Watch this video and learn answers to frequently asked questions about what upgrades you should consider when adding nitrous oxide-generated horsepower to your stock vehicle.

The gang at Summit Racing will help you think about the fuel system and piston upgrades you might need to accommodate all that extra horsepower.

 

Hi I am Dave and I am here to answer more of your questions about nitrous.

This time around we are going to answer more performance- based questions regarding nitrous systems. One question we hear is: ‘Can I use a nitrous system reliably on my stock engine?’ The answer is yes as long as you follow the horsepower recommendations set by the manufacturer. Companies like NOS typically recommend anywhere up to 60 additional horsepower on a four-cylinder engine; you can go 75-100 additional horsepower on a six-cylinder, and say you can go anywhere from up 140 horsepower nitrous system on a small block and say 125 – 200 horsepower off a big block. Anything over that, you are looking to make some upgrades to your engine. This leads us to our next question which is: ‘What type of upgrades do I need to make if I am looking to make some huge horsepower increases through nitrous?’ To start, you might need to run a high-flow fuel pump to make sure you are meeting the additional fuel demands of your nitrous system you may even need to look at running a dedicated fuel system just for running your nitrous system. You are also looking at retarding your ignition timing. NOS generally recommends about 1 ½ – 2 degrees timing retard for every 50 horsepower you add. Other upgrades you may need might be a colder heat range on your spark plugs, and if you are really going high with the horsepower—up over 250 additional horsepower—you want to look into adding forged pistons to your rotating assembly, things of that nature. So we talked about stock engines. What about blower and turbo applications? Well, nitrous also works great with those applications because it creates an intercooling effect on the incoming air which has been heated or compressed by the blower or turbo. By doing this you can expect turbo lag to be reduced and you can also bump up the amount of boost that you run. For more questions on nitrous or any other high performance related topic, please feel free to leave questions in the comment section below.