Nitrous 101 Options

[SlowCelica94]

I read this off a DSM forum and thought I'd share it with you guys. It's some great info.


Nitrous. It's a thing many wonder about. It's a subject with endless rumors, and endless fears of engine damage. Everyone wants it, but only seem need it or have it for their own reasons. Nitrous is your average gas, in a sense. It's combined of two parts nitrogen, and one part oxygen, hint the name Nitrous Oxide, or n2o. Nitrous can sit comfortably at room temperature in liquid form, such as it is when compressed inside a tank. But, when this gas is released, it rapidly changes from a liquid back to a gas, and can reach extremely low temperatures. Nitrous does not act as much of anything inside of your engine, and is only temperarely present to a point. Nitrous is not flammable, but the oxygen present in the mixture is, allowing for the easier combustion within the engine. Non combusted gases are expelled throw the exhaust valves after it's been used. Nitrous works by cooling air. When the nitrous is atomized, it can reach tose extremely low level temperatures, and cool the intake air greatly. Having this happen allows for a larger volume of air to enter the engine, allowing a greater gain in horse power and torque through the great amount of material to combust in a single combustion. As most of you should know, when something is chilled, it condenses and the atoms come closer together. When something is heated, the atoms space out, taking up more air, and generally expand all around. This chilling from the nitrous compacts the air greater together. This is how nitrous works.

The valence electrons in the oxygen molecule have to share with the valence electrons of the two nitrogen molecules so they all appear to have a full octet. The covalent bond makes nitrous oxide a super stable bond that can only be broken down by high heat (inside a cylinder). After this heat breaks apart the oxygen and nitrogen molecules, the oxygen is burnt, and the nitrogen is then categorized as an exhaust gas. If you injected pure oxygen, you should probably have a will written out, as it's going to result in one big exsplosion. Remember, fire is fueled by oxygen. Take out the oxygen, the fire starves and dies. So, the nitrogen acts as a buffer, both cooling the air with its transformation from a liquid back to a gas, and lessening the overall impact of the added oxygen to the air/fuel ratio already present inside the engine. Nitrous breaks apart at 565º F.

In most cases, a dry or wet kit is used to allow the injection of nitrous into the engine. Special nozzles are tapped into the intake piping before the throttle body, and properly plumbed with injection units, computers, lines, etc. These nozzles allow the injection of nitrous into the piping in two forms. One way, called a "dry" way, induces nitrous by itself, without any additional components.The use of a "wet" injection, allows the nitrous to be injected with a mixture of both nitrous oxide, and additional fuel. Both of these nozzles will require their own independent lines. So, if you're looking at a kit, and it has two steel braided lines leading to the nozzle tapped into the intake, you can easily distinguish that this is a wet kit, because it requires both the injection of fuel and nitrous, thus it has two lines, as the materials are not mixed until they are released through the nozzle as a mixture. Also, a direct port setup may be found. This is commonly installed by placing both nitrous and fuel injectors directly into the tubing of the intake manifold. Each nozzle set is placed into the tubular piping attach to the actual engine itself allowing direct injection of nitrous into each cylinder, rather than through the intake piping.

Here are example diagrams of both wet and dry injenction processes. Credit has been given at the bottom of the page to these pictures authors. Note the fact that the dry nozzle only has one connection, while the wet nozzle has two connections.

Dry Kit Picture http://colorealm.crosswinds.net/Pictures/Dry.jpg
Wet Kit Picture http://colorealm.crosswinds.net/Pictures/Wet.gif

There are many rumors that nitrous can cause engine damage. I was once told that using nitrous is like getting drunk. If you drink responsibly, don't drive while drunk, and don't commite any crimes while drunk, you'll be ok. The same is applied while using nitrous. If you're not using it at extremely low RPMs, with proper injection, and with an incorrect installment, damage could occur. The average nitrous shot is found from 55 up to 80. Now, for the larger motors, such as V8's, a starting shot of around 150 is normally found, and they work up over 250 shots. After the 80 mark on a 4 cylinder, you must begin to replace internal parts within the engine with better parts to compensate for the pressure. The smallest shot that I know of at the moment is created by an actual intake filter made by ZEX. This filter attaches in the same place as your average intake filter. It acts as a filter, having the same design and purpose, and is also washable. The only exception is the fact that there is a low spraying nozzle in the center area of this filter which a line protruding out the top area, allowing nitrous injection while the air is actually being taken in from the atmosphere and sent towards the intake manifold.

