I have been to the drag strip a few times last years with my Corvette Club and enjoyed it very much. I went for the first time this year on Tuesday. My best run was a 15.6 at 87 MPH. My second run I ran against a 1990 Mustang 5.0. I got to talking with the driver after the run and found he was running with a 100 shot nitrous and it cut 2 seconds off his 1/4 mile time. He said the install was easy and the kit cost was around $500. Could I install a similar system on my 1985 (stock except for a Borla cat back exhaust) Corvette with 82K miles without damaging the engine, I would only use it when I went to the drag strip? Would I have to make other modifications? I just race with the Club on test & tune nights. Any information you could provide would be appreciated. Need the BASICS as I know nothing about nitrous, other than it adds oxygen to the intake mix. What is a 100 shot?

 

There's a pretty good write up on my website. I did it about 2 years ago and I have some different thoughts now, but for the most part it should help explain nitrous to you.

www.jkvette.cz28.com

A 100 shot means that you will be adding 100 horse power with nitrous. 100 is usually considered to be pretty safe, with 125 more dangerous, and 150 being the upper limit of what the stock engine will handle.

To answer your questions:

Yes, you can use nitrous on your car without damaging or shortening the life of your engine.

No other modifications would be needed. You might want to turn the distributor a little to retard the timing a few degrees when you want to use the nitrous, but it probably isn't necessary with a small shot.

The basics are that you spray nitrous and fuel into the motor. You use a bottle of nitrous to add nitrous, and you tap into the stock fuel injection line for the fuel. Both the nitrous and fuel are injected through the same nozzle. Typically, there is an arming switch in the cabin that you flip or press when you want to spray, and another switch mounted on the throttle linkage that activates the system when the gas pedal is pressed to the floor. That way, you can arm the system with the cabin switch while you are sitting in the staging lanes. Then, when you floor it, the nitrous kit activates.

Good luck, let me know if there is anything else I can answer for you.

 

Thanks for the information. I read the "Nitrous 101" and it answered all my questions. The nitrous install page does not seem complete? I would like to see some installation instructions before I make a final decision. Again thanks for the good information!

 

Because of this topic I did some snooping around over at thirdgen and found this neat setup.



Pretty sneaky. A custom job? I've never seen one hidden in the valley.

I'm still ignorant to nitrous setups as a whole but I also read some hiding techniques such as stashing solenoids inside the cruise control servo after you hollow it out. That's if you don't mind going without cruise control.

 

Wow, thats an awesome setup. Never seen one like that before.

 

............

 

That kind of stuff has been going on since the early '80's... We used to disguise the nitrous and fuel lines with rubber hoses (those old smogger engines had about 250 different vacuum hoses, so it was easy). The well-heeled racers did direct port under the manifold.

Here's a shot of an old direct port setup on a car that was in our shop last year:
http://advancedautocc.com/item---79-...ry_engine.html

These days, you just fudge the numbers ("Oh, it's just a 75 shot..."), since everybody knows about or has nitrous.