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Nitrous oxide is well known by car enthusiasts from all over the world. It is the ultimate in car performance enhancements, most well known from many popular racing movies. While many people may know the name of the chemical, not many people know just what it does to your machine.
How Does Nitrous Oxide Work?
When the chemical sodium chlorate is heated to around 570 degrees Fahrenheit, it causes the chemical to split into nitrogen and oxygen. Fire needs oxygen to burn and by pumping the oxygen produced by the reaction into the engine, it allows for a more powerful burst of flame as well as allowing for more fuel to burn, boosting your machine’s horsepower by a considerable amount. The remaining nitrogen acts as a cooling agent, carrying the excess heat away from the engine which helps to control the burn more. That is why just pure oxygen won’t work; there is too much heat involved. Due to the rate at which an engine would use nitrous oxide, the systems only allow for a few minutes of use before the tanks run dry.
Dry Injection Kits
There are two forms of nitrous oxide for engines; one is the dry injection kits. What it does is spray a pure nitrous oxide mixture directly into the manifold. Since there is no additional fuel added to the mix, it doesn’t have as much power as what is possible with nitrous systems. One should be cautious when using the dry injection kits as too much can cause the engine to fail.
Wet Injection Kits
With the wet injection kits, what is sprayed into your engine throttle body is a mixture of nitrous oxide and fuel. It comes out as a fog. With this mixture, the extra oxygen to fuel ratio is far more balanced which means you are less likely to blow your engine when using it. If not properly watched, the wet mixture can create puddles of un-burnt mixture in the intake manifold which can lead to damaging backfires. Some wet injectors have individualized injectors for each cylinder which would require a special intake manifold to be fitted.
