custom nitrous!

If I had a bottle o' nitrous with a cable attached to a really small jet peeking through a hole in an intake and I had a bottle opening switch on my steering wheel would that work? Any other suggestions? If this would work and deliver some descent horsepower that would be great cuz i could get it done for next to nothin'.

Doing that would lean out the motor and almost instantly burn the tops out of the pistons.

NOS = extra oxygen

When you add NOS you also have to add extra fuel so the mixture doesnt lean out. When you buy a kit you get all of the matching NOS and gas nozles and solenoids which have to be carefully tuned so as the prevent the motor detonating :smoka:

noooooooooot true...
the reason that nitrous uses a throttle based trigger is b/c if you are at anything other than wot, you will burn it up. you can run a dry set up w/o burning the pistons. it doesnt occur automatically.
however, a good kit that is dry is either zex (www.zex.com) or venom (www.venom-performance.com) and they both monitor your a/f ratio, keeping you safe. the websites explain.

if you go w/ a wet kit you do get the fuel solenoid and jets, which do what you said.
basically you need a trigger that kicks on at wot. a bottle opener does nothing if there is no nitrous solenoid....

But since the jet, like i said is sooo small wouldnt that it would restrict virtually all nitrous flow, so that it wouldn't blow my pistons too soon. I know that the nitrous would lean out my engine lots but i would compensate with higher octane and more fuel pressure(I would also be monitoring my lean/richness). I was also thinking of adapting my own full throttle sensor (it wouldnt be difficult providing i hade a solenoid) to kick in at only full throttle.

ZEX and Venom are too pricey, i just wanted to find an old nitrous bottle fill er' upslap a hose on with a tiny jet (to start off really low power increase)

When they say wet or dry nitrous are they talking about the substance that comes out of the tank (gas or liquid) or the point where the nitrous is injected in the engine?(bear with me i'm a noobie)

Um, no, this won't work. Your just going to damage your engine, or hurt yourself, or both. How are you planning to moniter your A/F ratio? an A/F ratio guage? They are very inaccurate, unless you get a Tomei and have it run on a dyno. EGT? THey are around $180+. You might as well get a NOS kit and save the engine trouble. Can you make it work? Sure, but your slowly and surely going to cause damage. This is the reason NOS gets a bad rap, because people misuse and abuse it. A dry system increases your fuel pressure and supply through your stock regulator. A wet system adds the fuel together with the NOS, through a seperate soleniod. Avoid a wet system if you have long intake runners, because you can have serious problems with running lean and intake backfires. There is also direct port, in which each intake runner is equiped with a fuel and NOS jet, this is the safest system to run IMHO. Good luck and stay SAFE! :D

Originally posted by giff
But since the jet, like i said is sooo small wouldnt that it would restrict virtually all nitrous flow, so that it wouldn't blow my pistons too soon. I know that the nitrous would lean out my engine lots but i would compensate with higher octane and more fuel pressure(I would also be monitoring my lean/richness). I was also thinking of adapting my own full throttle sensor (it wouldnt be difficult providing i hade a solenoid) to kick in at only full throttle.

ZEX and Venom are too pricey, i just wanted to find an old nitrous bottle fill er' upslap a hose on with a tiny jet (to start off really low power increase)

When they say wet or dry nitrous are they talking about the substance that comes out of the tank (gas or liquid) or the point where the nitrous is injected in the engine?(bear with me i'm a noobie)

Man, some of these posts get "nucking futs!"

OK, I have several books about nitrous, and I helped my cuz with a Honda Civic venom dry system (which he hardly uses). And I'll say this.

Really, NOS isn't safe for your engine, despite what companies say. So, then why do they have it? Well, because you can make the engine compensate for the added stress and heat.

Now, about my cuz's system... Some civics, all Si's, are able to take it IN LIGHT AMOUNTS quite well in stock form. They come with forged con rods and pistons, depending on year. So I said, go for it, when my cuz wanted NOS. He had the right stock parts.

Now, for your engine, do research like I did. See if there's a computerized Venom system for your car. Venom is the best as far as dry systems go, and it seemed the best for the Civic, since my cuz had a laptop already, not that you absolutely need one for Venom systems.
Venom systems stop the NOS flow if it gets too lean, and you can do more than just one type of HP amount depending on the jet. You can pick engage/disengage RPM, how much time, how much NOS, all sorts of stuff. Just get the injectors and fuel pumps they offer too so you get the right fuel amount.

Now, preping the engine is a must; Turbo, NOS, any big performance job. Get Forged crank, rods, and pistons. Get the piston tops ceramic coated. Get stainless, or titanium valves. Ceramic coat them. Ceramic coat the chamber celing. Cermic coat the exhaust manifold. Microlube the crank, and other parts. Get top quality head gasket(s). Computer hone the cylinders. All of that stuff will make your engine ready for major boost. Turbo, Nitro, or Supercharger.

