Alright, after a buddy of mine blew up his engine with nitrous I decided i would make a post describing what nitrous actually does to your engine and what can happen if you just slap a nitrous kit on it.


Nitrous Oxide


We have all seen the Fast and Furious movies where they hit nitrous and flames come out the tail pipe and they have an instant boost of speed. Always a cool thing to see. Or we have seen a car purging nitrous out their hood. Always a cool show and an awesome speed boost.


Nitrous Oxide is an oxidizing agent that allows more fuel to be burned than normal. While hitting that nitrous switch gives you an immediate power boost it can also destroy your engine and alot of other things.


When nitrous is introduced into the engine it makes a bigger "explosion" than normal combustion. Due to the bigger explosion you can actually blow a hole through your pistons that look like someone shot a slug through the piston head, and if your unlucky it wil blow the rings out and send a rod through your block. Not a very fun repair, nor cheap.


Piston Head blown apart:




Valves that got really messed up with Nitrous:



It wont always happen everytime you use your nitrous but at some point it is probably going to happen if you dont have hardened pistons and an engine at least semi-setup for nitrous.


Ill use my car as an example I have a Nitrous Cam, Hardened Pistons, Carb set up for nitrous, and a 150 shot 15lb bottle of NOS. I havent hit my nitrous yet, and i dont plan to. I dont want to destroy my engine with it.


Yays about Nitrous:
-Instant power boost.
-Purging looks cool.
-Cheap power increase.


Nays about Nitrous:
-Severe Engine Damage Possible
-Might be against the law to have on streets depending on your area.
-Can be expensive to refill and some tracks wont let you race with nitrous.


So what would you rather spend money on? A nitrous kit and a new engine? Or other performance mods that can do the same thing as nitrous?

 

Mods that can do the same as nitrous, would rather be fast all the time instead of fast on the switch and slow off it

 

only babys are fed with a bottle in my eyes, i dont like nitrous at all i think its a cheap fake way to try and make your car fast. i want my hp 24/7 not only when i press a button. IMO

 

It's like your car on crack - very bad!

 

Agreed... if anything it should only be a show piece and not for usage

 

Exactly, i would rather be fast all the time and not have "Speed on a Switch" haha.

My car was originally set up for nitrous but i just keep the bottle in for show now.

 

no steroids for my car. real muscle only.

 

I dont like nitrous. In class when I was studying to be a mechanic while in high-school my teacher said that every time you hit the button it adds 10000 miles to the motor. so 3 shots add 30k to what your odometer reads. Not worth blowing an engine over unless im racing for $10k and sponsors.

 

most of us are all still driving v6's

That depends, a 50-100 shot on certain engines can be completely safe and not harm an engine at all, depends on the engine and all too... a 50 shot in a Monte would be perfectly fine, if it was tuned to be ready for it..

 

You can run a 150 all day on a stock motor and if you aren't an idiot about it and make sure everything is in check first you will be ok. My friends LS! trans am has 150k miles on it, he's been using nitrous for years, no issues.

If I had a motor built for spray, and all of it set up, I would use it. That's like putting on a supercharger and taking off the pulley because you don't want to blow up the motor.