My stage 3 WMI thread

A little history first. If you want to skip to the good part jump to paragraph 4!

So I started experimenting with WMI when I was still APR stage 2. I wasn't very successful with it for several reasons. The first reason was the excessive amount of knock I was experiencing while running base logs before using WMI. Troubleshooting the knock was a long ordeal and eventually was resolved about 4-6 months later after I pin pointed it to a bad transmission mount. Many thanks to the vortex and golfmkv forum members for assisting along the way. :thumbup:

Once the knock was resolved, I still pulled an excessive amount of knock when actually running WMI with the APR 100 file using a 225ml nozzle. In hindsight, I think the 225 nozzle wasn't enough and should have been running a 375ml nozzle instead. I never installed the 375 nozzle so I cannot prove that. It seemed that all the research I did showed that a 225 would be enough so I put the WMI on hold since I was burned out and disappointed. I was also going to upgrade to stage 3 soon so I didn't want to mess with anything since the car was running great and ready for the upgrade.

In January 2011 I upgraded to APR stage 3. I ran many logs and was amazed that the car pulled less timing on the 93 tune than it did on the stage 2 93 tune. I started experimenting with race fuel first logging w/ the 93 tune then the 100 tune. I was running VP MS103 and was not getting good results due to excessive knock at 5th gear WOT. Doing more research I realized that VP MS109 is the minimum grade I need to accommodate the 22-23# of boost to redline. I don't have a local track or tuner that sells it so I placed an order for Sunoco 260 GT+ with my local race gas supplier. Since this fuel has a 3 week delivery time I got anxious and figured I would start experimenting with the WMI on advanced timing.

I mix my own 50/50 and did some logs on APR 93 tune. Everything looked good so last weekend I logged the 100 tune with a buddy, trying to dial-in the start and full spray. Today I ran my first set of WOT pulls on the 100 tune from 3rd gear while letting it bounce of the rev limiter into 4th gear. I am using a start spray at 3 and full at 17. I use the Snow Performance MAP based stage 2 controller with a 375ml nozzle installed on the bung closest to the IAT sensor. The BSH TB is awesome and provides easy access to the nozzle without having to remove the TB to swap nozzles. I am very pleased with the results. Lambda may be a little rich in 3rd gear but I'm keeping it here for now since I still haven't logged going into 5th gear WOT and Lambda at 4th WOT is good. I will be doing that next weekend at MIR running 1/4 mile runs. I might also dyno on Saturday and will be sure to post of the results!

Here's my logs. There are 3 separate files all starting in 3rd gear into 4th till redline. See markers on left columns. My peak boost is 26-27# to redline in 4th. The only thing I can say is it is fast....very fast. Very smooth and honestly...it's scary. My adrenaline was rushing so hard after these runs my hands shook for a good 20 minutes. The runs were done on the same east/west stretches of road with a good 10min cool down between runs with the car idling while I reviewed each log. I didn't change the start and full settings since the logs looked good. After the logs I just cruised around to make sure the misfires and knock were acceptable. I experienced no bogging but did have some cylinders get 6-9 misfires but under no load. Kinda strange but I don't plan on daily'ing it on 100 tune. Comments and questions welcomed but please keep it on topic and constructive! :thumbup: This thread is for informational purposes for other members to learn. I am here to help and feel free to PM me if you don't want to post publicly. I have learned a lot from these forums so this is my way to give back.

Enjoy!! - steelcurtain

Round 1
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc...RTRVQUxzVDFQVGFVVS1PTGc&hl=en&authkey=CKGwzzM

Round 2
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc...EtnWWpZSjRram1rYmUwUUE&hl=en&authkey=CI_e6LAM

Round 3
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc...kxBVnluQjJZQ0lLUlV6dHc&hl=en&authkey=CLixtcYL

Did you upgrade the internals? Are you planning on combining W/M with 100+ octane gas?

PRND[S] said:

Did you upgrade the internals? Are you planning on combining W/M with 100+ octane gas?

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Not yet. I'm waiting for cams so I only have to pull the head once. I don't think you can run W/M with 100 octane but I could be wrong. I haven't gotten that far yet! I don't plan on running W/M much without the internals upgraded.

Ninja edit: I know I'm gamblin with my stock internals with meth!

steelcurtain said:

Not yet. I'm waiting for cams so I only have to pull the head once.

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oooooh, who are you getting cams from?
Do you have some sort of a tune lined up for them too?

steelcurtain said:

I don't think you can run W/M with 100 octane but I could be wrong. I haven't gotten that far yet!

