I was reading this thread over on the Highpower board about heaters and bottle pressure (http://www.noswizard.com/bboard/view...144&forum=3&94) and was wondering your take on it. Which of these two products do you think is best suited for a daily driven vehicle? It seems like the bottle heaters are a low cost option that are more suited for the occasional spray. And the N boost system is more for those who want the most out of their systems. Am I correct in thinking that? Also what's the expectations for something like this for your kits? Thanks.

 

Heating the nitrous is a very 'cost' effective and easy way to raise the pressure. The downsides are:
1) Heating the nitrous makes it less dense and brings it closer to boiling, which equals less power.
2) Most heating blankets are very inefficient and take a long time to bring pressure up when cold. The blankets that do operate quickly are very demanding on your electrical system.
3) The more you heat a bottle the greater the pressure drop is when cold, as the ambient temps are not near enough to stabilize pressure quick enough. So you could be running very rich at the end of a run and actually be losing power.
4) Blankets are ugly and cluttered with wires. etc. This is just my opinion of course.

These reasons are why we don't offer a heating balnket. All we could offer is what everyone else has and this is unacceptable to us.

Nitrogen boosting is better for these reasons.
1) Nitrogen does not raise the temperature of the nitrous, so you get that denser and more powerful charge.
2) Nitrogen does not suffer the pressure drop as heating does. You get a nice stabil pressure the whole run.

Nitrogen boosting up until this point has 'not' been user friendly for street use because of the high cost of regulators and having to boost manually. Trev has been working with a few more ideas and products to develop a much more user friendly device. I'm not sure of all the details myself. I have my own ideas and projects in the works, but I'm looking at a long time before a finished prototype is made.

For now if anyone needs anything the heating blankets are about your only option. They work alright, but as always we believe there is a better way and are trying to figure it out ASAP.

 

So as long as your bottle pressure is not too extremely low then there's probably not too much of an advantage to using a heater or blanket?
I would probably only have the ***** to run it in the warmer weather anyhow.

 

If you live in a warm climate I don't see a need for a heater. You may actually need to cool the bottle down if you want to use nitrous on hot days as pressures can go way beyond 1,000 psi. This can be done easily by venting the nitrous a bit. Our jetting power levels are rated at about 950 psi, so if your bottle temps. are lets say 800 from the ambient temps you can just increase the nitrous jet to get the power you want. This can be done as long as the system as excess to flow. For example if you buy a kit to flow 150 bhp and only need 75-100 bhp then you have excess to work with.

Another option available in the U.K. now and coming for our U.S. cutomers is a BOV for the bottle valves. Instead of using blow off discs that are inconsistant or expel all of your nitrous if they blow, we have an adjustable BOV that is factory set at 1,000 psi and bleeds any excess pressure off. Once the pressure drops below the set pressure the BOV closes again. Any pressure being released is gas and not the dense liquid that you want anyway. If you live in a very hot climate that may be opening the valve a lot you can just increase the pressure setting.

 

Sort of on topic..... Sorta....

Look close here you will see a Mod Motor contestant at FFW finals getting tossed for Venting issues



I thought cool I got a shot of the nitrous purge .. then realized that the purge was going to continue till the bottle was empty...



EDIT - I know that these pictures are from the stuck purge not the BOV - I just wanted to post them cause they were cool pictures from this weekend

 

Good chance that the purge solenoid failed and kept purging. I have seen this a lot and first hand several times with customers. We used to recommend U.S. purge kits so people could save money and a purge should last as the work load is minimal, but we have had to many fail and don't recommend this anymore.

The venting of a BOV on the bottle valve itself is a completely different concept. In the picture you can see that liquid nitrous is being dispersed and you don't want to do this

 

Ok a couple more questions now...

When someone purges their nitrous lines are they trying to get the air out of the lines or the nitrous gas?

Don't most nitrous companies sell BOV and vent tubes for when you install the bottle inside the car to prevent the nitrous from going everywhere if it leaked or built up too much pressure?

How do you gauge which jet to use in reference to the pressure in your bottle? How hard is it to change out the jets in the W.O.N. kit?

So if you are serious about running nitrous the minimum setup you should have is:

- The 150i kit with bottle
- Nitrous pressure gauge
- Progressive unit
- BOV
- Extra set of jets to compensate for bottle pressure
- Wideband A/F unit to make sure you didn't use too much nitrous jetting or not enough fuel

Atleast in the Texas heat that's a good setup right? I'm just looking to do a 75 shot whenever I do get the kit. Maybe bump it up to 100 with the right settings on the progressive unit

 

I can't talk about our products specifically as I am not a vendor yet, but I will answer questions in general.

1) Nitrous is NOT air. The chemical percentages are different. When you purge, this is to get rid of the gaseous nitrous and get more liquid into the line where the power is at.

2) Most companies sell a blow off tube to attach to the blow off disc port. The typical valve has a blow of disc in it that is set at 1800 psi. This disc is very inconsistant in what pressure is blows at. Not to mention you will lose all your contents as the disc is a one time use only and then needs replacing. A BOV will work just like a tubo set-up where excess pressure is released and then the valve will close again. No other company has a BOV design. A BOV isn't necessary, but just a nice accessory for added safety and performance.

3) There is no set jet range for any car. This is why I shake my head when a kit lists a 'guaranteed' hp from a given kit. Every motor is different. A NA motor may only put out 50 hp from 75bhp jetting and a forced induction motor may put out 125hp from the same jets. All numbers are theoretical(this is how we view them anyway) so each application needs to be addressed as such. The only way to know if you are getting the hp you want is to know how much power your fuel jet supports with a proper a/f level. Since your fuel side is pretty consistant as pressure doesn't change like nitrous pressure can, you can base the proper jetting off of this. Example: With 950 psi nitrous pressure you made the hp you wanted with a given fuel jet to match. Now if the nitrous pressure drops, increase the nitrous jet in small increments until that same a/f is achieved. Log the jetting numbers to bottle pressure and you will know what to do for the future. A simple road test and plug check can achieve the same results. We actually don't need a dyno as our kit can use a static test which is less stressful than a dyno also, but this is another story.

4) Going back to the theoretical power output. I will have some customers with a motor built to perform best in NA form. Problem is this is the opposite of best nitrous performance, so you may not get near 150 hp out of 150 hp jets. When building a NA motor you want big intake ports and cam lift. Nitrous doesn't need a big intake port as it's condensed, but you do need a big exhaust port and cam lift to get rid of all the extra gases which isn't built into a NA performance motor. Your best bet for a daily driven motor that will be OFF nitrous majority of the time, is to build the motor to your daily needs and then try to get what you can out of nitrous and be happy with it. The added power will always be enough for most cases though.

5) The parts you mentioned are what should be purchased with any kit. The a/f meter is personal choice. I don't have the time, resources, or desire to test every one out there so I have no input on which ones are actually doing a good job. I stick to the old method of looking at plugs and using our static test.