It all started one day when I was getting a ride in Keith Zellmer's old Eliminator Daytona lake boat. To clarify, this was a "lake boat" that could do the 1/4 mile in 11 seconds. He had this nifty little switch that shut off the water to his headers when he wanted to race someone. Now, I'd seen some of the headaches that my Jetboat buddies had been going through getting their cooling systems working properly. Too much pressure and they'd end up with water in the oil. Too little, blue headers. Too early? Hydro locked and wasted engine. I started thinking, if I could hook that switch of Keith's to something that would read the RPM of the engine.. Well, I might just have something there..

I decided to see if I could do just that..

First step was to design the electronics to measure RPM and control the valve. In order to do this we had to build an engine test stand to run the lab tests on.

The Lab testing is finished up. Everything seems to work great. Next phase is initial lake testing..

Once the valve works in the lab, its time to try it in the "real world". This means setting up everything in a boat with water injected headers, going out to a lake and see if we can make it all work.

Once again, a simple job took way longer than expected..

The trip turned out to be not quite the "Turn the key and go" kind of deal. I had to put togather the test boat. The poor thing was a complete mess. Here is a link to the story : The lake tests.

Seeing that the boat was now running, the familly and myself decided to take it to northern Iowa to go jetting on the Mississippi river. (From California) There was a meeting of some of the local jetters out there and we wanted to go meet up with them. Seeing that the prototype valve was in the boat at the time, this ended up supplying quite a bit of testing for it.

The lake tests are now finished up. Ready for the next phase. Prototype production run and Beta testing.

Fred (nelsonf) Nelson 1973 18' Blazer Jet 455 Olds Berkeley JG-A Jet drive. Modesto, California

Bruce (RatSquirt) Von Drashek 18' Hondo 454 BBC Chevy Jacuzzi WJ Jet drive. Prior Lake, Minnesota

Pat (SLOTRACER) Oneill 1975 18' Tahiti 454 BBC Chevy Berkeley JG-A Jet drive. Stockton, California

The Beta Test Team Boys were great! These guys risked blue headers, hydro locked engines and who knows what else to test valves. As the testing went on, I growled, snapped and otherwise pushed them to run their boats every weekend that they could. "I want results, and I want them NOW!" Fred had the longest path, his boat was all over the garage when the testing begin. Putting the entire boat puzzle back together and then getting it on the water first, was an amazing feat. WTG Fred!

During Beta, most of the other bits were finished up. Things like brochures and manuals..

The user manual has been written. waterInjectionValveManual.pdf

A Sales Brochure has been written. valveBrochure.pdf

Beta is wrapping up now. All of the issues brought up by the beta testing have either been corrected or are close to being corrected. Next step is to have a product launch and build the initial production run.

The product was launched at Tower Park II. (This was a hot rod boat meet in the California Delta)

Well, so much for initial development. Its a shipping product now!

I'd like to thank everyone who helped to complete this project. Some donated engine parts, some donated time to fabricate stuff, some donated engineering time. There was endless help and information from the boards. As the song goes, "With a little help from my friends.." But I find, without a lot of help from my friends, I'd just get nowhere.

Thanks Millions!

-jim lee