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I dont see why you couldnt run w/m + 100 octane fuel.
As a matter of fact you should adjust the w/m mixture ratio and run higher levels of water to aid in the cooling effect, would be interesting to see some logs IAT on that.

ViRtUaLheretic said:

oooooh, who are you getting cams from?
Do you have some sort of a tune lined up for them too?


I dont see why you couldnt run w/m + 100 octane fuel.
As a matter of fact you should adjust the w/m mixture ratio and run higher levels of water to aid in the cooling effect, would be interesting to see some logs IAT on that.

Click to expand...

I know APR is working with Schrick on cams but nothing announced officially yet. At least I don't think they've officially announced it. No tune lined up yet but I would definitely want a more aggressive tune than the off the shelf 100 file.

I'm taking baby steps with the W/M. I do have 15 gal of race arriving next week though. We'll see. I'm surprised you haven't experimented with the race gas and W/M yet?

Can anyone provide real experience with this that they would like to share?

steelcurtain said:

I know APR is working with Schrick on cams but nothing announced officially yet. At least I don't think they've officially announced it. No tune lined up yet but I would definitely want a more aggressive tune than the off the shelf 100 file.

I'm taking baby steps with the W/M. I do have 15 gal of race arriving next week though. We'll see. I'm surprised you haven't experimented with the race gas and W/M yet?

Can anyone provide real experience with this that they would like to share?

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If your using race fuel you could adjust your start setting up a little higher to save on w/m. Check your spark plugs on the misfires im seeing that these engines start eating plugs every 20k miles or so. If they are fine you should def see an improvement when you run race fuel. What res tank are you using?
Can you try starting your full setting at around 14psi and relog. Your graphs look good especially the timing pull but im looking at your ambient vs intake temps under wot, and comparing them to what i have seen and run on my vehicle. You can start to see from the second link that you provided that, especially in the 2-3 and 2-4 gear runs, that amazingly as boost increases and you run the car harder the temps drop closer to ambient. I have seen sub-ambient on both Ko4 and KO3 cars. Wondering if we cant bring your iats down even further and give you some more power.

steelcurtain said:

Not yet. I'm waiting for cams so I only have to pull the head once. I don't think you can run W/M with 100 octane but I could be wrong. I haven't gotten that far yet! I don't plan on running W/M much without the internals upgraded.

Ninja edit: I know I'm gamblin with my stock internals with meth!

Click to expand...

you can run it.

Also, what plugs are you using and what Gap? that might have something to do with the misfires.

And yes W/M is addictive, im gonna use a multi nozzle setup to run a PTE 5830, im using 4 cm5 (380cc) nozzles (coolingmist).

vegasGTI said:

If your using race fuel you could adjust your start setting up a little higher to save on w/m. Check your spark plugs on the misfires im seeing that these engines start eating plugs every 20k miles or so. If they are fine you should def see an improvement when you run race fuel. What res tank are you using?
Can you try starting your full setting at around 14psi and relog. Your graphs look good especially the timing pull but im looking at your ambient vs intake temps under wot, and comparing them to what i have seen and run on my vehicle. You can start to see from the second link that you provided that, especially in the 2-3 and 2-4 gear runs, that amazingly as boost increases and you run the car harder the temps drop closer to ambient. I have seen sub-ambient on both Ko4 and KO3 cars. Wondering if we cant bring your iats down even further and give you some more power.

Click to expand...

I'm using the stock WW tank. I need to check the gap on my plugs but they should be at .028. I only have 5k on them since the turbo install but I definitely get more misfires running meth. It's hard to make sense of the behavior because I'll see maybe 1 during WOT, several when just dailying the car but I logged a MIL yesterday after rev'ing up to 3900 RPM then going back down to 2700 RPM when entering the on-ramp of the highway. I logged misfires in all cylinders with cylinders 1&3 spiking to 9&10 and 2&4 spiking to 26&47. Two and four caused the MIL. This has occurred 3 times but not as excessive enough to cause a MIL.

Regarding the IATs. I've reached sub-ambient with my k03 in 95*F weather. These logs I posted were done in 74*F weather. I would imagine there is a temp/condition where the cooling abilities are not going to occur as much regardless of flow rate. The fact that I saw better cooling as IATs increased proves that. I am wondering if I can bring that down too. But for every action there is an opposite reaction so I feel I will be creating more misfires, additional delay in boost in low gears. Definitely worth experimenting with though since it is such a science to it. IIRC it was easy to have sub-ambient temps in 90*+F conditions. I will give it a shot though and relog. :thumbsup:

Alex@unitronic said:

Also, what plugs are you using and what Gap? that might have something to do with the misfires.

