who's right?
 

O.K. in a heated nitrous discussion (spl) I was arguing the fact that nitrous, if used properly and in the right amount, would have no ill effect on the engine. This "other guy" was convinced that nitrous, no matter in what amounts will, in time, fry your piston rings and cause compression issues. But, I stood firm in the belief that if you have the right N20/fuel combination you should be fine...what do you guys think?

I don't think it is correct to say that nitrous will have "no" ill effects on an engine when used properly. However, when it is installed and tuned/used correctly I think that it no worse than any other power adder. In fact it's probably better than the other power adders because the adder cylinder pressure and stresses are only placed on the motor when you want to use the nitrous. Where as with a turbo or supercharger you are placing added pressure and stress on the cylinders almost all the time. Don't get me wrong, there is more than likely small amounts of boost when just normal driving, but it's still added boost regardless.

I don't think you'll fry rings or cause compression issues just by running nitrous though. There are customers that have been spraying the same motors with fairly large amounts of nitrous for years and have not hurt anything at. I've even had customers tell me that when they tore their engines apart for routine maitenance the internals looked just as good as naturally aspirated motors with less miles on them then their nitrous motors. So I guess it all just depends on how you use it and how you have it tuend.

What he said.

Recently I have read that over time it will work harden the pistons and 'may' make them brittle. Then again as Jeremy points out so will any other power adder ;)

I have been runing N2O on cars since the early 80s and there are people here who have been doing it much longer then that ;) IF it was so bad I am sure we would have moved on to some thing else by now :devil:

thanks!!!

First thing you must understand is that motors begin deteriorating the moment you first start them.... even without nitrous a motor is eating itself from day one. Just a matter of time. Now racing even an NA motor accellerates this process. The more extreme the amount of power the more the wear accellerates.

Now with say a big cam and heads, high compression race motor you are lifting high, revving high and making more cylinder pressure ALL the time. Even when you are driving to the mall to pick up chicks. On a nitrous motor when you aren't on the bottle you are not accellerating the wear at all. Properly tuned nitrous motors will FAR outlast a similarly powered all motor vehicles of the same displacement.... it's just simply a factor of being able to turn off the mods.

U R Correct.
No way in time would a 5hp shot fry a piston. lol

Ricky

thats what you think-
didn't do my lawn mower alot of good-