Water-Methanol Kit for the 3.5L EcoBoost F-150

If you’ve been following our YouTube channel you know that we did a twin-turbo swap and a bunch of cooling upgrades on our F-150 with a 3.5L EcoBoost engine. It’s now making over 450 wheel horsepower. It runs great, we are loving it, but as usual, enough is never enough. So we did a mod that for under $1000 will add 30 to 50 horsepower and it’s CARB-legal so you can run it in all 50 states. We’re about to get into… some meth. Not the kind that ruins your life, water-methanol injection! As usual, purchase your mods at Motoroso.com where you can browse over a million top name brand products sold by trusted vendors at great prices. We’re here to help you on live chat or you can call us toll-free at 833.MOTOROSO that’s 833.668.6767. Let’s go! 

VIDEO: WATER-METH KIT FOR THE F-150 3.5L ECOBOOST

Why Water-Methanol?

Now let’s start with why you would even want a water-methanol injection system. In all engines, having cool air going into the intake is absolutely critical, especially in boosted applications like turbos and superchargers. That’s because the cooler the air is, the denser it is and the more oxygen it contains, and that’s how you get the better combustion and more power. That’s why cold air intakes are really popular, a couple of hundred bucks and you get a little bit of power gain and better throttle response. It’s also why your turbo pushes its compressed air out and through an intercooler before it goes back up into the air intake because you want that air to be as dense as possible so it can carry the most boost pressure.

How Does Water-Methanol Work?

A water-methanol injection kit injects a vaporized mixture of distilled water and M1 Methanol directly into the air intake. These kits usually work by injecting it right before the throttle body, but sometimes you can get kits that have a direct port injection plate that perform a little bit better. This chills the air instantly, essentially increasing the oxygen content by making the air denser, carrying more boost, and that means more power. 30 to 50 horsepower more! It also effectively raises the octane level of the fuel. It decreases the chance of detonation because it has slowed the combustion rate, and here’s what you need to know about this kit specifically.  

This kit is made for the 3.5L EcoBoost F-150 and it’ll set you back around $750. For 50 bolt-on horsepower which is CARB-legal and available to use in all 50 states, and under $1,000, I don’t know where else you’re going to see that kind of value. This kit includes everything that you’re going to need. It’s got all the fittings, the pump, the nozzle, the controller, and a regular-sized tank which of course you’ll fill with a 50/50 blend of M1 Methanol and distilled water. You’re going to use about a gallon of water-methanol mixture per 20 gallons of gasoline that you go through depending on your tune and your horsepower numbers.

Tank Sizes

This kit comes with a one-gallon tank, which, depending on how much you’re driving, you’re gonna fill up about every 20 gallons of fuel that you’re using. For me, that’s probably 5-6 days, for some people it might be a week or more. If you’re driving a lot, you might find that this tank is too small, and luckily Snow Performance sells upgraded tank kits. You can go to a 2.5-gallon tank or you can opt for the mac-daddy guitar case 10-gallon tank which is what we’ve chosen. This mounts directly in the bed of the truck over the wheel well, looks slick, comes with the extra-long stainless steel braided lines, and costs around $200. 

The estimated time to install this kit is 4-6 hours so it’s not a tiny installation but it’s also not so complicated that you can’t do it on your own with a little bit of patience and a good set of instructions. We’re going to be making a how-to installation guide article and video and look for that and we hope you find that helpful.

Where to Buy M-1 Methanol

If you get one of these systems, you’re going to need M1 methanol, and you’re going to want to talk to your local specialty fuel dealers like VP Racing Fuels or Sunoco. They’re going to sell 5 gallons or 55-gallon drums of M1 methanol and this is very affordable. $35 to $40 will buy you 5 gallons which you blend with distilled water and then put into your methanol system. You can get yourself a little jug that you can mix it up and pour it in and it’s pretty straightforward and inexpensive. If you don’t want to do any of that but you still want to run this, Snow Performance does sell something called Boost Juice which is 51% methanol and 49% water. It comes in a jug that’ll set you back about $10 to $15 per gallon, you just dump it straight in and you’re good to go. It is the easiest way but definitely about three times as expensive as blending your own. Never let your tank run dry. 

Don’t Run Dry

You want to make sure you always have water-methanol on hand because once your car is tuned to run it, you don’t want to run it without any going in there. That’ll be bad.  If you get into a pinch and you’ve run out of fluid, believe it or not, you can actually get 70% water 30% methanol windshield wiper fluid at your local automotive parts store and you can dump that straight in here and it will run. It won’t be as good and you won’t get as much power, but you can run that until you get back to your 50/50 blend. 

So there you have it, 50 horsepower and 50 state legal for under $1,000. Even with the 10-gallon tank upgrade, it is a relatively easy installation that you can do yourself. If you want to buy this check us out at Motoroso.com you can reach us there on live chat or you can call us toll-free at 833.MOTOROSO. Thanks for reading.