IonNinja

i think he may have that backwards, with a dry kit after a certain point u may need to upgrade injectors because they are supplying fuel for both the engine and nitrous. And of course your injectors can only flow so much...

slowion2

actually he might not be so off, as a lot of old school guys have this as rule of thumb. some of the older cars did not have strong enough fuel pumps to support the added demand of the fuel solenoid. on these cars though, you're fine for what you plan to run (if I was going direct port over 150hp then I would probably upgrade it).

wdsoccer

so i can run a 50 shot of wet nitrous system with a stock 2.2l? whats the highest shot on a stock 2.2l?

slowion2

I've been running a 75 shot, as have many others, for quite some time. I'd bet it could take a 100 shot but that's not something I'm planning to try without a spare engine built ready to swap in.

stick to the 35/50/75 area and you should be fine. don't forget the colder plugs as well and stick go the highest octane fuel you can find.

wdsoccer

so anywhere between 35 and 75 shot will not screw anything up in my motor? what colder plugs would i need to get and what octane do you recommened

slowion2

I run NGK BKR7E-11 gapped to .035 but there are a few others that have other plugs that are also the same heat range (2 steps colder)

get the highest octane you can find. if 91 is it, get 91. if 93 is then get 93. you want the highest octane possible to resist detonation and knock as much as possible.

there are some times where we have experiment with toulene but that's another topic all together...

Blububble

some good info here, some not so good.
my suggestion is to go buy a book about sport compact nitrous. i think thats the name of the book. but you will find much better...and professional information in there. not necessarily vehicle specific, but a 4 cylinder is a 4 cylinder.

the rule of thumb is 20hp per cylinder. www.zex.com
the zex kit uses a nitrous management system which claims to never run rich or lean.
what kills engines is improperly tuned. however with nitrous, its really hard to tune. thats why a fuel system upgrade is suggested over 75 shot. that means buying an aftermarket fuel pump such as a Walbro. that increases fuel pressure for the added gasoline needed with higher nitrous applications (100 shot-150shot).
since combustion chambers do get much hotter using nitrous (thats a fact that can not be disputed, and if you try, you need to read up on nitrous) you need to run colder spark plugs. Timing. it is suggested you retard the timing of your vehicle using a 75 shot or higher. unfortunately, when not spraying retarding the timing takes away some power.

There are so many "safety" items you can add for nitrous applications and i think they are all BS. BS for street cars, not for racing applications when 200-300shots are used. ramp profiles and all that other blahblah. not for your street car, save your money.

Yes! Nitrous is the most cost effective way to get big power gains from your car. There is nothing on the market today that will give you an extra 75 ponies for $600.
It has its pluses and minuses as does a s/c, a turbo, or any other power adder. with nitrous, the driver can make catastrophic errors quickly. so there are some things you should know before you start spraying. dont hit the rev limiter. it's a fuel cutoff and fuel is shut off while the nitrous still sprays which causes an instantly lean condition. and being lean means blown engines.
Warranty. someone said your warranty is invalid if you install nitrous. i took my car to the dealer and they saw my switch and they knew what it was. we talked about it and so on. they then replaced my transmission neutral switch without any other questions. So, is your warranty invalid with juice installed? Depends what breaks. throw a rod, probably not covered. water pump fails, probaby covered. see what i'm getting at? engine problems which they can relate to nitrous, probably not covered. other than that there is no reason why any other part of your car will not be covered.

Frequency of use. someone says dont use it more than once a day. BS! use it as much as you want to. ok, let me rephrase that. if going to the track and you'll be using it for 12 seconds or more, you will need to let the engine cool down between runs (remember the temps i was mentioning in the combustion chamber???). After a strip run, your bottle pressure will decrease. when nitrous comes out of the bottle, its very cold. give the bottle heater time to warm up the bottle to optimum pressure again...wont take long. i've run cars on the highway back to back. short bursts for about 5-6 seconds is not a problem.
and dont worry about this. i think i am even making it seem more serious than it should be. use it when you want to. its that simple. but 10lbs runs out pretty quick.

Bottle pressures.....bottle pressure is important because like someone mentioned before, they measure a 75 shot at optimum bottle pressures. if you have a cold bottle, you wont feel that "hit" when you get on it. cold bottles have low pressure. hence the need for a warmer. and low pressures in the bottle will not cause a lean condition which is what you DONT want. with the Zex system, you wont run rich either. so keeping the bottle pressure at optimum levels is mainly so you get what you paid for...a 75shot.

