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Welcome to the Nitrous Oxide Page!
Click ANY image for Larger picture
Yes, I realize this is one HUGE purge
- It usually scares away the rice burners - LOL.
To see the full video file click
HERE ("save link as"...
works best).
OK - so why is the Purge so HUGE????
Well, it's like this >>>> My good friend JC helped me install the kit (and the
gauges and the headers for that matter). Anyway ..... a few months later I
complained to him because I felt the purge was TOO small and couldn't be seen.
He told me he'd hook me up with a new purge setup at the next Modular Shootout.
That video was the first Purge ..... Yeah, I'd say he went overboard ....... Hahaha we certainly have fun with our cars.
Anyway .... my kit consists of the
following:
Nitrous Oxide Systems (NOS) 5171
Bottle Warmer and Blanket
Remote Bottle Opener
WOT Activation Switch
RPM Window Switch
Dual Purge
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Here are 2 shots of the trunk - The bottle is
mounted onto a Polished Stainless Sheet I designed. The sheet is bolted to
the floor and the bottle is bolted to the sheet. The sheet is the exact
size of the trunk floor. It creates a perfect mirror effect >>>


Nitrous Oxide 101
First of all, please do not refer to Nitrous Oxide
as NOS. Nitrous Oxide is a chemical made up of 2 parts Nitrogen and 1 part
Oxygen. NOS stands for a Company called Nitrous Oxide Systems. If
you are using their products (as I am) then feel to call it NOS ... :)
Think of Nitrous Oxide as OXYGEN. You know when you
add oxygen to a fire by fanning it or blowing on it, it burns better right? Well
this is the same exact thing. Except you can not use PURE oxygen because it is
far too unstable. SO, Nitrous Oxide has a higher percentage of oxygen than the
AIR we breathe does, so by adding Nitrous Oxide to the air-intake system, we are
increasing the oxygen supply - hence, increasing the "Fire" (explosion) that is
created, thus increasing HP. Pretty simple huh?
Here is some SUPER COOL notes I picked up on
Nitrous on the internet. This is not written by me but it IS accurate
.....
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Chemical Properties
A nitrous oxide molecule is made up of 2 atoms of nitrogen and 1 atom of oxygen.
By weight it is 36% oxygen (air is only 23.6% oxygen). At 70° F it takes 760 psi
of vapor pressure to hold nitrous in liquid form. The critical temperature is
97.7° F; at this temp the vapor pressure can no longer hold the nitrous in
liquid form. At this point the nitrous turns gaseous and will be at 1069 psi. As
temperature rises further, so will pressure, but it will remain in gaseous form.
If you intend to siphon liquid nitrous, it is important to keep the temperature
below 97.7°. When liquid nitrous is released, it will go from 760 psi to 14.7
psi (normal atmospheric pressure). It will then begin to boil and rapidly
expand; the pressure drop will cause the temperature to decrease. Nitrous boils
at 129.1° below zero.
Combustion
Nitrous oxide does not burn, it is an oxidizer. It provides more oxygen, so more
fuel can be burned, and the result is more power. The atoms in a nitrous oxide
molecule are bonded together. The oxygen is not free, but fortunately the bond
breaks down as temperature rises. At 565° F, the bond is broken and the oxygen
is then free. Combustion temperatures are much more than 565°, so it's not a
problem. By adding nitrous oxide to an engine, the total amount of oxygen is
increased and other gasses that do not support combustion (mostly nitrogen) are
decreased. This speeds the burn rate and requires less timing advance for peak
output. It is hard from many people to grasp gaining power with less timing, but
it's a fact. Peak cylinder pressure must occur at approximately 20°ATDC to make
peak power. If you speed the burn rate, peak cylinder pressure will occur too
soon. It is easy to run too much ignition advance with nitrous, but too much
will not only hurt power, it can quickly bring a nitrous engine into detonation
and destroy it.
Detonation
Nitrous will increase the chance of detonation. To keep the engine out of
detonation, you must control the extra heat that nitrous makes. The easiest way
to do this is to add more fuel. All nitrous systems come with rich jetting to
give you a safe starting point. The extra fuel takes away heat and raises the
detonation limit. Another way of controlling heat is with water injection. A
well set up water injection system will allow you to run the chemically correct
nitrous to fuel ratio, so the system will be more fuel-efficient. If you don't
try to over do it, and keep the hp levels within reason, running slightly richer
should be all you'll need to control detonation. Water injection and running
richer will both reduce the power output, but raising the detonation limit will
allow more nitrous to be used to get more power.
Nitrous-to-fuel Ratios
The chemically correct nitrous to gasoline ratio is 9.649:1, but that is too
lean to run safely. The chemically correct air to gasoline ratio is 14.7:1, but
at wide open throttle, we cannot run that lean without going lean. The problem
is that every bit of oxygen does not find and mix with every bit of gasoline.
Same goes for nitrous, you need a richer mixture to better the chances of the
nitrous mixing with fuel. If a nitrous engine runs lean, it can destroy the
engine in a matter of seconds. There must be enough fuel for the nitrous to
react with, if there isn't, temperatures rise rapidly. The oxygen that couldn't
react with fuel will oxidize any parts that get hot enough, and the next thing
in line to burn is aluminum, so don't run lean.
Plate Systems
The most common systems are the spray bar type. A plate gets sandwiched between
the carb and manifold. There are two spray bars in each plate, the upper one is
nitrous oxide and the lower one is fuel. The nitrous sprays over the fuel to
give a better nitrous fuel mixture. Plates are easy to install and provide good
