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our NOS kits can by installed by our skilled technitions for your
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The Nitrous oxide injection kit begins with a supply cylinder containing
pressurised liquid nitrous oxide. This cylinder is connected by
means of a delivery hose to a normally closed electric solenoid
valve. This solenoid valve, which is usually mounted in a cool area
under the bonnet, is engaged and disengaged via a throttle switch
(either a micro-switch or an electronic unit). The fuel solenoid
valve receives fuel from a 'T' piece, which is tapped into the fuel
delivery line, this is also activated by the same switch. The nitrous
oxide and fuel that is to be delivered to the engine's air inlet
is conveyed via two delivery lines to an injector mounted in the
inlet tract. The amount of nitrous oxide and fuel is adjustable
by means of metering jets installed in the solenoid outlet fittings.
Nitrous oxide systems make large amounts of torque by allowing
an engine to burn more fuel at a lower rpm range than normal. Burning
more fuel this way creates a longer burn period (and slightly higher
cylinder pressures, if the timing is not corrected), that will push
down on the pistons with greater average force. When the nitrous
is injected into an engine and the initial combustion takes place,
it creates enough heat to separate the nitrous oxide into its two
components, nitrogen and oxygen. Once separated, the additional
oxygen is then free to allow combustion of the additional fuel,
while the released nitrogen acts as a buffer against detonation
and damps mechanical loads.
To run nitrous successfully and safely, you have to introduce precise
amounts of additional fuel with precise amounts of nitrous oxide.
All of the extra oxygen provided by the nitrous oxide must have
fuel with which to burn or you may damage your engine severely.
When the amount of nitrous and the amount of supplemental fuel is
controlled precisely, your engine can safely and reliably generate
exceptional power increases.
Combustion
Nitrous oxide does not burn, it is an oxidiser. 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 while the volume of nitrogen is decreased (as a percentage
of the whole). This speeds the burn rate and requires less timing
advance for peak output. It is hard for 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
Large power increases achieved by using nitrous oxide can increase
the chance of detonation. To keep the engine out of detonation,
you must control the extra heat that nitrous can make. 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. 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. Running richer
will 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 petrol ratio is 9.649:1. If a
nitrous engine runs lean, it can destroy the engine in a matter
of seconds. There must be enough fuel to maintain this correct ratio,
if there isn't, temperatures rise rapidly. The oxygen that was left
over from burning the limited amount of fuel will result is a lean
burn situation raising cylinder temperatures and melting components.
So don't run lean.
Cooling Effects
Cooler intake air is denser and contains more oxygen atoms per cubic
foot. So cooler air will allow more fuel to be burned and in turn,
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 an 80? or so drop
in manifold air temperature. Now if we are dealing with say a 400
hp engine, we can see a gain of well over 30 hp from the cooling
effect alone. This cooling effect also helps the engine deal with
detonation.
Average Power
If you were to build a 350 hp 3.5 Rover V8, it would have to rev
to 7000+ rpm to make that kind of power and only make power over
a narrow rpm range. A nitrous injected 3.5 Rover V8 making 350 hp
would make that power at a much lower rpm with a 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 running 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 torque and consequently power more at low rpm.
As rpm increases, 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 even lower 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. To put it simply, using 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.
A Nitrous Engine - Choosing a Camshaft
Optimum cam timing for a nitrous motor will be different than optimum
timing for that same motor off the bottle, so you will have to make
a choice as to whether you want the most power with or without nitrous.
Obviously if you are driving the car on the street most of the time,
you will want the best power off the bottle. If you find that you
can spare some power to make your car faster at the track, picking
a camshaft to favour nitrous can make a substantial difference when
nitrous is in use. Of course it is a trade off, but usually the
power that you make on the bottle, will be far greater than the
amount lost off the bottle.
Pumping Losses
Nitrous oxide adds oxygen, much of which is in liquid form. So you
can see that a large intake valve and port is not required or desirable.