I just dynoed my Z. i have been running a 100shot for some time without any issues.
My Z rear wheel torque increased 94ft/lbs on a 100 shot, but only about 70hp. Bad news is, my bottle pressures weren't where they needed to be. thats one of the first things they asked me when i took my car in. bottle warmed up? i dont have a working heater.
So, with proper bottle pressures, my hp numbers should go up quite a bit. i suspect another 30hp. or roughly there about. the torque numbers will probably not increase much at all.
Air/Fuel ratio..on that dyno run, they said my a/f ratio was "pretty safe". 100 shot pretty safe? how could that be? lower bottle pressures.

Shift early when racing. 1 for safety, 2 because you will make more power and quicker times staynig away from redline. by the time you get to the higher rpms, your torque curve has already taken a dump and is going downhill. the only reason you're hp still goes up is because of the added rpms. thats all. power=torque. people will debate that statement all day long, but it's factual. hp is derived from torque.

Anyway, i have typed way too much. there is much more to nitrous than this. invest $15 in a book and read up on it. it will allow you to discern what is truth and BS when people talk about nitrous.

Enjoy the juice! and dont put any NOS stickers on your car. thats like putting all your eggs in one basket and letting everyone know what you got. keep it a sleeper.

Rick

slowion2

^^^Excellent write up! If you could go through and take all of my posts and PM's on this board and combine them that's pretty much whta you would get. I admit, I did use the wrong terminology when referring to chamber temps, I was thinking intake charge, but hey nobody is perfect. It's also good to see someone else who has faith in Zex systems. Not sure when it started but they got a very bad rep for a long time, and quite honestly they're one of the safest kits on the market.

What all is on your Z and how much did it actually dyno at? I bet if you had you're pressure right you would have had a better gain on that shot.

It is nice to see someone else with knowledge that seems to be just as irritated with the bs that goes on from word of mouth and flat out rumors.

Fatalis

Im curious as to why you think with a bottle heater, youll net 30 more hp, yet your torque will stay about the same? I want to know why the torque would be the same.

Horsepower = (Torque x RPM) / 5252

For hp to increase at a given rpm, wouldnt torque have to go up? Im not calling you out or anything, im just wondering. Im just trying to give my ion a little more hope for when i get my ass in gear and order a bottle heater .

And, you mentioned safety items. The only safetey item i would get is a window switch. I agree with everything else, save your money. But a window switch nearly guarantees you wont hit that fuel cut off.

slowion2

realistically, it makes sense, since the longer you spray through a gear, the more bottle pressure has the potential to fluctuate. with a heater on and warmed, you're making somewhat of a buffer there to try and maintain pressure, as opposed to heating it, spraying, and having it drop 50-100psi by the end of a gear. so you would down the road get back the hp and torque that would normally be lost with no heating element.

it totally feels like the bottom fell out when that happens, I used to hate it the week I didn't have any sort of heater.

PayJ

the only flawed step in his setup is the TPS switch...in my old honda i learned that when you TPS starts getting old you nitrous will start hitting unexpected in traffic and in other driving conditions...the object of the TPS trigger is when your throttle is in the WOT(wide open throttle) position it will send a comunication to your Solenoid to allow nitrous to leave trhe bottle and into your...throttle body i assume. but when you TPS(throttle positioning sensor) goes bad it doesnt know what WOT or closed is so the end result can become bad...and on mmy honda the TPS was riveted into the Throttle body and i could not replace it...I hope this is different in the cobalts...any way my sugestion would be to go with a trigger switch...safer and my reliable

slowion2

eh, it's 6 of one and half dozen of the other really Pay. I see it from both sides of the ball, and for the record all Honda's I've seen have the WOT microswitch, but you do bring up a very good point in that if your TPS is going, the sensor wont' be accurate. then again, this is why you need to keep up with the condition of your car. I'm sure it was acting funky in normal driving with the system disarmed, so one would assume to not arm the system until the problem fixed (although, it can be hard, nitrous is a hell of a drug haha).

and yes, the 2.2, 2.4, and 2.0 ecotecs all have a removable TPS.

Bika

iTrader: (3)

the ecotec build manual states that the largest "safe" shot of n2o is 75 from a wet kit. ive been boosted, juiced, and everything in between. i really do prefer nitrous oxide to boost. its just as safe when used properly and doesnt effect normal driving conditions or fuel economy.