And yes W/M is addictive, im gonna use a multi nozzle setup to run a PTE 5830, im using 4 cm5 (380cc) nozzles (coolingmist).

Click to expand...

Hey Alex. That's a BT! Welcome to the forum and thank you for chiming in. I use the NGK Platinum's that APR ships with their stage 3 kits. I don't have the part# on my PC. They should be gapped to .028 but I have to check. I realize a colder plug can cause the misfires with higher octane fuels but I live in Virginia so we'll be in the 90+ temps in another month or so; so I probably should stay with a colder plug.

I only have 5K on them and haven't checked the gap since the install. With no meth on the 93 tune I have no issues...just an occasional 1 here or there. When running race gas I've occasionally seen a cylinder barf up 6 or 9.

steelcurtain said:

I'm using the stock WW tank. I need to check the gap on my plugs but they should be at .028. I only have 5k on them since the turbo install but I definitely get more misfires running meth. It's hard to make sense of the behavior because I'll see maybe 1 during WOT, several when just dailying the car but I logged a MIL yesterday after rev'ing up to 3900 RPM then going back down to 2700 RPM when entering the on-ramp of the highway. I logged misfires in all cylinders with cylinders 1&3 spiking to 9&10 and 2&4 spiking to 26&47. Two and four caused the MIL. This has occurred 3 times but not as excessive enough to cause a MIL.

Regarding the IATs. I've reached sub-ambient with my k03 in 95*F weather. These logs I posted were done in 74*F weather. I would imagine there is a temp/condition where the cooling abilities are not going to occur as much regardless of flow rate. The fact that I saw better cooling as IATs increased proves that. I am wondering if I can bring that down too. But for every action there is an opposite reaction so I feel I will be creating more misfires, additional delay in boost in low gears. Definitely worth experimenting with though since it is such a science to it. IIRC it was easy to have sub-ambient temps in 90*+F conditions. I will give it a shot though and relog. :thumbsup:

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MIsfires strange how clean are your valves?

Granted if it creates more misfires its not worth it but curious as you are to see if the conditions that you will see lowering the boost full onset. Also curious as to see when/if the conditions occur and at what temps ect where you will not see sub-ambient just really close to ambient iats. Either situation is awesome of course.

vegasGTI said:

MIsfires strange how clean are your valves?

Granted if it creates more misfires its not worth it but curious as you are to see if the conditions that you will see lowering the boost full onset. Also curious as to see when/if the conditions occur and at what temps ect where you will not see sub-ambient just really close to ambient iats. Either situation is awesome of course.

Click to expand...

I had my mani replaced under warranty at 37K when trying to troubleshoot my timing pull issues. My VW mechanic said they looked good for 37K. He drives a tuned Porsche 997 with a beast of a turbo and lends me tools when needed so I trust him completely.

I'll play around with it an let you know. I love running logs so I'll post them up. The forecast has mid-70s all week so that will be consistent data from the logs in my first post.

**UPDATE**

Changed my full setting to 13 and got great results. Less knock and getting closer to ambient temps than with the full @ 17. I couldn't get as many 4th gear pulls this round due to traffic but my last 4th gear pull hit ambient. Ambient temp/humidity was the same as my original logs with 17 but climbed 3 degrees towards the end.

This round I had major torque steer when I hit peak boost at 26# when I didn't prior with the full at 17!!! I'm thinking about increasing the full spray a little bit more to 11-12 and relog. Rain is in the forecast so probably won't be doing much logging but I got a dyno scheduled for next Saturday. I'll be doing 3 pulls on 93 tune w/out meth and 3 pulls on 100 tune w/ meth. Stay tuned!

Thanks for the recommendations Vegas! It looks like it's paying off. The 5 misfires on the last 4th gear pull were from me having to abruptly let off the throttle. People on the road must have been thinking I'm a lunatic!

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc...UZjZEpoTE95ZnVnSVgyb1E&hl=en&authkey=COC2lNwI

So a little update today. I've been working on getting the misfires down to an acceptable level that would allow me to run the WMI daily using the 100 tune. And today I finally achieved it!

Running stock (well used to be stock) BOSCH copper plugs gapped to .032 with a start spray of 4 and full spray of 10 produces very little misfires at random loads typically seen with daily driving. I can still open it up in low gears without going WOT and no misfires.

Having a .028 gap on the copper plugs was not good. I had more misfires than having the platinum NGK AT .028. I also noticed that a full spray setting of 10 or lower generated more misfires too.

Many thanks to Bob G for answering my PMs and making recommendations. this car is now a daily beast and worthy of getting rods installed!

So you're running APR Stage 3 and 100OCT File on a Stock Block?