NITROUS OXIDE ( nos / n2o ) advice forum

have heard info that I should run one step colder plugs with no electrode tips for nitrous is this true?
An how far should I retard my timin?
Is their anything else I should know have read a fairbit of info just want confirmation
Setup is a mildly worked sbc turbo 400 runs 11.57 an recently just installed a sniper nitrous system 150hp shot

All very good and accurate information, so all I have to add is this;

If I had any sense I'd keep the following advice to myself, as without it your US brand nitrous kit would fail to deliver adequate results and you'd be more inclined to switch to a vastly superior WON system.

Obviously I don't have any of that kind of sense, so here's the knowledge you need to know about Surface Discharge (S D) plugs. Whoever told you to use S D plugs has NO idea what they are talking about and can't have even tried to use them on their own car.

BTW why is it that some people go about advising other people what to do, when they obviously have never even tried their own advice?????????

While S D plugs sound GREAT 'in principle' (no electrodes to melt off), in actual practice they fail on a more important basis.

When adding nitrous to an engine you increase the pre-combustion pressure which means you need more volts from the ignition to jump the same gap as before. If your ignition system doesn't have any surplus volts available to make the spark jump the gap at higher pressure (which most don't at some power level), the cheapest, quickest & easiest solution, is to reduce the plug gap, as it then takes less volts.

S D plugs have a FIXED & LARGE plug gap!!!!!!

So your basically tellin me my sniper solenoids arnt that great an that I should go out an get WON solenoids?
Thanks for the advice guys I'll take your word for it an see where it leads me

Just to show how much nitrous shit I've accumulated over time (and the fact that I'm NOT talking out of my ass), and much of it has been sold in large chunks (like a lot of ZEX garbage!). Some things are still brand new in box! I've owned all brands of kits pretty much: NOS, NX, Dynotune, Zex, Compucar, etc. All of them worked pretty much the same so I sold many parts off and just kept the NOS kit just for the ease of getting parts (at the expense of cost for the "premium" brand name):



A NOS fuel solenoid I got fed up with (almost always leaked after a bottle of juice), you can see the noid was pretty clean so no junk was getting inside of it. But what was up with the crap on the seal, chemical reaction from fuel additives?:



This was ANOTHER plunger seal that started to tear up after a rebuild (see the shiny speck?), which was replaced but that one started doing the same thing:




I just got fed up with all that stress and started to look for yet ANOTHER brand of nitrous kit that would cure my need for the JUICE, and that's when I found WON. A huge argument on another nitrous forum sparked my curiosity surrounding WON claims of superiority. Not long after that I made the switch and have been loving it!

Yeah shit sounds like it has being more trouble then it's worth,thanks for the heads up man I'll see how it goes an if it starts fuckin up I guess I'll buy another kit
So change the whole kit or can I leave the nitrous line an still use the bottle etc?
An can I buy this WON kit on the net?

Have you heard or tried the sniper system?its what they recommend at engine master Australia

They must love you on the US forums ,your sounding like trevs press officer ..

Very true Ted and the IMPRESSIVE part is that he has NO affiliations to my company and he's AMERICAN.
Such a shame that more people (especially American's) haven't had the WON experience to enable them to come to the same conclusions.

Unlike you all those guys have suffered at the hands of US nitrous companies and accept their deficiencies as problems TO BE EXPECTED. You on the other hand have only known the INCREDIBLE RELIABILITY OF WON.

BTW please tell these guys how long you have been using WON products and how many failures you've had.

For the record I did NOT say anything negative against the US components (in this thread) despite being inclined to do so and the comments made by Turbobox are entirely his own and they is TOTALLY INDEPENDENT of WON, so hopefully people will take more notice of them, than they have done when I've made the same comments myself in the past.

well i had a quick look up of my first endeavour into nitrous, started with my e46 diesel and now its on my mx5, so its about 6 ish years wow how time flies..i reckon i am a baby compered to other members ..but hand on heart not ONE problem in all that time and if there was ever a hiccup im man enough to say it was me either not fastening something or not opening the bottle one time
talk about being spoilt so personally i have nothing but good to say about my nitrous experience (with WON of course) and yet i still get negative remarks about nitrous in mx5 forums and some of the garages i have used for other bits,they do tend to have one thing in common..they have never had a nitrous system or a reliable one

You know what saddens me most, is that I've spent 35 YEARS making the best nitrous products in the world, to save people from the risk of FIREBALLS etc., that I experienced with MY first use of US brand nitrous kits and trying to educate the world, that nitrous doesn't have to cause the problems that US kits cause and yet the majority of people out there STILL BLAME NITROUS, rather than blaming the REAL CAUSE which is GREEDY, SELF INTERESTED, BRAINDEAD ASSHOLES that don't give a shit about their customers, who run the numerous US nitrous companies.