performance, but they are not the best. The nitrous must travel through the
entire intake manifold. The longer it takes to get to the cylinders, the more it
expands. The more room that nitrous occupies, the less of the normally aspirated
mixture the engine will get. So the engine will make more power if the point of
injection is as close to the cylinders as possible. Another problem with spray
bars is when using larger kits; the motor will hesitate slightly when the
nitrous is activated. When the nitrous first travels down the spray bar, it hits
the dead end of the bar and sends a pulse backwards, which impedes flow. Once
the system is running there are no problems, but that slight hesitation could
cause tire spin. This reversion is mostly a problem on larger kits, around 300
hp or so.
Nozzle Systems
Also known as foggers (started by NOS Systems), the nozzle nitrous systems can
produce much more power without any reversion problems. With this type of
system, you must drill and tap each intake runner near the cylinder head and run
at least 1 nozzle for each cylinder (many multiple stage systems will run more
than 1 nozzle per cylinder). There is much more plumbing in a nozzle system, but
they give better mixture (or fog), because the nitrous and fuel mix before they
are injected. The high pressure nitrous breaks the fuel into a very fine mist.
The point of injection can be very close to the cylinder for minimal expansion.
In many cases, depending on how the nozzles are situated and aimed, the normally
aspirated airflow will increase. So there are many advantages to the nozzle
systems.
Cooling Effects
Cooler intake air is denser and contain more oxygen atoms per cubic foot. So
cooler air will allow more fuel to be burned and intern make more power. A 10
degree drop in temperature can add 1 to 1.5% power to an engine. Nitrous oxide
boils at -129°F and it will begin to boil as soon as it is injected. This can
cause a 80° or so drop in manifold air temperature. Now if we are dealing with
say a 400 hp engine, we can see well over 30 hp gained from the cooling effect
alone. This cooling effect also helps the engine deal with detonation.
Average Power
If you were to build a 550 hp 350 Chevy, it would have to rev to 7000+ rpm to
make that kind of power and only make power in a narrow rpm range. A nitrous
injected 350 Chevy making 550 hp would make that power at a much lower rpm and
higher average horsepower. So the nitrous engine will out perform the normally
aspirated engine by a healthy margin. The reason is that nitrous flow remains
constant no matter what rpm the engine is at. At lower speeds there is more time
for the nitrous to fill the cylinders, so you get more nitrous in the cylinders
per power stroke at lower rpm. This will boost power more at low rpm (before the
engine is in it's power band). As rpm increases, and gets in the power band of
the engine, you will get less nitrous per power stroke, but the engine will
start making more normally aspirated power. This really flattens out the torque
curve and widens the power band.
So Why Not Pure Oxygen?
Air has only 23.6% oxygen by weight, the rest is made up largely of nitrogen.
That nitrogen does not aid in combustion at all, but it does absorb and carry
heat away. When you add nitrous, it has 36% oxygen with the rest being nitrogen.
So the more nitrous oxide you add, the less percentage of nitrogen is available
to absorb heat. That is why nitrous increases engine heat very rapidly. If we
were to add pure oxygen (which has been tried), the percentage of nitrogen would
fall much faster as more oxygen was added. We would not be able to add much
oxygen before heat was a problem to control. Also compressed oxygen is in a
gaseous form, so adding oxygen takes up more room and reduces normally aspirated
power, and the amount of nitrogen from it. By injecting liquid nitrous, the
normally aspirated power only drops slightly and it is adding oxygen and
nitrogen. To put it simply, with nitrous oxide, we can get more oxygen atoms in
the engine and have a lot more nitrogen as well. Nitrous can make much more
power before heat is uncontrollable.
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My system is a "Dry" system. This means that
the Nitrous Oxide is injected into the Air supply BEFORE the Intake. The
computer is told to add more fuel through a SCT (Superchip Technology) custom
burned multi-programmed chip. The software tells the computer to add a
certain percentage more fuel, ONLY when under wide open throttle and ONLY during
certain RPMs according to my RPM activated window switch.
I went with the SCT 4-program chip. In my
opinion with this technology, you shouldn't go with anything else. I got
it tuned by the Steeda.ca.
crew. Whether you require a Naturally Aspirated tune or a tune for a power
adder, they can hook you up for sure!
Here are the 2 Dyno graphs. N/A and with a 75
shot (which is quite small). If you notice, we still have to sort out the
Air/Fuel. There is a rich dip between 4000 and 5000 rpm, and that is
causing the Torque number to start dropping at 4000 rpm and it really should NOT
till after 5000 rpm. I hope to get that corrected soon.

You can see in this picture, the routing of the
nitrous lines - the dual purge lines as well as the purge jets at the top.
Also, you will see where I injected the nitrous jet in the BBK inlet tube AFTER
the Maf. Click for larger view.

I highly recommend the following safety items are
installed along with your kit.
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Colder plugs - 6 rating (I use NGK Tr-6)
Gap the plugs at .35 (reduces hp in N/A mode but will save your engine)
Window Switch (allows to fire between certain RPM's only) CRITICAL!!!
WOT activation switch - allows the Nitrous to inject ONLY under Wide Open
Throttle
Bottle Warmer - if you live in cooler climates - increases bottle pressure
***********
Please e-mail me with any other
specific questions
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