Talk:Nitrous oxide engine

I rewrote most of the text, as well as some adding some wikification. This page still needs work, but it's at least more readable than before. Caveat: I'm no expert on this subject, so someone who is had better take a look. A picture would be nice, too. Khaydarian 01:51, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

"Nitrous"
The compound is nitrous oxide, not nitrous. When a search is made for nitrous oxide, a disambiguation list should appear for the correct choice instead of creating this section with an incomplete name. --MartinezMD (talk) 04:41, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

History?
A section about when Nitro was first used for car tuning (counjoring up images of some uptight upper class person in 1908 going "One has got NOX, dont you know"), when it first appeared in racing, and when it first became very popular on the modification scene (i'm presuming after The Fast and the Furious came out) might be good 86.158.27.179 (talk) 21:33, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It was first noted in German war planes during WWII, but I don't know enough of the history to do it right. --MartinezMD (talk) 04:41, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
 * It was used in the modification scene decades before The Fast and the Furious came out. It was popular in the Daytona Beach Road Course back in the early 1900's when they were going upwards of 200MPH on the actual beach in one mile.  Please do not use The Fast and the Furious anywhere in the history section, it is absurd.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Erick880 (talk • contribs) 08:06, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
 * It was used before WWII by a few racers, but the only cars doing over 200 at daytona then were the land speed record attempts. Some averaged over 200 in the "flying mile", but the few I'm aware of used conventional aircraft engines with 2 or 3 powerplants to the vehicle. Do you have any references? I'd like to know just how early it was first used.Ion G Nemes (talk) 04:49, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Direct port question
In a direct port n2o configuration (or others), is n2o always required to run the engine?

Nitro?
Is this what some people commonly refer to as "nitro"? What is the legallity of it? Do professional racing divisions use nitrous, such as Nascar, or is it not permitted in certain racing leagues? How about street-racers -- are they allowed to use nitrous? All of these things need to be addressed in the article.


 * No, Nitro means Nitromethane, a different type of fuel. -Sprintstar 11:10, 20 September 2005 (UTC)


 * We need to be aware of some brand new commercial company poweredbynitrous spamming its links please monitor this***--Edited By a Professor of Life 23:26, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

On the Physics of Increased Horsepower from Nitrous Oxide
There are three possible mechanisms to account for the increase in horsepower associated with adding nitrous oxide: N20 has relatively little energy of its own to contribute to the combustion process, so the first option is not considered to contribute much power. The second option is the most popular. A reasonable assumption given the popularity of nitrous oxide in rocket fuel. However, charge cooling has been shown in testing to provide just as much, if not more, horsepower than the extra oxidant effect. The N2O expands as it joins the air/fuel mixture, this expansion cools the air, the resulting mixture is more dense, you can fit more in the combustion chamber, more fuel burns per stroke, and you make more horsepower.
 * 1) Combustion of the nitrous oxide itself.
 * 2) Extra oxidant allowing more fuel to be burnt.
 * 3) Charge cooling.

Just a little bit I remembered from my internal combustion course. Feel free to add / modify / summarize / ignore.

Hillgiant 19:39, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm glad to hear you say that, and I think this needs more detail in the main article. For example, Freon gas would provide a charge cooling effect, but is inert and wouldn't support combustion. On the other hand, if you wanted a great oxidizer, just use pure oxygen! Of course, this would immediately destroy the engine. Nitrous works well because of a nice balance of the two effects. Good charge cooling effect with just enough oxidization to burn the extra fuel used with the denser air. Right? (I'm no chemist!) Dustyattic (talk) 23:46, 21 January 2008 (UTC)


 * As I have understood it for some time, mainly from the motorcycle tuning world, the charge cooling effect is by far the greatest factor in nox tuning. The claim in the text that running with nox allows "an oxygen saturation of 33% to be reached" is pretty disingenuous, as it assumes that only nox is injected along with the fuel. This is obviously never the case, as it is only at elevated temperatures that nox releases oxygen gas. Hence, an engine with only nox going in with the fuel would fail to ignite at all. If the charge cooling effect were tried with an inert gas then the partial pressure of oxygen would be reduced and so although you may increase the volumetric efficiency, you kill the combustion efficiency. Any coolant gas has to at least maintain partial pressure, and nox actually raises it... slightly. This results in the "nice balance" that Dustyattic identifies above. Unfortunately, my old tuning manuals and such went the way of the dodo quite a few years ago, so I can't unearth a ref to that effect.  Pyrop e  16:03, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Incompatibility
This page states that Nitrous increases power output by like 45%, while the Nitrous Dioxide article says it produces 100-300% more power causing many engiens to break down. Which one, then?

This one is correct. --Mistertbones 17:19, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Compucar Vandal
69.174.230.64 is continuously deleting the link for Compucar Nitrous. Compucar does make kits, and it isn't a spam link. --Mistertbones 17:19, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Single Point Wet
I think we should call it a spraybar plate because a wet single-point system is usually a plate system.