Nitrous installment is one of the leading problems with most people and having damaged internals, or other engine area related accidents. The nozzle for a dry or wet injection system should be placed around 6 inches from the throttle body on your car. Having this distance is crucial to the performance of the nitrous. As I stated earlier, nitrous is injected in the form of a liquid, and rapidly changes back into a gas, thus is most atomize. Six inches is ideally what most people prefer for proper atomization of the mixture, and allows it to take effect. Injecting the nitrous to closely to the throttle body can result in poorly atomized, or hardly atomized, nitrous mixtures. This mixture will be induced into the cylinder causing poor combustion. Pooling is also an issue. If you misplace the nozzle, and the nitrous begins to pool in one place, and is sucked in all at once, it can effect combustion even more greatly towards the point of detonation or misfires. Having a fuel pressure which falls to low can also add towards harmful fuel/air ratios, by having far more air than fuel present for combustion.

Nitrous oxide kits come with several parts, and can be installed in any way you seem fit. The common kit comes with several lengths of common -6 AN sized stainless steel lines, and have screw-on attachble ends. Most kits also come with their own ECU to allow injection at the press of a button, arming switches, and some kits such as the NX and ZEX brands have built-in fuel pressure sensors to stop nitrous injection incase fuel pressure falls to low. There are 3 common bottle sizes: 10, 12, and 15 pound bottles.Motorcycles can even come with bottles small enough to hold only ounces instead of pounds, and are easily hidden within the body parts or under the seats. Nitrous, is measured in a sense of pounds rather than gallons. This is because of the fact that nitrous is naturally a gas, and is only a liquid while in its compressed state. Liquid is measured in gallons, gas is measured by volume in pounds. The injection nozzles are each replicated in appearance between each brand, and are normally just found to be in different colors. Again, a wet kit utilizies to lines for gas and nitrous, while a dry kit would only have the use of a single line. Each nozzle is usually pre-labeled to indicate which nozzle should have which material attached to it. For example, fuel lines attach to the fuel connection on the nozzle, and nitrous lines attach to the nitrous connection.

Staged kits, or staging modules are also available. At NOPI 2003, I saw a few demonstrated by NOS at their booth, but the prices were around $400-$500. A little to far out of my price range. Staging your nitrous allows you to beging with a lower shot of nitrous, and gradually increase the shot depending on rpm ranges, or gears. Nitrous is often used for spooling up larger turbos, so staging it can be benefitial to helping you increase the spool up time of your turbo with a smaller shot, while using a larger shot later in the run to help increase overall horse power ratings, and lower times. Also, staged kits can be used due to traction issues. For example, a front wheel drive car wouldn't want an instant 100 HP increase from nitrous while launching his car at the track, when he already has traction problems to begin with. So, he can use a very small shot to help get off the line or for turbo spooling, and use a much larger shot once he's in motion and out of the lower gears to improve the overall track time.

Some form of measuring the pressure inside the bottle may be of use to most nitrous users. Average pressure inside a nitrous tank is a maximum of 1200, and at a point of around 900 psi, the contents of the tank tends to become mostly compressed air and left over vapors of nitrous, which isn't pure nitrous, and will not provide the same effect when used. Most gauges max at with a reading of 1500 psi, which is far into the danger zone, and at the point where valve rupture may occur. As it isn't generally your duty to do the bottle filling, make sure that whomever you give the bottle to fill prevents the PSI from going over 1200. Gauges can be attached directly to the valve on the nitrous tank, but this can sometimes be uncomfortable to read. Other nitrous gauges are marketed which can be mounted in the cockpit area of the car, but require a seperate nitrous line to be ran to the gauge, requiring a product made by nitrous companies to split the lines in half. Using this PSI is not lost, but it does take more nitrous from the bottle to fill these empty lines. So, theoretically, the average usage of your tank may not last as long. It shouldn't be a noticable loss in tank duration, because the line isn't very long. But hey, you never know, leaks can always occur, but are easily solved by listening or spraying soapy water onto the suspected area, and then tightening the connections as needed.