PayJ

i know but what you said about the upkeep of your car...this is very important but my honda was a 94 accord with a h22a prelude engine...i built this engine for damn near a year and a half and gave it a turbonetics t3/t4 .57trim, and 75 shot of juice...and the only flaw was the throttle body...lol and i must say honda F'ed up with their design with this TB. the actual sensor was mounted on and into the TB and for me to replace the sensor i would have needed to buy a whole new TB. i wasnt going to send 400 bucks on a stock spec TB when im running more fule and air in this block...so i just took the nitrous off and retuned my ecu for the boost and thats the end to that story...if someone would just learn how to tune these beasts...i would have my nitrous back on the cobalt in a matter of minutes. But what everyone should know you should/have to build your engine internally before adding any type of chemical mixture into the block...i always spray just before the throttle body and it still leaves massive carbon on your pistons. not to mention our allum block...just right for a rod to fly out..so be safe and be prepared to have fun

slowion2

yeah that's kind of dumb but good way for the manufacturer makes money down the road.

however, and it's been said a bunch or times, you don't need to build up internals if you're sticking with a 75 shot and lower, just take the right precautions. there's not going to be any more carbon deposits than normal unless you have it on a rich shot. if a rod "flys out" on one of these it's typically due to user error.

not trying to tear your post apart, but there are false statements for the ecotecs in it, while if it was on another engine it might be totally feasable. but yes safety should be priority.

I just remembered who you are now, you joined a few months back, totally forgot haha.

IonNinja

I was under the impression that nitrous actually cools engine temps...not true?

Sounds reasonable to me but then I guess if I think about it, the opposite could be true since essentially you are burning more air/fuel

8cd03gro

using nitrous does increase engine temps for sure. more air, more fuel, more molecules in the checmical reaction, which means more heat. that's what i was saying earlier but i really didnt want to argue it.

Fatalis

I just know that the nitrous decreases the intake charge like slowion said. This means more horsepower becuase the air will be denser along with the nitrous. I guess

Nitrous doesnt add too much temps, providing the A/F ratio is at safe levels. Its probably just because its used for short instances and the heat disperses quickly enough.

slowion2

well think of it this way: if it didn't raise temps during combustion at all, you could run stock timing and stock heat range plugs, but it's common to knock back a few degrees of retard and go 1 to 2 steps colder on plugs, so it makes sense.

Blububble

Thank you Slow! i was just about to make a sharp, brief rebuttal. i'll do it anyway.
i said the combustion chamber gets hotter shooting nitrous and i said it it was factual and cant be disputed. so dont question me! just kidding.

Blububble

Fatalis,

I guess the one advantage i have over anyone else here is i have seen my dyno sheet. max torque is about 4k. shortly there after it falls off sharply(low bottle pressure). so by the time i reach my max hp (roughly 6500rpms) my torque is quite a bit lower than max. if my torque curve stays flat for longer, such as up around 315ft/lbs at lets just say 6500rpms, then my horsepower number will be sky high in comparison. use those numbers and you have 389hp at 6500 rpms without one extra ft/lbs of torque across the curve.

i dont have my dyno in front of me, but it appears i was making only 250ft/tq at 6500rpms for a net hp rating about 309.

the bottle heater should make a nice difference in how long the torque stays without fading. i expect a bit more hp with just a little bit more torque than what i initially had.

Hope that makes sense.

Blububble

Fatalis,

By the way you were right. torque does have to go up in order to get more hp. however, it's where in the rpms that it goes up that counts. the max torque number isnt used to calculate max hp.
Rock on white bread!

slowion2

yeah that's what I thought you were getting at, I notice it on mine when I do a pull and I've let it sit and "cool" even though pressure is up. then you hit it and the needle dives on you, used to really annoy me lol.

haha it's all good, I'm here to help as well.

Fatalis

Blububble - Thanks, I think I get it. While you may hit 315 torque, it would be lower in the rpms and drops lower as you ascend into the rpms, thus, hp will not gain that much since the torque is dropping because of lower pressure. However, if that 315 torque is flatter, by keeping bottle pressure up, than the 315 torque in the upper RPMs will make much higher horsepower where as before it fell. Thus, your torque would stay virtually the same with a max of 315, but more horsepower will come out of it, because of the torque curve, like 290 hp, 315 torque vs. 390 hp, 315 torque at a given RPM.

^^Right?^^

It sucks for me because I have no bottle heater, so my pressure is low after like, one run. haha.

Slowion- yea that makes sense where you pointed out the timing and heat range. So, would retarding timing give the plugs more time to cool down, which helps eliminate pre-ignition or detonation? Is that how retarding timing works? Im going to have to read up on it again. Its been a long while.

Thanks for the info guys.

1fstss

a wet kit can be bad and so can a dry, with a wet kit you risk puddling in your intake then BOOM, its not wise to spray a dry kit on a forced inducted car, but the 2.2 isnt force inducted so your ok, if i where you id just go with a 50 dry and call it a day but like i said a wet kit isnt always the best choice. I have lots of nitrous experience, i have a 97 SS on a 150 dry shot, a 95 Z28 on a 2 stage wet kit (300 shot) i had my 94 firebird on a 50 dry, i have my cobalt ss/sc on a 75 wet, ive installed many many kits for friends, ive been around the block.