NOT ONE of the owners of the US nitrous companies cares one little bit about their customers, otherwise they would have been eager to stop buying their cheap generic junk from their existing suppliers and bought/sold my far more reliable and far safer products instead.

EVERY ONE OF THEM is fully aware of my products and they KNOW they are MUCH BETTER than those they sell and yet the STILL CHOOSE to sell UNRELIABLE, UNSUITABLE & UNSAFE products.

I've informed many people about this particular example but it warrants being said again;
Many years ago after Holley had just purchased the NOS company, Holley secretly bought some of my Pulsoids and put them through EXTREME testing (firing them for 10 seconds, then leaving them off for 2 minutes and then repeated the process 24/7 for SIX MONTHS), before inviting me to visit their HQ.
By the time I went over they had concluded that my Pulsoids were indestructible and I'd also discovered that they'd done that, so I went over thinking that they wanted to buy/sell them instead of their JUNK.
What they ACTUALLY wanted was MY OPINION of the FLAWS in their products but why they wanted that and why they went to the trouble of such extreme testing of my Pulsoids, is still a mystery to me for the following reason.
After they had acknowledge how impressive my Pulsoids were, I asked their TOP brass if they were intending to purchase them and their answer was this;
"Oh NO we couldn't do that, as we MAKE MORE PROFIT on our sales of solenoid SOLENOID SERVICE KITS than we do on ANY OTHER product, so we'd be cutting our own throats to do that".
Needless to say I was STUNNED at such a DISGUSTING attitude but Holley were in no way unique in holding this attitude, as I've had similar responses from ALL the US nitrous companies I've approached to buy my products.
I called one company up (NS) and asked; "Would you like to offer your customers better products?" and one of their TOP men replied "NO".

Since then HolleyNOS has denied even testing my Pulsoids and their front man Monty Smith has accused me of lying about it but as he wasn't even old enough to be employed by Holley at the time and the conversation was JUST between myself and the TOP brass at Holley (which Monty Smith has never been and will never be), I'm the ONLY person who knows that IT'S THE TRUTH!!!!!

If it wasn't the truth and now that EVERYONE KNOWS that WON Pulsoids are VASTLY SUPERIOR to ANY other solenoid, HolleyNOS (and the rest) WOULD BE BUYING THEM!!!!!!

NX were the ONLY company to show any interest but they were ONLY prepared to buy my Pulsoids if it was at the same price as the junk they were buying and when I refused they wouldn't pay even a slightly higher price. They then decided to TRY and copy my Pulsoid design but when they found they couldn't make them for anywhere near the price of their junk solenoids, they decided to compromise and copy JUST the base and material (alloy) but keep the same JUNK internals and just to make them look nicer (so they'd sell better), they put a carbon fiber coil cover on them and called them Lightning solenoids. Unfortunately for their customers, the FACT of the matter is that those solenoids are WORSE than the JUNK they previously sold, as they MESSED UP by copying the least important parts and changed a key part for a worse material.

What WORRIES ME EVEN MORE is the fact that this SAME ATTITUDE is held by the VAST MAJORITY of people running the VAST MAJORITY OF COMPANIES, so there will be vastly superior designs and products available for many of our needs BUT GREEDY ASSHOLES will be withholding them from US, because they can make more profit from selling us JUNK.

I'd bet all I own that there are cheaper and better ways to create propulsion for our cars etc. and cures for the common cold and possibly even Cancer, etc. but because the people leading those market sectors know they make MORE PROFIT by keeping things exactly as they are, WE ALL SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES!!!!!

SUCH PEOPLE ARE SELFISH BASTARDS & I HOPE THEY GO TO HELL!!!!

Oh boy, the fuse on this thread has just been lit!



