We had a bunch of Popular Science and Mechanics Illustrated from the 40s-60s, remembered those advertisements well. In the early 60s discovered JC Whitney catalogues, many of their products made the same claims.
I love that reasoning. I remember back when I got my first car, a bunch of my (teenage male) friends were going crazy over a product that had a name something like Intake Tornado. Basically it was a little plug that went in the intake. Had vanes on it to introduce âswirlâ to the air so that it would enter the throttle body with less turbulence and therefore increase power.
I wasnât very popular when I pointed out that it was bunk - that if a 5 cent piece of plastic could really get you 10-50hp, then all the car makers would be using it to up horsepower numbers and sell more cars. Plus thereâs that whole 90 degree elbow at the throttle body thatâs gonna disrupt any swirly air youâve got going on. They went on and on about how the manufacturers were intentionally not using them so that they could keep us from using the âfull potentialâ of our engines.
Oy. And these people vote. 
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I remember seeing ads for the tornado/turbine/intake swirlarator. It kind of just eventually disappeared from the market didnât it? I havenât searched for it, maybe they still sell them.
Iâve never heard of the âaqua tuneâ though and Iâm not entirely sure how itâs supposed to work. It appears it injects a little water into the engineâŠ? Iâm trying to understand the theory. I guess it reduces the temp of the air before combustion, basically?
@shadowfax. Actually, the real reason these gadgets to improve mileage and performance didnât succeed was the wonderful additives that were put in different brands of gasoline back in the 1950s. We had Shell gasoline with TCP and Super Shell with Platformate. Standard oil featured gasoline that contained M2PG. We had DX gasoline with Boron. Phillips 66 gasoline was advertised as Flyte fuel which made your car perform like an airplane. You hoped your car wouldnât go into a stall.
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I always leave my engines bone stock. The manufacturer designed them that way for a reason, is my thinking.
All these folks that are looking to squeeze âuntapped powerâ from their engines need to search for that post a while back from the Ford Super Duty guy with a blown engine. He put one of those programmer/chip things on his new diesel truck, and the engine blew shortly afterwards. Maybe the chip didnât cause it⊠but he said the Ford dealer sure zeroed in on that when denying the warranty repair. Seems like it was $10-20k or something on him.
No thanks. 
It would be one thing if they simply did nothing but some of them actually degrade performance-
Yeah, water injection is a real thing. Fighter planes used to use it back in the piston-prop days. It cools the intake charge which allows a larger amount of fuel/air mix into the cylinder, absorbs heat from combustion (so it doesnât get absorbed by the cylinder walls), etc. You can even use it with jets to the same effect, tthough I donât think itâs used in practice on airplanes, at least not routinely.
So, it works in theory as a heat absorption medium, although if the ECU isnât set up to handle water injection itâll cause more problems than it solves. If I remember right it was used by some actual factory cars back in the 60âs. And BMW uses it in the M4 GTS.
The water-junk theyâre talking about in here supposedly cracks water into its components - hydrogen and oxygen, and then burns them in the engine to make power which recombines the components into water again. Even if the âhydrogen generatorâ really is cracking the water rather than just turning it into steam, that cracking takes a lot of energy - more than you get from re-combining it.
After all, if you could get more energy by burning the hydrogen than it takes to crack the hydrogen from water, and the byproduct of combustion is water, then all youâd have to do is route the exhaust pipe into the intake and youâd have a perpetual motion machine. Which, of course, is impossible.
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So the aquatune deal (assuming it doesnât seperate the H from the O) could give the same benefit that a cold air intake is supposed to give. Except a cold air intake generally doesnât provide colder air. I suppose you might feel a performance difference. Seems like the device would have to be pretty precisely calibrated though, or youâre in for trouble.
The trouble is that modern engines which are not in the BMW M4GTS have ECUs that are set up assuming the only thing youâre stuffing into the throttlebody is a fuel/air mix. They have no way of knowing that youâre putting water in there, and so they wonât make adjustments to compensate for the altered mix.
Oh, if you used hydrogen peroxide would you get twice the O?
@ledhed75. I agree with keeping a car stock. When I repaired my Ford Maverick, I always used genuine Ford duct tape.
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Also, the turbines compressing the air intake cause heating so the water helps combat that.
This idea of introducing liquid or even vaporized water to a naturally aspirated gasoline engine is completely ridiculous. Even electrolyzing the water to generate hydrogen gas is a pig in a poke. We used to do that to make hydrogen bombs as kids using our toy train transformers. As you said, it takes more energy than it gives back. But another issue is one of volume. If one of these geniuses ever considered the volume of air processed by an engine every minute compared to the volume of hydrogen being produced by this miniature electrolysis machine, it would be readily obvious that such a minuscule amount of hydrogen per cylinder volume could have NO appreciable effectâŠ
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Iâm pretty sure the Aquatune nonsense involves splitting water and using the hydrogen. Itâs not water injection to limit detonation. So itâs BS.
The only aqua tune Iâm interested in is a waterproof speaker.
Check https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1099009_bmw-water-injection-can-boost-power-and-cut-fuel-consumption . Aquatune also dissociates water using electrolysis, which may potentially help some more although I would have thought that @ about 50% efficiency, they are using much more energy to create the H2 than what they are getting back in terms if improved engine efficiency.
I have made and installed water injection systems on a couple of vehicles and both responded very well. The water vapour removed carbon in the combustion chambers of one and prevented a major running-on problem it had had for years.
Lower octane fuel typically contains more energy than higher octane. It follows, that if water injection enables the use of lower octane fuel you are going to get better mileage.
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Hi Geoff:
Welcome to this site. Iâm sure youâll find lots of very interesting past discussions on water injection.
I am curious though. Aquatune seeks dealers to help sell their products. Would the reason for your post be because youâre a dealer for them?
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And congratulations , you just got Flagged as Spam.
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This was flagged but since it seems that @Geoff-30 has some experience in the area I am with @JoeMario.
I think Geoff-30 was just responding to the thread, not hawking Aquatune. His link was to the Greencar article about BMW using liquid water injection, not the electrolysis junk vendors.
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Agreed with texases. Aquatune even says itsâ about splitting water and using hydrogen.
To add ridiculousness to it all, read some of their testimonials. One person said they got 16 MPG with their Range Rover. After installing Aquatune they claim to get 41 MPG.
One guy (Ford Escape) EPA rated 17 in city driving was getting 11 before Aquatune. Now heâs getting 19; a 72% increase in mileage according to this person. So with AT heâs back at near normal.
Seriously, how naive does one have to be to buy into this bunk.
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