legacycentral bbs

Well, I purchased two nitrous systems off of ebay recently.

The complete one with all the parts (a wet system ZEX with the "Air Accelerator") is being shipped tommorrow cause the seller is a wanker and took his sweet time.

The second one I bought was incomplete and set up for a 300 hp shot on a built chevy 350 with a plate system. However, it did have the fuel and nitrous solinoids, two steel hoses, and the bottle which just happened to be full. It also came with a MSD 3 stage retard system which may be useful down the road but it needs a MSD ignition to work.

Since I like immediate gratification, I decided not to wait for the ZEX and just cobble the second system together. All I needed was a few switches and a fogger nozzle and some jets.

Well, while I was able to purchase a fogger from Baxter Autoparts out near PIR, jets, and especially small jets, are not sold ANYWHERE in Portland as far as I could tell. Of course I didnt call everybody but I did call, Baxter, Radke, Horsepower Freaks, Ground Zero, Thrifty and a few others. Everyone could order me some but that would take a few days or more.

But damnit, I couldn't wait! I chucked some brass rod into my minilathe and started making little brass chips. I ran down and bought a mini drill set of 20 drill bits (the largest is 1/16th") and made myself two .018" jets, one for fuel and one for nitrous. I had an existing jet for the 300 hp set up to copy. That jet was .136"

If you have the chance to buy jets, it is cheaper unless you have "free" time. It took me about 45 minutes a jet (and jets are only $6-$8 apiece retail) but I now could make them faster, especially if I made a bunch, now that I know the sequence to make them.

The .018 jet is about a 35 hp shot supposedly. [Edit a .018 is more like a 18 hp shot] And I have huge solenoids that will supposedly allow more pressure through than small hp kits solenoids would. So I decided to be safe and do real small jets.

I install the solenoids, the fogger the switches and what not. I test everthing without the motor turned on. Everthing works fine, no leaks. With my heart pounding (cause I really could fuck my motor up if I miscalculated and dont know what I am doing) I take off at about 10 pm tonight and head for the freeway.

I get up on the freeway and am about 3000 rpm in 4rth and I floor it and press the magic button.

Nothing.

I try again.

Nothing.

Well at least nothing blew up. I take an exit and pull into a lit parking lot and do some detective work. Blown fuse. Hmmmm.

I head up the street to a 24 hour Thrifty auto parts store. Thank God. I buy some fuses. Stick one in. Start the car. Or should I say I attempted to start the car. Takes a little coaxing, kinda rich. Finally starts. I drive it about 150 yards around the store and onto a side street. For some reason I turn the car off. It will now be a full hour before I get it started again.

I try and try to get the car started. It turns and turns and turns. It is running really rich I am about 95% sure. Sometimes it barely starts but then it dies. I try to bump start it but no go. Finally I push it under a streetlight and think about it. I do have the fuse out so the fuel solenoid is not on. I never did have power to the nitrous so I know (hope) I didnt screw the motor up. But I am definately running rich. So I pull (literally cause I was stupid and didnt bring any tools) the fogger nozzle out of the intake (the plastic part before the throttle body). I lay the nozzle on top of the intake tube and turn the car over.

Gas EVERYWHERE. The damn fuel solenoid is bad and either has something something jamming it open or is tweaked some other way. A quick run back to the Thank God Its 24 Hour Auto Store and buy a wrench set and some bolts for blocking off the fuel line and after removing the fuel solenoid I finally get it to a roaring start! Whee!

Back to the shop at about 11:30. Tear the fuel solenoid apart and find the rubber stopper is somehow off center and has an off center ring imprint in it. So I razor blade the top off and carefully sand the rubber down flat. A quick test back on the fuel line is positive. Hook everything back up and cross my fingers.

Back to the freeway and give it some gas. Press that magic button. It Freaking Works! It is like Light Speed! I am going 1 million miles an hour!

Ok, it worked but just barely. No push you back in your seat or even close. But it definately picked up the pace. Obviously I have installed too small of jets OR the pressure in the bottle is way low (I will have to weight the bottle soon). However, the higher the RPM, the greater the increase in power and I bumped it up to 100 fairly quickly.

So, now I just have to make a few bigger jets and get some colder spark plugs and we shall see how much power it takes to blow the motor.

Night all.

sounds like you had a hell of a night congrats

I was reading and read the "zex wet kit" thing and was like, "man, I hope he knows it's NOT a wet kit!"

those things are a dry shot that monitors your mixture, when you start to run lean it turns it off. and then when you're ecu backtracks itself and figures out what's going on, it turns itself back on and continues this horrible horrible sequence of events all over again.

versus the REAL wet kit, which has solenoids.

I say wait and go grab some jets, it's too much work IMO to do it the way you did it.

although I would do it to to try it out! who wouldn't? you got all the stuff there to play with, why should life be unfair and make you wait?

Interesting...

So you made the fuel jet the exact same size as the nitrous oxide jet? I don't know anything about nitrous oxide setups, but how do you know that's right?

If your fuel mixture is off, that could account for why you're not getting as much out of the spray as you expected, right?

Depending upon the system, the fuel pressure set up and how much power you are shooting for determines the size of fuel jet in comparison to the size of the nitrous jet. I used this site,
http://www.diy-nitrous.fsnet.co.uk/nitr ... etting.htm
to figure out all the English equivilents of the jet sizes and then did comparisons to holley and zex recomendations on their kits.

Zex does make a "wet" kit and a "dry" kit but we will see what I actually get in the mail since I bought it off ebay from someone who didnt know what they had. If it is a dry system I plan on adding a fuel solinoid anyway.

Ok, a little update.

First off, the fuel jet is sized in relationship to the nitrous jet DEPENDING UPON fuel pressure. If you run too large a fuel jet, you get a boost of power but then the engine starts to bog because you are running too rich.

I now have an appropriately sized fuel jet in place, though it may still be a tad too large, but this ensures that I dont run the opposite way, which is lean and screws the motor up.

I am up to, and stopping at, a 70 hp shot which is a .039 nitrous jet with a .026 fuel jet. While my head is not whipping back, you feel the serious increase in power!

The increase in HP will be tested this Friday at PIR late night drags. The seat of the pants testing has shown an 11-13 mph increase on our test track called the Fremont Bridge OnRamp. My all time high for this section of on ramp was 99 mph. With nitrous I am hitting 110 mph WITH an extra 100-150 lbs in the car.

By knowing my old best time at the track, and factoring my increase in speed, my new ET is estimated at 15.2 to 15.5, an increase of a little over a second (from 16.601)

My 60' time should drop to -2 now as I do use the nitrous in 1st but only after I have completely engaged the clutch so I dont fry it.

I intend to upgrade to a 2 stage nitrous set up for more power in 4th gear. When the supercharger gets installed I will be rolling back the nitrous shots once again and working them back up until I hit the 230 chp range. Then I should drop into the high 14's. My biggest concern is the clutch so I cant be doing the same style drop launches I was doing when I was bone stock and had no power!

My son now says "Dad, turn on the fast gas!"

You squirt in 1st? How? I'm barely in first for more than a few seconds. 1st gear is ridiculously short in our cars.

I squirt for a ridiculously short time! But it helps that 60' time!

Since I am a weak little NA to start with, my 1st takes longer than your 1st to hit 6000 rpm. By adding NO2, I am just turning my engine into your engine (or closer anyway). If my engine was as powerful stock as it is with NO2, I would NOT hit nitrous in first because then it would be so fast I would probably break traction, an axle, or the tranny.

I hope to get a video camera for Friday night and film the dash.