Also, when I was performing my experiments years ago, I began to wonder why in the HELL nitrous kits were using solenoids and jets to deliver nitrous and fuel to the engine anyway. With the need to meter the mediums to get a certain quantity of them to the destination, why have a component that only opens and closes in a discrete form just to pass it through a metering component? I thought that it was a primitive form of delivery and that a CONTINUOUS method of delivering the nitrous and fuel to the engine was a FAR BETTER method of control (like a faucet valve). Then shortly after finding WON this year, I realized that this is EXACTLY WHAT THE REVO DOES! That's when I really knew that there was something special about High Power Systems and that they were ACTUALLY THINKING THE WAY I WAS! Now I feel like I've wasted so much time on other SHIT nitrous kits instead of just having fun by using a WON kit, that I am INCLINED to participate in any way that I can to bring people to the light.

I think that Trev and I have a very similar way of thinking and that's why our posts seem to be almost parallel in style. It's just a shame that only now did I discover this.

Outstanding post and I just hope you manage to save others from the curse of US nitrous kits, as I'm very close to giving up on my 35 year battle to do so. Luckily I have a few worthy successors who will carry on the battle but it will take every smart guy out there, to beat this message through the skulls of the masses of dumb ass fools who refuse to accept THE FACTS, so all your help is welcome.

And here's the PROOF!!!

What am I lookin for when I read a plug after a pass?

Assuming your shutting down the engine IMMEDIATELY after your passes, you're looking for NO CHANGE from a non-nitrous power pass and a nitrous power pass. The plugs (and I mean ALL plugs) should look clean and almost new with no overheating, melting/ distortion, or carbon/metal particles on the porcelain.

Ideally, a plug that looks PERFECTLY WHITE on the porcelain base with no signs of distortion, melting, or carbon/metal deposits would be the optimum nitrous mixture. But that's teetering on the edge for the hardcore racers. Meaning EVERYTHING from climate to the exact bottle pressure must be damn near where you need it to be.

Street cars should be slightly rich for safety and any atmospheric changes or slightly elevated bottle pressures.

What is slightly rich? A set of plugs showing a noticeably TAN color around the ENTIRE base of the plugs' porcelains with a clean/white appearance near the electrode is the desired target. This gives you a good margin of safety without sacrificing performance much. A BLACK/SOOTY appearance is too rich and the car will not feel strong on the nitrous. Additionally, you'll be looking like a dirty diesel with black smoke coming out of the exhaust.

What is too lean? A plug (note singular) that is too lean will show NO tan color around the base and ANY of the following: have a blue/purple color near the ground (earth) strap base; show melting at the electrode tip and ground strap tip; contain black carbon and/or metal deposits near the top of the porcelain base (this is detonation and you MUST find the problem quickly). And that's just to cover a few of many signs that the jetting needs more fuel. NOTE: For rich I said a set of plugs and for lean I said A plug, that means that there could be a set of plugs on an engine that could indicate RICH, yet just ONE or MORE could indicate LEAN, which means there is a dispersion problem or maybe a problem in general with that cylinder causing it to burn the improper mixture ratio.

Here are some pics to help you, they come from MY own car that is jetted SAFELY for EVERYDAY USE:



Note the timing mark and that there is no color distortion. YOUR timing marks may be in a different position, ideally the closest to the plug base without loss in performance or detonation. But some engines produce more overall power with less timing depending on their design.; it boils down to experimentation.


Always identify the cylinder where the plug came from to troubleshoot problems.

So your sayin I should shut down the car whilst still in full throttle or would it be okay to brake come to a stop then shut it down it will that not give me a proper readin

You want to close the throttle THEN shut down immediately after and coast to a stop. It only takes a few seconds worth of combustion cycles to erase the conditions the plug was under during full power whether it's a nitrous pass or not.

A common mistake is for people to continue driving to the pits (or even a short distance), check plugs, and assume that the tune they're running is good when in reality the results are useless at that point.

Condensed procedure:
FULL POWER > RELEASE THROTTLE > SHUTDOWN IMMEDIATELY to a STOP > PULL ALL PLUGS

Hope that helps!

EXCELLENT post and again there is very little I can add to that, other than the first 'obvious' sign of a plug that is struggling to cope with the extra heat of combustion, is the tip of the ground electrode has swollen and if you see that, you have had a VERY CLOSE escape as a second or so more and the electrode would have melted off and got stock on the exhaust valve seat, and any longer than that and you'd be seeing burned exhaust valves/seats, followed by damaged piston.

The solution to avoiding that problem, is to modify the ground electrodes as described in my book.

Sounds like abit of a tricky process obviously id have to put it into nuetral before shuttin it off
Full throttle put it in nuetral an then shit off as quick as possible?