It seems to me that if this system really worked, Harley would be selling it for about $1000.00 as an after market add on.

 

Water injection was not developed by the Army Corps of Engineers for the R-2800 (they build roads, bridges etc.).

It was developed by the same folks who developed the engine, Pratt & Whitney (my employer for the past 29 years).

It was used in conjunction with a rich fuel mixture during takeoff to prevent detonation and overheating. Water injection did not add 1200 horsepower, it allowed the engine to make the horsepower it was already capable of producing, without blowing up...

 

GRF000
70 percent of all German fighter aircraft in WWII had this system! It is no joke! It works!

 

Have first hand experience with water injection and it does work. In the early 80's my '79 Ford Mustang with a 4cyl turbo had it and it worked just fine to prevent detonation. I can see the benefits of this on our bike, but my opinion, not fact, is that it might be overkill for normal use. I still am interested in seeing test results on a naturally aspirated bike.

 

I love it when folks say stuff like that. I also have heard that if Harley sells their own oil, it must be the best for my bike.

 

Yep! I couldn't hold myself.
Even HD knows that the technology will work, but adding a new modification will require A LOT of testing and qualification before sending to production. Even the engine oil may have to be a different grade.
It is not simple as plug-and-play! "It seems.." Nevermind!

 

The more fuel that gets into the cylinder, the more performance you will get. When engine are at operation temperatures, all of the raw fuel doesn't make it into the engine because it evaporates. With naturally aspirated engines, water helps to cool the fuel, allowing more atomized fuel to burn.

Some early 50's police and highway patrol cars had water injected engines.

 

My winter/ need to haul something/ torrential doun pour ride is a dodge 2500 with a 5.9L turbo diesel with a bunch of work under the hood...... a lot of my buddies who are more in to tuning than I am run water/ methanol injection. Usually it is added after some other mods that bring EGT up to a dangerous level. I've never heard of anyone running it if they didn't need to, but I am curious now.
I suppose if you had a few turbos that got cooked on the bike it might be worth it, but for a relatively stock bike I don't know what it'd do on its own

 

I ran one of these systems on a high horsepower turbo car I was drag racing a while back (a 2.0 liter 4 cylinder making around 450 horsepower). I ran pure alcohol, not a mix.
Where I got the best performance was when I was not managing my fuel with a full on standalone system (I used a Haltech EK6). Before I went to the Haltech, I was using a piggyback system, basically 'fooling' the ECU similar to the V & H Fuel Pak's you can plug in to your bike. The less control I had over the timing/advance/fuel, the better it worked, but it was really a band aid for my application, like a fail safe to stop detonation from killing my engine if I really messed up.
Having used it, I think it's overkill on a bike. You need a place to put the pump, and need a storage container of some kind as well. On my race car, the trunk I wasn't using made a great storage space for the tank!
Once I went to a complete custom ECU for everything, I still had it connected, but I no longer tuned with it or used it to control detonation.

Did it work? Oh yeah, it cooled down my intake charge, but if I had to start over, I'd just go with a full blown programmable ECU to get the performance I needed/wanted. On a bike, I'd look at the SERT or a Thundermax, something like those devices....

Just my 2 cents....

 

The turbo P47 Thunderbolt normal hp was 2,000. The engineers went to water injection and gained hp but had freezing problems. They added a 50/50 mix with methanol. That produced 3,800 hp. They used in ten minute bursts to get out of the way or catch up to the enemy. There was only enough mix for two 10 minute bursts.

The mix in its self did not make the full hp gain. It was gained in combination of higher boost and spark advance that the mix provided because it reduced detonation.

Octane does not make horse power. Compression and spark advance do. So by pushing more in by having a cooler charge, boost and advance the hp will follow.

In a bike the entire system will fit in half the space in a saddle bag with one small tube going to the throttle body and a small brass fitting and nozzle to spray into the intake.

One additional increase is that the mix promotes more complete burning of the fuel which increases cylinder pressure. Alcohol does not have the energy that gas has. The methanol in the mix has to due with the chemistry of mix with the water molecules and to decrease the temperature of the intake charge.

It is not snake oil it is chemistry. Some don't understand that engineers developed it and have been refining the system for 70 years. Now with micro processors the injection system accomplishes the same result that fuel injection has done for engines.

$400 for some modest performance gains and significant positive side benefits is a good value. A full stage I cost about $1,200 and still is a 14.7 lean burn EPA approved system. Big whoop.