Occasionaly you can find people who inject nitrous before and after the intercooler, as well as perhaps before the turbo. This methods shouldn't result in anything bad, but won't give you the best result you're looking for while using nitrous either. Injecting before the intercooler allows the air to cool a lot before entering the intercooler. But, that's the purpose of the intercooler, to chill the air. So in a sense, it's kind of dumb to spray before the intercooler, because the overall effect of a 55 shot can go downwards to around that equal to about a 25 shot or so. The effect of the nitrous will be a lot less feelable and noticable. Injection after the intercooler will allow further cooling and compaction than what the intercooler allowed, producing the same kind of output as a normal shot of nitrous, but due to the distance away from the throttle body, the shot will soften out a bit and not be quite as strong as the shot size you are expecting to use. When injecting before the turbo, you must realize that there is a very little room of piping before the turbo inlet. So of course it's going to compact the air and everything, being that it's only a little bit farther away from the turbo than it would be as if you were injecting by the throttle body. The only downside is that you must realize it now has to go through the turbo, where it will come out being greatly less-compacted than it was entering due to the chopping of the air and matching towards the current cfm amount you have flowing outwards of the turbo. Also, you must then realize that you still have the intercooler, lower intercool piping, and upper intercooler piping to travel through, allowing the air to become even further uncompacted. Idealy, the best place to spray is the standard 6 inches away from the throttle body.

As stated earlier, the shots can in a wide variet of ranges. Your average wet kit begins at a 55 shot, and usually maxes out at around a 100 horse power shot. The shots are measured by the increase of power to the crank or flywheel, and not actually a true measurement of the amount of horse power gained to the wheels. For instance, a 55 shot may produce 40 whp, or somewhere in that range. Only dyno sheets could give you the results of an estimated power gain, as sometimes dyno runs vary, and aren't always back to back producing the exact same numbers per run. Your average dry kit begins at around a 50 shot, and also maxes at the range of around 100. These kits are oftenly used for the average racer, and come with jets which are commonly referred to as "pills." Each pill has a certain size hole, which is generally marked on the pill itself with a number (i.e. .38, .41, etc.). For a wet kit, a combination of fuel and nitrous pills will arrive for you to use. A sheet is also given to you in the kit to tell you the combination used to give you the desired nitrous shot. Each kit comes with a little bit different sized jet, thus a 55 shot for a ZEX kit may differ slightly with results from an NX or NOS brand kit. Direct port is also similar, but most users begin the starting shot at 80, and can end at excess of a 200HP shot. I believe there are currently direct port kits that can go as low as a 50 shot, but I'd suggest simply buying a wet kit if you're looking to start off that low of a shot.

Purge kits are also a crave for most nitrous owners. They're cool, and help just a tad bit more while spraying at the track. Purge kits allow pressure, as well as nitrous, to be released from the nitrous line as long as the valve is open. The opening of the purge valve is controlled by a push button. As long as the button is held down, the longer the valve is held open. Puring the pressure and contents of the line allows for a better, and more pure, shot of nitrous. This is crucial in nitrous performance at the track. When you turn off the bottle, the remaining contents of the line will either leak out, or can be purged out, or even sprayed until the line is dry. Whenever you reopen the bottle, all the air inside the line is then condensed and compacted at the farthest away end, the nozzle end. Puring this allows for that excess gap of compressed air to be released, so when you spray, you don't end up with a spray of just air until the nitrous eventually gets there. Having this occur could save you tenths of a second in the time you run at the track. They're also pretty cool to use in traffic. If you're more of a show car, and you have kids leaning out the window of a van screaming at your car as you go buy, purging can be an awesome thing to them. This happened to me once, and you should of seen the look of those kids faces. Same with parades, it's a great attention getter and race starter for those jealous guys without nitrous.

