S4 Racing

First let me say I will post a detailed account of the steps that we took for the CIS on the other thread. Both Dwight and I have been extremely busy and just finding the time to work on the car has been hard enough.
Here is the single largest improvement made to the car by far "AEM Water Injection" !!! I met Kirk Miller (VP Sales and Marketing AEM) through Ivan Stewart a few weeks ago at Pikes Peak. Great guy and even turns out, even though he lives in CA, we know a lot of the same people. It's such a small world. Standing on the mountain at 4am during Friday's practice session we began talking about CIS, which Kirk has had a lot of experience and seems very knowledgeable. He asked if I had ever considered water injection. I told him that I had and was just waiting until we could get a little further in the development of the car. He proceeded to discuss the benefits and the quality difference in the AEM product.
I got home, picked the car up from Dwight and drove it for the first time in 3 or 4 weeks. The progress that Dwight has made is very noticeable. Instead of feeling weak around 4,000 and having slight detonation at 13 to 14lbs, now the car pulls hard to around 5800 and has a lot more torque through the entire RPM range. Still lean on the very top and just not 100% right yet, but a lot closer than when we started. Dwight still has a few more things that he wants to do.
I had a Hill Climb coming up last weekend and I was planning on taking the #06 car, but we are fixing the trans and changing the exhaust manifolds and it just wasn't going to be done in time. So I thought the #40 may be up to the task, if we did a few things to prep it. At this point I thought why not give Kirk a call and give the Water Injection thing a try. He over nighted the pro kit to me and we installed it last Friday, before I left for Cumberland, MD. The only thing I can say is, amazing ! At 20lbs on 93 octane the car pulls so much harder and smoother, with 0 sign of detonation. I was beginning to think this type of power just wasn't possible with CIS. For the first time I actually had to watch the tach so I didn't over rev the motor. It pulls all the way to 6500 with no sign of going lean or letting up. We have not hooked the A/F meter up ye,t but I will be doing that this week. I will give you all the details when I have them but from a drivability stand point, you just know that the motor is much happier. Trust me, it is not a modification that you have to question the results. Even my wife riding back to the hotel this weekend, mentioned how much different the car was. I urge everyone that has CIS to consider it. For the cost I have not seen anything yet that even comes close to the performance gain, that I have seen. I realize that maybe this car saw more of a gain, then maybe a standalone car would, because of the fuel issue that we are trying to overcome, but you would think that a noticeable improvement could be made to any car. I am going to try it on the World Challenge and Grand Am 2.7 cars. I really can't see a downside and I'm telling you the upside on this car was really impressive. One other cool advantage is that you can use the same system to spray the outside of the intercooler. We will be doing this on all of our installs. We use spray bars on the #06 car now and it drops the intake air temp by over 20 degrees when it's on. If you have any questions just ask. The install took about 4 hours and I am sure the next one will be less. Setup was simple and it worked perfect right out of the box. Here is the link to the product http://www.aempower.com/ViewCategory.aspx?CategoryID=120. If any of you are interested, I can ask Kirk if he can do anything for us on a group buy. In my opinion next to standalone, this has to be the best $ per horsepower improvement that can be made to these cars. I am calling Chad Block now from CBRD to setup some dyno time for this car and the #06 car. I will let you know what the dyno says. I'm guessing it has to be as much as 30 whp and I really think that I am being conservative.