thinking of running one on my car,i have a edelbrock and a sperrco kit

[Ecode70D]

Günter
    At some time in the mid 80's I installed a Buick V6 engine into a 34 Ford.  The car ran pretty good but had chronic spark knock upon acceleration.   After trying all kinds of things, I finally installed a water injection unit that I took out of a car in the junk yard.  It worked on the principle where the loss of vacuum upon acceleration  triggered a mechanism that gave a squirt of water into a fitting that I installed on the air cleaner above the carburetor.  The system worked quite well and got rid of the spark knock.  The car got 21-27 mpg.
     In the 90's I took the Buick engine out and gave it and the complete water injection kit away to a person who put it into a Willies  and he is still driving it.    I put a dressed up flathead back into the 34 Ford, and still have that car. I'll look through my files to see if I can find pictures.  Jay   

[canadian_ranchero]

both kits have vacuum switches,the sperrco uses jets to control flow rates.the edelbrock has a control module that controls the flow rate and rpm control of the water 

[Zapato]

remember during the 80s during one of those phony gas crisis shortages that there were a lot of those kits available. don't remember them being very complicated or expensive.

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[djfordmanjack]

thx for the infos, will forward them to my friend. I will try to get a pic of that 300L6 Ford on here so maybe one of you will recognize the stuff.
Guenter

[Zapato]

dj, have your friend check out   www.turboimage.com/water.html    lots of good info on building and maintaining a water injection system plus sources for all the parts needed. probably easily save 40-50% by building his own.

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[Lou]

You can build a water injection set up yourself, in the lale 50s early 60s i built several for my friends , cost about $2.00 then, maybe $10.00 or $12.00 now.

[Zapato]

Lou, the ones you built how did you control amount of water flow, seem to remember some kits that were nothing much more than a water bottle [windshield washer reservoir] a short length of tubing going to a nozzle mounted in the air cleaner pointing straight into the carb. water drawn in mostly by engine vacumn.

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