The other thing I read about is the concept of cooling the fuel rail, what kind of benefits could that present if any?
I've been wondering about this and have a sneaking suspicion that cooling the fuel rail could be beneficial and it may not require any modifications other than wrapping it and/or contacting it (along with the injector lines) with some kind of insulating / cooling jacket.
Just looking at the placement of a port-injection fuel rail (as well as the main fuel rail and the six injector fuel lines) I would guesstimate that fuel temperature must be pretty close to the under the hood temps - at least 135F in the summer based on my idling warm IATs (and definitely higher in Arizona, right Doubles?). So if it's 90F outside - your gas tank temp - that's a Tdelta 45F increase, which at the very least could be reduced with thermal insulation. Tdelta will be even bigger on cooler days.
Keep in mind this would be most beneficial for a port-injection setup as the metal injectors themselves being plugged into the cylinder head are probably very close in temperature of the cylinder head. So the hot cylinder head will heat any pre-chilled fuel entering the injector. Then again, high enough fuel flow rates at WOT should have an overall cooling effect in the injectors, with cooler fuel having a bigger effect there.
So what's the benefit of cooling the fuel? (Keep in mind this is all a wild-ass guess and I didn't google any other platforms to try to sound really smart and authoritative, just my 2 cents...)
1. If we can cool the fuel spray entering the cylinder by at least 25*F then I think this should have a similar effect on reducing the overall pre-ignition charge temps, and hence timing drops, as would reducing the IAT by at least 25*F. So, overall, we may be able to increase timing.
2. I suspect keeping the fuel cooler in the injectors may give a tighter and more controlled spray - (Another WAG: because the surface tension of fluids is generally higher the colder the fluid, it would be harder to break up a megadrop of fuel into a mist of microdroplets, etc. Maybe this is a negative for cooling the fuel from an injector's perspective?) But I really have no data. Remember, I did not google.
Overall maybe all we need is a cooling / insulation jacket around a metal air intake manifold and integrated port-injection file line? Fill the cooling jacket with water, air, refrigerant, whatever.
...just wondering.