- Bye bye, little buddy.
(rock music)
(gears clicking)
(motor whirring)
(dramatic music)
How much nitrous oxide
can a bone stock short block take?
That's what we're going to find out
on this episode of Engine Masters,
presented by AMSOI
and supported by Mr. Gasket and Earl's Plumbing.
Here's the thing.
Nitrous does not blow up engines.
People blow up engines.
And we're going to show you how to not be that guy.
We're going to take steps along the way here
as we make more and more nitrous oxide power
to show you how you can tune
to actually prevent an explosion.
But let's be honest,
there's no entertaining in not exploding
and there's no chance that that sucker lives.
This is a stock Chevy small block.
It's a 305, so it's no loss.
No crying, dry your tears.
'Cause that sucker is going to go.
With it's cast cranks, stock rods,
stock bolts, cast pistons.
It's junk.
But we have hopped it up a little bit.
It's got a Comp XE268 hydraulic flat tappet cam.
That is an Engine Quest Vortec head.
It has aluminum roller rockers also from Comp.
Big hankin' single plane intake manifold.
Big hankin' 850 double pumper
and of course, the precious.
The two stage NOS Cheater,
capable of 500 horsepower.
But is that motor capable of a 500 shot?
No.
But we're going to find out how much it will take.
First, we're going to run into the Dyno
and baseline this thing.
And find out how much power
this pooch makes naturally aspirated.
AMSOIL knew that we were going to splatter the guts
of this thing all over the Dyno cell walls.
And they said, "You know what, when that happens
"it's not going to be the oil's fault."
Because, bam.
DOMINATOR racing oil.
They've recommended this every time that we've gone
with a super charge or a nitrous application.
Because it has a really tough film strength,
so the oil doesn't squirt out from between
the bearing and the rod under that heavy pressure.
But what's interesting is that they went this time
with the SAE 60 weight oil for the 305's final meal.
This is the equivalent
of going to the chair for an engine.
Yeah.
(dramatic music)
(engine revving
I feel really guilty now.
- [Voiceover] Yeah.
- I feel like we're about to shoot a puppy.
That thing runs pretty good. (laughter)
What did this thing make?
358 horsepower and 323 pound feet of torque.
And look at the torque curve.
- No, it's good.
It really is good.
If this thing were in a guy's Camaro
with a 150 shot on it, which we know we can do.
This would be good.
- Ready?
- [Voiceover] Yup, ready.
- Okay, nitrous time.
With N O S nitrous.
You can't say nos.
You can't say noz.
It's clown shoes, just don't do it.
Here's how nitrous oxide works.
Stored here in this bottle, it's liquid.
You inject it into the engine, it's a vapor.
And you've got all these little molecules
that have one atom of oxygen and two of nitrogen.
And because you've got oxygen in there
and you're injecting it into the engine,
you're bringing more air into the engine.
Which means that you can burn more fuel.
When you burn more fuel and more air
all smashed into the combustion chamber,
you make a bigger explosion and more power.
Here's how you do that.
You inject the nitrous and the supplemental gasoline
into your engine with some kind of a plates system.
This happens to be a plate
that goes underneath a Holley carburetor.
It is an NOS Cheater two stage set up
capable of 500 horsepower
of additional nitrous into your engine.
As I said, nitrous doesn't blow up motors.
People do.
So people can take steps
to make sure that doesn't happen.
And here's what we're going to do.
You must control detonation
when you're on nitrous oxide.
The first thing that we're going to do with that
is run Rocket brand 118 octane gas.
That will just control that detonation,
help the thing survive a little bit longer.
Next thing you have to do with nitrous.
Because that explosion happens
so much faster than it does naturally aspirated,
you have to retard the ignition timing.
Otherwise, the cylinder pressure
is fighting the piston coming up.
And that is just disastrous.
What we're going to do to prevent that
is use an MSD power grid ignition system,
which is pretty advanced.
MSD also makes a bunch of other lower end boxes
that are designed to retard ignition timing
right when you hit your nitrous oxide button.
So you always want to do that.
Spark plugs.
When you're running nitrous,
you need to run a colder spark plug range.
Now remember, that doesn't mean
anything about the power of the spark itself.