That's not really true. Most single-point systems for EFI cars use a nozzle, not a plate. I'm thinking that we're better off discussing plates and nozzles separately so as not to confuse the issue. Also, please sign your comments with four tilde characters so we can keep track of the discussion. Thanks! Spinolio 17:40, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

law
This article needs a section on the legal restrictions surrounding its use in street cars. I'm not familiar with this but if anyone is the section would be agreat help to the article.--24.163.161.47 03:05, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Effect on engines
How about some discussion about the effect on engines of nitrous use? One thing I've wondered about is using nitrous in a non-racing context. Consider that many cars carry around a V-6 or V-8, but in 98% of street driving a small four cylinder would be enough. Could a nitrous system be installed just for when that oomph is needed, to improve overall mileage? Or would it kill the engine so quickly that rebuilds would swamp any possible cost savings, or would it be illegal under anti-pollution laws?

One of the problems with that idea is that nitrous is expensive. Retail costs can go as high as $5 a pound. It takes .8 lbs of nitrous to make an extra 100hp for 10 seconds. So as you can see, it would get fairly expensive very quickly to use it for daily driving situations.

Actually, I think the guy has a point. The cost of producing nitrous oxide gas is actually a lot cheaper than what you pay for it at the NOS dealer. Perhaps if nitrous injection systems became common place, the costs would come down. Not sure about pollution though; N2O is a potent greenhouse gas. What actually comes out the tail-pipe when it is combusted though? Sir Spike 18:24, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Removal of commercial links
I have removed all of the external links on this article because they all link to commercial retailers and do not provide any more information that is not already in the article. Per WP:EL, Links that are added to promote a site, that primarily exist to sell products or services are not permitted. Perhaps there are some non-commercial sites that can be linked to instead. Nacon kantari 15:24, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Created an FAQ section and added 2 direct links to a FAQ and basic info page that seems to be original content and very informative--Edited By a Professor of Life 18:05, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
 * This seems like a reasonable compromise.  Nacon kantari  21:22, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough :) --Edited By a Professor of Life 22:45, 10 October 2006 (UTC)


 * This edit The root of the site boasts **Our ALL NEW Store is now online and open! Click to enter**.. the Entire left NAV bar is to product checkout... and why does wikipedia need links to Cunsumer F.A.Q's?! this needs to be reconsidered, and content added to the article instead of links. Wikipedia is not a space for the promotion of products or services. Edited By a Professor of Life knows the policy, it has covered ad nausium here and here. Hu12 19:43, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Hu12 it's not about the commercial aspect there's tons of commercial links all over wikipedia as long as they have solid information on their site. MOST sites on the net have some commercial tie. This site and those specific pages are Factual, in depth relevant original content specific to the use of nitrous oxide in vehicles. It's information that is relevant, important and worthy of being linked to. There's no realy direct sales offers on those pages other than some basic navigation. Trust me it's info you want people who are looking into nitrous to know. I think this is a fair compromise being the links are to actual factual information pages. If you removed that you'd have to go through every single phrase, page, and topic and remove any single site that offers or links to a site that offers anything comercially. I understand you seem to have some personal beef but let it go man truce. --Edited By a Professor of Life 21:29, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

What happened to my article?
Yes, I am the original poster of the article, now under a different IP. I am not happy with some of the edits, especially with several of the companies that are involved in the business being deleted in top companies. I have never heard of BOSS NOSS.

Sincerely,

Zachary
 * Please read WP:OWN. Nacon kantari  00:17, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Companies
Why are you getting rid of some of the best known companies? We should include the companies in the best known companies because people want to know some of the better known companies. I don't want to start a revert war, but this article was fine for several months. I am not happy with what is happening, so please, lets stop with the revert war and include some companies.
 * Please read WP:OWN as I have said above. The list of companies is not needed and is spam regardless of there is an external link.  Nacon kantari  01:26, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Bit of Humor
This bit made me laugh:

"'This is also the method used to activate the Nitrous Oxide supply to The Humungous' Truck in the film Mad Max 2. It is not apparent if 'The Humungous' was aware or concerned about the possibility of engine damage, however.']"

Was this deliberate? Sir Spike 18:06, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Legal section
The legal section is too vague and too US specific. It only mentions two sports bodies, both US, and doesn't mention the FIA (The biggest Motorsport body in the world) or Formula 1 (The most popular motorsport by viewing figures). N2O is street legal in the UK and I belive (Though don't know for sure) its legal to have the bottle open on a public road, though it might not be and you could probably be done on oter charges.(86.31.188.11 (talk) 01:44, 27 September 2008 (UTC))

More than that, in the US what is legal to drive on the road, aside from some basic overall emissions regulations that are less restrictive that any of the state regulations, is a state issue, covered by state law and not federal law, and thus varies from state to state within the US itself. It does not say what state it is talking about. It's possible it's illegal for street cars under one of the federal emissions regulations but I doubt it as if you maintain a proper A/F ration N2O doesn't necessarily make emissions worse(theoretically at least) aside from the fact you are producing more power and thus burning more fuel to do so which simply making the engine large will have the same effect. In short this section needs a lot of work to put the laws of most of the other western countries(at least the English speaking ones given this is the English wikipedia) as well as the individual US states 99.135.26.129 (talk) 10:16, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Shouldn't this be merged with the Nitrous oxide article?
Or at least have a link to it?Skreeran (talk) 16:29, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I but this article have intensive discussion about its uses on car racing... So I suggest that this can stand a a seperate article... just change the title... automotive nitrous oxideJpogi (talk) 14:28, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

name of the article
seriously? nitrous oxide engine? I suggest to change it to... Automotive nitrous oxide.Jpogi (talk) 14:28, 11 January 2012 (UTC)