As for applicatons, most kits are univeral. There are some application specific kits, but that's generally in categories of cylinders. Some kits come made for 4 cylinders, others for 6, and others for 8 cylinders. Generally, nitrous kits are made to be used with any car. The plumbing of the kits are all the same in general, which is what makes them universal. Every car has an intake, every car has a trunk. Having these two major things allows you to place your bottle and run the lines under the car, or through the car, and tapping the nozzle into the intake for use. The only major difference may be in the shot ability that your car can handle. Generally speaking, a 2.0L engine can generally handle a 50 shot, and stop at a 75-80 shot. A smaller engine, such as perhaps a 1.8L, could perhaps max out at a 75 shot, but I've never used it on one, and would suggest looking elsewhere for information on your engine before attempting anything above a 55 shot.

Timing adjustments are also another issue. When compensating for the air, tuning is involved, of course. When you first begin with a standard 50-55 horse power shot, it is not recommended that you need to have any timing adjustments. But, after that, you must begin to retard your ignition about two degress per every 10 horse power gain. So, for example, the 50-55 shot would be an adjustment retard of 0, while a 60-65 shot would have an adjustment retard of about 2 degress. As for the actual adjustment, it may vary from engine to engine, but is generally 2 degress or so. Some cars that do not have distributors, and have their timing controlled by the ECU may require timing adjustment applications. An example of this would be the MSD DIS-2 System, which allows you to adjust the timing advancement or retard on cars whos timing is controlled by the ECU. The cause of having a timing adjustment is the fact that spark knock can occur, which can ultimately lead to detonation if not properly taken care of. Low knock is not normally a problem, but when you start having higher volumes of knock counts, it can quickly become a situation that needs to be taken care of.

Now, about pressure. The reason engines must be upgraded internally with forged parts before increasing to a higher shot is due to the effect of the nitrous. Nitrous works by cooling off air as stated earlier. Now, having this cool air and resulting in the much larger volume of air added to the engine cylinders, the pressure is dramatically increased. Having to much pressure on stock cast aluminum parts can cause them to crack or rupture. This is the most commonly stated misuse of nitrous. Preventing this and having the ability to gradually increase your shot size, is by using forged pistons, and ultimately, forged connectiong rods to help handle the increased pressure of the nitrous and larger volume of air. Having stock engine internals, and a larger turbo producing high volumes of cfm (rate at which air is mvoed per minute) or psi can cause conflicts with using nitrous. Say you have 20 psi, and want to run nitrous. You most already note that the stock pistons are designed for only so many psi and pressure, so adding higher than stock boost levels, plus the additional pressure of mild shots of nitrous, add together to create one large pressure increases above the stock levels. I havent actually had this yet, as my stock Talon TSi doesn't have increased boost, and as a 16 year old pizza boy, direct port nitrous is just a tad bit out of my range at the moment. But, a question about this was recently brought to my attention, and this is the best logical conclusion I could make from it. Before increasing your shot, consider the options of replacing at least your pistons with forged ones before adding nitrous to your turbo car if it's above stock levels of boost, or at least research your model car and strengths/weaknesses of your parts before you carelessly start putting heavy pressure loads on your engine.Air Fuel Pressure Regulators are also an option worth looking at. While you have all this great volume of air entering the engine, you'll need fuel to compensate for it. This is also a cheaper option than forged internals. It helps to keep air volume related knock at a minimum. Although, forged internals are still recommended at some point.