It makes me sick when the term "Bolt-on" is used so carelessly. But, that's how you sell stuff. Then you sell even more when the engine blows. I've seen the differences between stock pistons, forged pistons, and ceramic coated pistons after being hit hard with NOS. And guess what, the ceramic coated stuff wasn't chared a single bit, unlike the other stuff.

Now, I know you guys are going to criticize me about something I wrote, just like you're criticizing each other, so to warn you ahead of time, I'm not an expert. I'm a hobbyist. A hobbyist who's done research on the topic of NOS, and Turbo too. So take my knowledge for what it's worth.

Pardon me for asking, but what the hell is a ceramic coated piston? There's basically 4 types of pistons:Cast, Hypererutic, Forged and Billit. With cast being the weakest, and billit being the strongest. I've never heard of a ceramic coated piston.

Anyways, nitrous is perfectly safe on engines as long as you use it accordingly. Yesterday I ordered a generic V8 NOSzle kit, and i'm going to run a 75 shot to help spool the turbo a little bit. As long as you don't try and run a 300 shot on a stock civic, you'll do fine.

Pardon me for asking, but what the hell is a ceramic coated piston?
I think the name is pretty self-explanatory. A thin ceramic coating is applied to the top of the piston crown to reduce heat transfer to the piston. I'm no fan of ceramic coated pistons, but they seem to be popular aftermarket items. It's my opinion (based on theoretical / practical considerations alone, not testing) that ceramic coatings aren't worth putting on pistons. My guess is that they'll either be too thin to significantly reduce heat transfer, or too thick to stay attached to the piston when it swells. If it adds any weight to my otherwise unsupported opinion, I had the pleasure of discussing the subject last week with one of the world's top experts on piston design (with over 40 years experience at Federal Mogul, Mahle, etc), and he agreed with my "off the cuff" assessment.

There's basically 4 types of pistons:Cast, Hypererutic, Forged and Billit. With cast being the weakest, and billit being the strongest. I've never heard of a ceramic coated piston.

Well let's see, "Cast," "Forged," and "Billet" describe part of the piston manufacturing process, and "Hypereutectic" partially describes the alloy that is used... I don't think that's even a list of piston types, let alone an exhaustive list. I assume that you've only used those terms in reference to single-piece aluminum pistons, right? In addition to the aluminum pistons that are (partially) described by your list, there are also one piece iron/steel pistons, several varieties of one-piece composite pistons, and articulated (2-piece) pistons. Of course that list doesn't take into account the various schemes for holding the piston pin in the piston, etc. There are probably other pistons that I'm not familiar with as well. Any of these pistons could be ceramic coated if someone wanted to do it (but you've already heard my views on the subject).

When manufacturers construct an engine they do it with safe margins. This means that you can increase the power somewhat without that the engine is breaking apart.

If we add 50-100 hp by a dry nitrous system this shouldn't be a problem for most engines.

Nitrous is injected by one nozzle before the manifold. The extra fuel comes från the increased fuelpressure.

Then you can use a lambda sensor with a multimeter to check the fuel/ air ratio, use a little too fat to start with and there should be no danger.

Yeah, when they construct a new car, the crank and rods can handle it, but the pistons cry for mercy. In Sport Compact Car Magazine's June 2002 issue, they have a big thing with RSX's. They do all of these tests, and run the project cars of the performance companies making RSX parts. Well, there's one spot where they get into the pistons, and they showed one after it was hit with NOS several times.....

OUCH!!! It looked horrible. It looked like it was 40 years old (and I have seen a 40 year old piston). I wanted to cry when they compared it to an un-NOSed piston. Then they showed the sweet-ass dished piston for the turbo kit (mega performance).

Now, about the ceramic coatings.... Even though it's a thin layer, it does ALOT! It reduces surface heat by over 100 degrees (which would have saved the piston on that RSX), and if you coat the valves, piston tops, and ceiling of the combustion chamber, you can get an extra 18% horsepower. So if you already have 500HP or so from turbo, NOS, all that stuff, add 18% to that and that's almost another 100HP. And it makes your pistons hold up much better to heat from NOS and turbo useage. It's a bit expensive, but it's worth it if you are going to use NOS and/or turbo. And ceramic can actually be made to be stronger than some metals. FYI: The space shuttle has 90% water (or something) when the panels are made, so that's why they break alot. Not an example of ceramic coatings in engines.

You can also coat exhaust parts too, and turbos. Supposedly, ceramic coating turbos cuts the spool time in half, or something like that. Now I'm not sure why exhaust parts benefit from coatings, cause I'm not a scientist, but it slightly increases HP. And if you should ever have a big oil or fuel leak in the engine compartment (like the early Fiero's), it can help prevent a car fire.

