Choosing and Buying a Nitrous Oxide Kit

Nitrous Oxide
Nitrous oxide, laughing gas, NOS, N2O - call it what you will, you can see serious power gains with it. Nitrous oxide has a very dense oxygen content - more oxygen provides a better explosion in the chamber - giving lots of power, providing fuelling is in place to allow for this. It has a reputation of blowing engines up, but wrongly so. If used sensibly it is a worthwhile addition. Fifty bhp can be used safely on most engines, if you take in account that extra strain will be placed on transmission components. On turbo engines nitrous oxide can help by cooling the air further, or filling the power dip while the turbo spools up. The Nitrous can be controlled by an auxillary switch or switched on the accelerator when on full throttle. Either way the bottle will have to be turned on too. There are remote switches that control this such as those by Zex. If you do inadvertently leave the bottle 'open' there can be disasterous consequences.

There are 3 types of nitrous oxide kit generally available - Dry, Wet and Direct Port.

Dry
Nitrous is added at the intake pipe and adds extra fuelling for the pressure created by the nitrous. All dry kits add the pressure to the fuel regulator apart from the Venom kit (pictured below). The Venom kit adds fuel electronically by pulsing the injectors for longer time. Try and keep less then 6" between the nozzle and throttle body
Cost: £600 + £2-4 per lb of nitrous.

Wet
The same idea as dry but the wet bit comes in the form of an extra fuel injector. The fuel rail is tapped for the extra injector - pre-made billet ones are available frm the likes of AEM. The fuel and nitrous are pumped through a Y-shaped nozzle. There's not really much in it between wet and dry.

Direct Port
Direct port kits are the same concept as the wet kit, but there are 4 nozzles, one in each the area between the intake plenium and the head. The minimum N2O shot for a direct port kit is 80-90. All direct port kits must be custom made to fit with plate kits available that bolt between the intake manifold and the head. Plate kits are limited to the amount of cars they are made for - usually Honda.

Engine mods for N2O?

1) Colder plugs around 2 heat ranges cooler.
2) Retard the timing.
3) Purge kit. Purge kits clear out warm nitrous and air bubbles. The kit is also a safety feature, so when you shut the bottle off all the pressure is released out of the line, extending the solenoid life.
4) Fuel pressure regulator and pressure guage so you can keep an eye on things
5) Larger injectors to increase fuel flow.

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