Larger intake ports cause more of the nitrous to turn to a gas and
reduce the amount of normally aspirated power, if the nitrous takes
up more room, there will be less room for air, reducing volumetric
efficiency. Also, you do not want or need long intake duration or
a very high lift, so the intake side of the cam does not need to
be any different when nitrous is used. The exhaust is a totally
different story. All that extra oxygen and fuel makes for a substantial
increase in exhaust gas volume. How can the exhaust valves deal
with this? It can't, pumping losses go out of sight. Much of the
extra power made in the cylinders never makes it to the flywheel,
because it is used to push out the exhaust. Since making the exhaust
valve large enough and the port flow enough is impractical with
most cylinder heads, we must take other actions to cut pumping losses
(which is actually just a band aid fix).
Reducing Pumping Losses
The first obvious step is to use a dual pattern cam with longer
exhaust duration. Opening the valve earlier will help by getting
the valve open more and bleeding off some pressure before the piston
starts moving up the bore. This does eat into the power stroke,
but more power is freed up than would be made by holding it closed
longer (the best solution would be a larger valve and better port).
The blow down phase (overlap period) becomes very important in a
nitrous engine, because the gas has a much greater velocity and
can over scavenge, closing the exhaust valve a little earlier helps.
Anytime you make more power by reducing pumping losses, you are
freeing up horsepower that already existed in the cylinders. The
engine will still experience the same loads, but more power will
be put to the flywheel and less will be used to push out exhaust.
Camshaft Specs
As said earlier, the intake needs to remain pretty much the same,
but the exhaust needs more duration, an earlier opening point and
an earlier closing point. To make this happen, you need to use a
dual pattern cam with more exhaust timing, and a wider lobe separation
angle. Cam's with 112-116? lobe separations are common is nitrous
motors. To keep the intake timing the same, you must install the
cam advanced, usually 6-8? advanced. The good thing about this is
that advancing a cam will bring more low-end (at a trade off of
top-end) when running without the nitrous and the wider lobe centre
angle will also help idle and vacuum. Even the most radical nitrous
profiles are usually pretty tame on the street. Ultra high lift
cams are not need to make power with nitrous. On the exhaust side,
the low lift flow is the most important thing, and must be dealt
with much more seriously than high lift flow.
Intake Port Work
Nitrous adds so much oxygen that getting oxygen in is no longer
a problem. A large intake port is not needed or desired. The larger
the port, the more surface area it has and the intake charge will
have lower velocity. Slower moving nitrous has more time to turn
from a liquid to a gas, so a large port will have less liquid nitrous
getting in the cylinder. As nitrous turns to a gas it will expand,
taking up room in the intake and reducing the amount of normally
aspirated air. More surface area will give the nitrous more area
to absorb heat, which will cause even more nitrous to turn into
gas. The same goes for large intake valves. The intake valve is
the hottest part of the intake system and when nitrous is involved
you don't want excess surface area on the valve. The exhaust is
a different story.
Exhaust Port Work
All the extra exhaust has to be dealt with. The exhaust valves of
a nitrous engine are almost always too small. When possible it is
best to reduce the size of the intake to allow room for a bigger
exhaust valve. The head of the exhaust valve should not have any
sharp edges. It should have a nice smooth radius to allow the exhaust
to travel around it as easily as possible. The valve job on the
exhaust is the most important part. There will be much more cylinder
pressure when the exhaust valve opens which means there will be
more burnt gasses trying to escape through the valve at low lifts.
Low lift exhaust flow should be your number one concern (up to about
.300" lift). A good multi angle valve job is the best bang
for the buck in a nitrous engine. The short side radius will usually
benefit from a straight cut to the port floor. The area directly
past the seat should be as wide as possible. The valve seats should
be slightly wider also (.010"-.015") to help get rid of
some of the extra heat in the valves.
Combustion Chamber modifications
Usually you cannot do much chamber work without reducing compression
and being forced to use a high dome that hurts power. With nitrous,
a high compression ratio is not needed, so some work can be done
in this area. Nitrous can make very respectable power with compression
ratio up to 10:1. First step is to angle the exhaust valve as much
as possible so the gasses can move around the valve easily. The
next step is to polish the combustion chamber and remove any sharp
edges. Sharp edges will be the first to get hot and cause detonation
(as well as be the first to melt). Polishing the combustion chamber
will help keep carbon build up to a minimum (a good idea for any
engine).
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