To Spray or not to Spray

Well...sometimes you gotta do whatcha gotta do I guess! but holy smokes... sometimes these nitrous installs are pretty sketchy! We have seen a few scary installs in our time, zip ties even, which brings a question to mind: If there was a Nitrous TB plate that you could run instead of these fogger nozzles wouldn't that be the better option? Let’s think about this...

 First of all, the concept of using a throttle body plate as a means to deliver nitrous oxide to the incoming air charge is not a new concept. There are already several manufacturers making throttle body nitrous plates for late model domestic V8 applications that do just this. They seem to work pretty well too! In our experience they are really straight forward to install. Changing jets to tune nitrous and fuel delivery takes about 3 minutes. Freezing your throttle open after a long hit won’t happen anymore. It is far easier to achieve an aesthetically pleasing installation as compared to any fogger install, direct port or otherwise. Oh yea and there is the possibility of building the solenoids right into the plate which makes for a very compact installed footprint and less fittings you have to deal with.

 I know what you’re thinking though…you can’t guarantee even distribution! Well what is “even”? If you had to put a tolerance on it how tight would the tolerance be on variance between distributed nitrous per cylinder?   

 We looked hard for testing performed with a nitrous throttle body plate on a “small displacement” 4 cylinder application. We couldn’t find any testing performed with a high level of pedigree that satisfied our inquisitive minds. The question of even distribution is really hard to dismiss without cold hard data. Collecting the necessary data will require a dedicated O2 sensor be installed in each exhaust runner. Logging the air/fuel ratio simultaneously of each cylinder over a dyno pull will reveal nitrous distribution characteristics of the throttle body plate. Testing can also look at distribution characteristics with different shots of nitrous. For example, the distribution signature with a 50 shot might be different from a 150 shot. A controlled test on the dyno with the same car will result in the empirical evidence required to answer the question of distribution.

 So how does the nitrous throttle body plate work? There are two rows of cross drilled holes. One row for fuel. One row for Nitrous. The exiting jet direction of the Nitrous will intersect the exiting jet direction of the fuel. The velocity of the Nitrous will be much higher and pulverize the jet of fuel causing atomization of the fuel to occur. It would be like turning on a garden hose in one hand and then shooting that stream with a pressure washer in the other hand. The result is an atomized "wall" of mixed fuel and N2O just behind the throttle blade.

We will be revisiting this subject after testing is performed with a test car on the dyno. We will post up all test results and data logs for discussion. We are really excited about what we learn next! Until that time here is a video talking about some of the Nitrous Plate features as it currently exists in concept.

 Stay Tuned,

Brandon Vazquez

Mechanical Engineer

KStuned