Now, one thing with piston rods, try to avoid aluminum. Yeah they're lighter, but really. Do you need to sacrifice reliability for some weight loss? (only in drag racing). As far as pistons go, read what ivymike said. A good guide to metalurgy.

Newer engines are OK for NOS, not a whole lot of NOS, especially if you don't have the fuel system beefed up a bit. Use a venom 1000 system, cause it kills the NOS flow if the mixture is too lean or rich, and it's not too expensive. But remember, what is a reliable car that will run 300,000 miles, becomes a 100,000 mile car with the use of NOS, in the stock form of course.

And one thing boosted331...

Nitrous CAN be reliable and safe, with what I said above. If you keep the air/fuel ratio right, you won't blow up the engine. A way to tell if the engine is too lean is "you're driving down the road, you get on the ramp to get on the highway, you turn on the NOS switch, you go pedal to the metal, click, click, boom, there goes your engine." That's when you know it was too lean!

So, how about that Venom system? The 2000 system can be set to spool the turbo at the start, and then turn off to let the turbo to it's thing. And you can have the thing do a different amount of NOS according to the RPM's and/or throttle. And you can have the NOS shot timed, or just the plain old standard way of running it.

By the way boosted331... good choice with the NOSzle thing. Keeps your intake manifold undrilled. I don't think it's availible for my TBI Pontiac 2.5 though.

Ok, bring on the criticizm boys :devil:

Oh, one thing Saab, it isn't always one nozzle before the manifold. You're thinking of single-stage plate kits, which can be good, by the way.

There are different ways to inject NOS. As boosted mentioned, there are NOSzles, which has your injectors piggyback on the nozzle, which means no removal of throttle body, or removal of manifold and drilling of manifold.

Now, drilling into the manifold, right before it goes into the cylinder head, is called direct port nitrous, what everyone used in The Fast and the Furious. There's one nozzle per intake runner, or per cylinder.

Nitrous Express (I think it's them, it might be venom) has a patent on a dual stage nozzle that's two jets, or two nitro stages into one nozzle, which means no extra drilling for dual stage. Dual stage means there's a normal stage, say 50HP for example, then on a separate bottle, there's a second stage that's 100HP, for example. Normally, they're used separately, but you can combine them, equalling 150HP. The reason behind this is, you can't change the jet size while you're driving, so instead, you push a button for use of a different jet.

I like NOS.
It's cheap,
versitle,

and you can save your car by just installing it on your cousin's ricemoblie and destroying that cheap thing instead of your baby! :silly2:

One more thing I want to blabbler.

Get shot peened rods. It's what they use in WRC and it holds up great. I'm getting it for my Fiero when I rebuild it after I get a few more thousand.

As far as pistons go, read what ivymike said. A good guide to metalurgy.

huh? I can't find anything that I wrote that counts as a good guide to anything. Mahle has some books on the subject though, and I expect that Federal Mogul does too...

As for the ceramic coatings, I'm not going to believe a word of that until I see a couple of tests by a reputable company. Until then, it's sitting right next to "magnetic fuel saver" in my book of snake oil.

"If I had a bottle o' nitrous with a cable attached to a really small jet peeking through a hole in an intake and I had a bottle opening switch on my steering wheel would that work?"

That sounds to me like he wanted the easy way... not direct ported, computerised or whatever.

You can easily measure the air/fuel ratio with a lambda sensor and a multimeter - no problem.

The ceramic turbos with shorter spool-up have a ceramic wheel which is lighter.

Active carbon is used sometimes as a heatshield on turboshargers.

Nikasil for example is used to coat cylinderliners, it's a nickel silicon carbide product from Mahle. This is what they use on F1 engines. The layers are very thin, 0,05-0,1 mm so the basic function isn't heat isolation.

Titaniumvalves are used as intakevalves and in some dragracingapplications as exhaustvalves. When a high heat tolerant exhaust valve is needed it's usually made of inconel or nimonic. Saab uses nimonic valves in some of their engines, and Saab have the thinest valvehandles in the world and a very high exhaust temperature since small turbochargers are used. Ceramic coatings - no, but stellit can be used to increase wear resistance.

WRC cars uses steel rods similar to these: http://www.kgtrimning.com/stalstakar.jpg

Crankshafts are usually not a weak link, they can usually resist twice up to over five times the power of the original engine. But if that isn't enough there are billit machined crankshaft but these cost a lot of money.

Most original cylinderhead to block seals can withstand around of twice the power output, but of course this depends of the combustionpressure used. Otherwise one can made a copper gasket and o-ring the block (and head if wanted), this is what top fuels use - very reliable.

Oilcooled pistons are also a good idea, this lower the temperature on the pistons.

But for around 50 hp no modifications are than the power increasing one are not needed, and that even for one of the weakest cars in production: BMW M3.
And newer engines are often weaker than older since they are lighter and have less internal friction.