You hear all these rumors about nitrous being so dangerous and all. Who has actually killed an engine from spray?

Off the top of my head, a buddy killed an lt-1 with a few 85 shots.

I know there are some popular cases on here but they seem to be huge shots really pushing their engines anyways.

 

I killed a D16Z6 honda engine with spray, melted two of the intake valves right on up the stems and took out all the spark plugs at the same time......it was a learning experiance to say the least.

 

no one on here has done it. lol

 

Nitrous is no more "dangerous" than any other high performance mod. If you do it wrong, it will break things. Do it right and it will still shorten your engine life (all performance mods do, to some extent) but it's not like nitrous is even flammable.
I'll grant that nitro might be considered truely dangerous, but I don't think I've seen anybody running that one the street.

 

It is not necessarily the nitrous that kills the engine, it is the lack of fuel or having too much timing.

 

To much fuel will kill it faster than to little, RICH IS NOT SAFE !!
To much timing will hurt it wether its rich or lean.

If you spray enough your bound to hurt something sooner or later... you can learn alot that way but it aint cheap. LOL

 

Nitrous rarely hurts the motor. its timming and fuel

 

i hurt my first motor on a 100 shot.

i had the wot throttle controller, msd window switch, and this was a t.n.t kit

well i had the car in 3rd for my burnout. (automatic trans). i pulled up to stage. downshifted "i was thinking that i was in od and i thought i was putting it in 3rd, but in reality i went into 2nd. I launched.. very poorly.. car felt like it was REALLY Slow.."leaving in 2nd had alot to do with it.. well the nitrous kicked in at 3,000 rpms.. i looked down and noticed i was in 2nd.. so i upshifted into 3rd, the car hit its kickdown gear and the nitrous fired, shut off and fired again.. poof went my engine.. pretty much driver error... i felt really stupid... been scared to spray since!!!

 

You can get a pretty good start with using a nitrous jet calculator. Then from there you can read the plugs and adjust the fuel jet/timing.

I was mainly talking about pressure drop, definitely not good. A standalone fuel system is a great way to keep your motor safe on the unit.

 

You can't say that running nitrous doesn't beat the dog **** out of your rod and main bearings though. I imagine this is the number 3 engine killer with 1 being a bad tune and 2 being overuse.

I've seen pics of rod bearings side by side of a blown car and a nitrous car and the bearings from the nitrous always look like ****.

 

Wrong. Nitorus is no harder than any other power on the bearings. atvs car had 200 + runs last year and the bearings were butifull. Its in the tune. detonation kills bearings or bad machine work.

 

I have to disagree with this. Power is power, regardless of how you make it. How much power you make is purely a matter of how much (properly mixed) air and fuel you can get into and out of the cylinders. Air is pretty much always the limiting factor. Blowers get more air into the cylinder by forcing it in, under pressure. Nitrous system do it by using nitrogen as a carrier for oxygen and injecting this into the intake or directly into the cylinder. The end result is EXACTLY the same. You get more oxygen into the cylinder and thus can increase the amount of fuel to make more power.
It's true that anything that increases power will also decrease the lifespan of your parts. This is true regardless of whether you're running nitrous or forced induction or whatever. Nitrous, in and of itself, is not bad for an engine. A bad tune or driver error will break the engine. The nitrous will not.

 

I had tons of 11 second passes on my stock motor. with a 150 shot

 

Sorry but I have to disagree. A turbo or a supercharger progressively increases power to the rotating assembly. With nitrous, unless you're using an electronic progressive controller you are hitting that rotating assembly all at once with that extra O2/nitrous and fuel increasing cylinder pressure driving that slug down the bore harder than normal.

Next time one of you nitrous guys pull your rod bearings look at the top half of it and you'll see the beating they take. Just my opinion. Remember I said it was 3rd in line so I'm not disagreeing with the tune.

 

pressure on the bearings is directly related to cylinder pressure...its no differant then a super charged or turbo at full boost...nitrous is hard on them the second it comes on...turbos and superchargers are the same when they get into full boost...and id even say harder because most boosted cars make more power then nitrous cars, thing that might save them is at higher rpms they are pumping more oil to cushon the beareing

 

I guarantee you have no clue what the **** you're talking about.

Power is power, it doesn't matter how you make it.

 

i had 100 passes on my car all in the 9 and 8 second range over 2 years. i pulled my car apart and could have reused my bearings. when i sold the rods, i sent the bearings because they could be reused if someone was on a super tight budget.
bearing wear is a direct cause of poor motor assembley, or a poor part. spun bearings etc happen, but beat up bearings in a car is due to dirty put together, wrong clearances, no matnance to the motor/oil etc.

 

Research more lol.

 

i've seen blowers break more **** than anything... put a big hi helix blower on there and tell me its not hard on cranks or bearings.... the tension put on the crank by them is unreal..... a helix blower has more of a hit than nitrous ever dreamed about.... talk about instant torque

also a helix blower is not a gradual progressive power ramp... you touch the throttle and its WOT no matter if its open .25" or 5"



a safe nitrous tune up does not always consist of what fuel or timming is used... a good nitrous tune up starts with a motor thats purpose built for nitrous.... ring gaps, rings, piston dome, and compression ratio (to name a few small things) have a very big effect on how the motor reacts to nitrous....

this is why my nitrous tune ups look very odd to many people....

 

and progressors work by opening up and slapping shut.... they dont hold the plunger barely open.... so in essence the motor is seeing that full shot mili seconds at a time