What does nitrous oxide do to a car?

Answer 1

Contrary to popular belief, nitrous oxide is NOT flammable, however it IS an oxidant under certan conditions - which happen to be found inside a car engine.

If you inject nitrous oxide (in liquid form) directly into the engine (or via the intake system AFTER airflow metering) and then also inject additional fuel you enable the engine to take in far more oxygen that it would usually be able to take in via normal aspiration or even a turbo/super charger.

If you use a progressive controller that ramps up the additional fuel and nitrous smoothly over a second or so, it is MUCH easier on the engine and drive train, helps to prevent loss of traction at the tyre and as a side benefit, your cylinder of nitrous lasts longer.

Nitrous benefits the engine in other ways too, as the liquid N2O expands when it exits the delivery pipe, there is a fantastic cooling effect which, especially with tubo charged cars, can provide a very much needed cooling action on the air charge being drawn in to the engine. Additionally even tiny amounts of nitrous (and additional fuel) can almost completely eliminate turbo lag.

Providing additional fuel is added along with the nitrous (a "wet" system", engine damage is much rarer than most folks assume - especially when used progressively and with some common sense. Forcing a 50HP engine to make an extra 100HP from nitrous may be unwise - but something a 300 HP block should be able to handle effortlessly.

The biggest cause of engine death when using nitrous oxide is allowing the engine to run lean. ALWAYS aim to run a little rich and do NOT trust narrow or wideband sensors to protect you from running rich.

(Nitrous can also be used with Diesel which are typically even more durable than a petrol engine).

Lastly, the reason pure oxygen is not used is at least two fold: First it is an extremely hazardous liquid because it will enable almost ANYTHING to burn - you included - if it is ignited and secondly the "flame front" is far too fast. As such, if you injected liquid oxygen into an engine, the engine would be "detonating" rather than combusting.

I have used N2O for around 7 years on a street legal car, insured for N20 use on the road (Liverpool victoria used to do it in the UK, as do a few other specialists).

Hope that helps.

Mark