---SAFETY WITH NITROUS ITSELF---

Many people abuse nitrous. Knowing that it's used as laughing gas amongst detentists and medical staff, many people asume it's safe to inhale and breathe large amounts of it. There have been reports of several people which have inhaled. Inhaling nitrous can cause suffercation due to the lack of oxygen. Sure, you can safely inhale it (BUT DON'T!) in certain quantities, but it has no where close to the same effect as it does in the dentists office. Dentists use a deluted amount of nitrous mixed through other processes to provide the state of mind caused by inhalation of nitrous directly. Oxygen is also mixed seperately through the breathing process in a dentists office. This is used for safety, so you don't pass out or become unconscious while under its affects. The nitrous oxide gas provded for use with cars is industrial grade, and is much much more stronger than regular laughing gas and will result in a mostly just a really bad headache.
Nitrous can cause problems with the vitamin B-12, and is a central nervous system depressent. Long-term exposure, even at very low levels, may result in infertility or a vitamin B12 deficiency (which causes anemia and nerve degeneration, producing painful sensations in the arms and legs, an unsteady gait, loss of balance, irritability, and intellectual deterioration). At least one case occured of a man severly abusing nitrous. Nitrous also comes in small pellet gun sized co2 containers. A man took 3 cases, with 24 bottles each, and inhaled them for a prolonged time. This man ended up having no feeling in his legs, couldn't walk, had problems feeling in his arms, had "an electrical shock" feeling periodically through his back, and couldnt not gain an erection. It took him 4 months before total feeling was restored, and 6 months before he was living a normal life once again.
Also, inhaling can be extremely dangerous for external (and sometimes internal) parts. Being the fact that nitrous just doesn't turn back into a gas when injecting through a nozzle, it will convert back into a gas at any point where it is given enough space to do so. When exiting directly from the bottle with no attached lines, it will convert from liquid state to gas state, and create very low air temperature surrounding the bottle. So, if inhaling directly from the bottle, possible frost bite and severe freezing of the vocal cords, lungs, throat, tongue, and the whole general mouth to stomach area can occur. Accidental touching of the hand or any exposed skin to the direct freezing temperatures of nitrous can result in severe ice burns, freezing of the skin, and major scaring. Just take a look a picture below of a friends hand who was frozen in a nitrous accident on Sep. 28th of 2002. This picture was taken on December 20th, 2003. Over a years worth of healing.

Picture of hand. http://colorealm.crosswinds.net/Pictures/Bobby.jpg

He had a nitrous bottle lose in his trunk, and upon taking a sharp enough corner, the bottle moved and the valve opened when it hit against something. The pressure from the bottle began to cause the bottle to spin out of control in his trunk. Upon pulling over and opening the hatch, he reached in to grab the bottle. There was a huge white cloud of pure nitrous, and his hand happened to grab ahold of the valve. He held it with his left hand, and close it with the right. His thumb and index finger were frozen together. Two days after the incident, the area was black, 4 days afterwards, a huge blister covered the whole area and caused severe itching and an overall painful experience until healing finished.

Oh yeah, nitrous is also a form of pollution. Go figure? It breaks down ozone, but makes up like under 1% of overall pollution. That's less than methane (farts). So, purge away!

Nitrous is nothing to play around with, please use it responsibly and use proper mounting brackets, usually included with the kit, for securing your bottle to the floor or desired area of your car for safety. Any questions can be e-mailed to owens1@cox.net .

This Guide was written by Brian Owens, aka Colossus on December 21st (and December 22nd). Took me a while, and two days, because I started at 11PM and finished at 2:34AM. Have fun!

Credits:

Pictures:
Nitrous FAQ By Wayne Ing http://www.sccoa.com/sccoo/Faq/nitrousoxide.htm

Health Information:
http://www.state.ma.us/dph/inhalant/nitrousoxide.htm

Misc Nitrous Information:
http://members.hometown.aol.com/ffastcbr/nitrous.htm
http://www.johnpowell.net/gasman/1n2o.htm


Da Link: http://www.dsmtuners.com/forums/showthread.php?t=93374

This post has been edited by Coomer: Jul 9, 2004 - 1:40 AM

[macavely]

damn you i wrote my nitrous 101 for nothing now.. j/k.. this should be a sticky..

[Silver94CelicaOw...]

I agree...this is some sticky worthy material. Thanks alot for the info.

[SlowCelica94]

No problem guys. As I draw nearer to get my nitrous installed (aka, i get more money) I learned I still need a lot of things. My shop I'm getting it installed at says I should get an AFC so I can tune the celica when I dyno it.
First off, I'm still unsure as to if I need to dyno b4 and after the install. I seen lotsa people just install it and be done.
Second off, I bought a sparco steering wheel for nothing. Nitrous isn't push button activated. It's toggle switch. As you read above, you flip the toggle switch, and it's armed. Then when you slam the gas (WOT) It's spray cause of the wide-open-throtle switch. But I don't wanna spray in first. So instead of a toggle switch, should i just wire up my ricey lil buttons on the steering wheel, and when the button is held down, it'll act as my armin switch?

Ah, the confusion.

[o8poa8o]

thats a big help, i was accually wonderin about what nitrous would/could damage yesterday, yea this should be stickied

[subsolo_21]

Very good. Most informative nitrous related thing i've ever read. Thanx. Sticky is a must.

[wht95st-02gtivr6]