Nitrous Oxide                                                    

 

 

          

 

Before You Begin:

How many times have you had some car up your backside (not literally), and couldn’t get away from it. You always feel that you need more power but haven’t got thousands to spend! Well we may just have the answer. How much power do you want? 50bhp… 100bhp… the world is your Nitrous oyster!

                  

What the hell is Nitrous Oxide anyway? Well, it’s a gas at room temperature, so if you supercool nitrous oxide into a bottle at 1000psi, then release it a bit at a time into a fuel/air mixture, it turns back into oxygen rich gas. Welcome to the world of cheap power. Nowadays, it’s cheap, safe and reliable.

How much can I have sir? The amount of nitrous is controlled by a jet. The more you want, the bigger the injector nozzle jet. Generally though, it’s safe to do around 50bhp jets. It gets even better though. Because nitrous oxide burns with a slower hotter flame than normal air/fuel, it means the flame front travels more slowly and hits the top of the piston later than a normal burn. It also pushes rather than punches the top of the piston, which means mechanical shock is reduced. Lovely! That’s why, that if you just increase it by a 50bhp jet, there’s no need to strengthen other engine internals. There are two types of nitrous… dry and wet. The dry is the simplest and cheapest, injecting a spray of nitrous into your cars inlet air. The wet system uses a proportional quantity of fuel mixed with the nitrous for a richer mix – recommended on turbo motors.

What do I need? 1). Nitrous kit, 2). A car, 3). Someone to fit the bugger for you.4). Cash. One of the biggest companies in nitrous at the moment is TTS, which supplies and fits the Nitrous Express Kit in Northants.

How the hell’s it done then?

 

Check the car first! The first thing most companies will do is to dyno the car for 2 reasons. The first to make sure the car is running soundly in the first place, and second to get power readings. A lot of companies will also changes the spark plugs for ‘colder’ plugs that are rated one or two grades higher to handle higher temperatures.

Mount Me! The hardware is mounted first. The most important piece of the system is the injector jet which supplies the fuel/nitrous mixture. It should be mounted somewhere In the inlet air tract, as close to the inlet plenum as possible for best results. Every car is different, so they build a simple mounting plate to mount the jet on. The spacer fits between the throttle housing and the inlet air feed.

 

Here we go! The jet has two feeds. One for nitrous and the other for fuel. Screw the nitrous and the fuel feed pipes to the jet. The next job is to mount the solenoids which control the flow of fuel and nitrous. Usually, you can chose a spot on the wing which is secure and within reach of the jet. With the solenoids in place, it’s time to supply them with fuel and nitrous. The fuel comes from the cars fuel line. The kit fitted comes with a T piece that allows you to conventionally tap into your cars fuel line without hacking hoses.

 

It’s getting serious now! With the fuel line plumbed, a braided nitrous feed hose is run under the car and up into the boot. The bottle is securely mounted in the boot and the line attached to it. With the solenoids mounted and the fuel and nitrous feeds attached, it’s time the get wiring. Basically, the solenoids are wired to operate together. For this reason they share a common earth and common positive supply. The two positive wires are joined together and a single wire then fed across the engine bay in preparation for the relay that switches the solenoids on and off.

 

I’m a control freak! Mount the relay securely. Run a positive supply from the car battery to the relay. A small microswitch is mounted on the throttle linkages. This is switched on when the throttle is wide open. This prevents the nitrous being used unless the car is accelerating hard. Run a switching feed in series from the relay to the dash-mounted arming switch. This goes via the microswitch to control the system. If the microswitch senses a fully open throttle then it allows the dash switch to arm the system.

 

Oh shittttttttttt! All that remains is mount the arming switch on the dash. With all that done, check all the wiring and hose connections and hit the dyno for a setup. In order to provide the necessary quantity of fuel, they will usually alter the fueld pressure regulater to increase/decrease the amount of fuel supplied.

 

It’s as simple as that. If you need to get some Nitrous fitted then contact these guys below!

 

These are the main people who you can get the gas off, and also fit the actual system to your car!

North East: Teeside Motor Factors in Middlesborough
Tel: 01642 232222

Midlands: TTS Engineering at Silverstone
Tel: 07000 367867

South London: Brute Farce at Carshalton
Tel: 0181 773 8263

South West: M&M Racing in Bristol
Tel: 01179 553244

If any of these can't be contacted, get in touch with TTS on 01327 858212 and ask for your nearest dealer! The price for all this is about £640 for the full kit including a 10lb bottle, with fitting from