These days Water-Methanol Injection (WMI) is a vital part of many high horsepower builds on which the cooling effects, increased octane, and added fueling are essential for the motors performance and reliability. Because of this a WMI failure can be catastrophic for a lot of our customers, luckily, if you drive a MazdaSpeed it’s very easy to know if your WMI system is spraying or not. As you can see from the image below when the WMI system on your MazdaSpeed is spraying your boosted air temps (BATs) will experience a sharp drop soon after letting off the throttle. You don’t need to do a full gear run, being under boost for a second or two is enough to create this effect. However this method does not tell you if you have a partial failure in the system or just how much water/methanol is delivered.

Failures of your WMI system can be quite hard to prevent as they are often caused by unforeseen circumstances such as a clogged nozzle, bust line, empty tank, or even a leaking connection. Many of the most popular WMI controller manufacturers (AEM, CoolingMist, AquaMist, Snow Performance) on the market have fail-safe options which will detect failures such as this and warn the driver. Often by the time you have been warned, and responded to the warning, the damage has been done.

Pairing one of these fail-safe enhanced devices with a Stratified Guardian Angel will give you the utmost in safety. Any WMI fail-safe with an output can be very easily configured to trigger your GA. The Guardian Angel reacts to triggers instantly – in less than a tenth of a second. The reaction speed is what is essential here; by the time you have recognized the warning on your dashboard your Guardian Angel will already be venting boost pressure and saving your motor.

Here is an overview of how easily you can connect your Guardian Angel to an AEM WMI fail-safe gauge.