Instead, it is the temperature
of the center electrode there,
because of the length of the path
to the cooling passage.
So that is a very cold spark plug right there.
Also in your tune up, you really need to
pay attention to your air fuel ration.
You could hurt your engine whether it's too lean,
meaning not enough gas, or if it's too rich.
A lot of people say fat and happy.
That is not necessarily true.
You go too rich, you can hurt your engine on nitrous.
I highly recommend you get an oxygen sensor like this
and a reader to power it,
and either a data logger or a gauge
or something so that you know that you're
in a range of, say, 12 and a half to one,
that wide open throttle on your nitrous.
Remember.
The air fuel ratio that makes
the most power naturally aspirated on your engine
is the same air fuel ratio
that will make the most power on the nitrous.
Now, that's all a bunch of tuning steps
that you can largely take care of
with this chingadera right here.
This is a nitrous controller.
It happens to be an NOS launcher.
This is a really advanced controller
that can do a lot of things.
It can shut off your nitrous
if you're too rich or too lean.
It can read our nitrous bottle pressure.
It can activate your nitrous
in a whole bunch of different ways.
Throttle switch, whatever you want it to do.
But most importantly,
it can control the behavior
of how you're applying the nitrous to the engine.
Because you'll hurt an engine
if you just hit it with the nitrous really hard.
What you'd rather do, instead of hitting
it like this, is give it a nice push.
Put the nitrous into the engine in a delay over time.
And that's what this can do.
We can ramp the nitrous from
say, 50%, to 100% power delivery
over a period of time that we select.
You'll see that as we move on today.
Now, the last thing that we didn't control at all
in this test is the fact that you want
your engine to have good internal parts.
Forged pistons, rods, crank.
Our 305 has none of that.
Here's what the problem with that is.
Not only can the pistons be fragile
and just fail under the power,
but a big deal is piston ring end gap.
Of course, the piston ring goes in here.
Seals the piston to the cylinder.
Now the end gap right there, of course,
gets much smaller when you put this thing inside the engine.
The problem is, if you are gapped
for just a regular street engine,
when the ring heats up under nitrous,
that gap can close up.
When it does, it breaks the piston.
That's probably what we're going to see here today.
And it could lead to catastrophic failure.
The smart thing to do is to take
any engine apart that you're going to run with a
power adder and just file those rings further open.
Did we do that?
No.
But I bet you this thing will live through the 150 shot
of nitrous that we're going to start with right now.
We're going to spray it?
- [Voiceover] Yep.
- Yeah.
- Got all the wiring tidied up and everything.
(chuckles)
- [Voiceover] Sweet.
- Okay, we have this thing set up right now
just on one stage, it's 150 horsepower.
We already have it jetted.
We've already verified when it's running
naturally aspirated that the MSD
is pulling the timing out like we want to.
It's got 35 degrees total naturally aspirated
and as soon as we hit the nitrous,
it drops to 29 for the 150 horsepower level.
This is the handheld controller for the NOS launcher.
You can go through the menu here and do all the settings.
I'm not going to ramp the nitorus in
on the 150 horsepower set up.
We're just going to hit the button, boom.
150 horsepower, later on
you'll see it's tuning more with this.
So the last thing we have to do
is hook up the hose to the nitrous bottle.
We are monitoring pressure very carefully here.
You want, like, 950 pounds of bottle pressure,
and we need that to be stable through all our tests.
Just because that's a way to maintain a consistency
and to make sure that you're
delivering enough nitrous to the engine.
If the pressure is down, it'll go lean.
What we've got here is a hot water bath
for the nitrous bottle.
We'll throw it in right here.
And the perfect temperature for it is 92 degrees.
Look at that.
As if by magic, it is at 93, 92.
So that bottle is set.
Going to hook up a line directly to the nitrous solenoids.
And bam.
Got it fired up, bottle's open.
150 horsepower ready to go.
Are you going to purge it?
(speaking indistinctly)
Is this going to blip it?
(motor whirring)
(engine revving)
Our 350 horsepower 305
is making 537 horsepower, no.
- 557.
- 557 horsepower. (chuckles)
(laughter)
200.
That happens a lot, actually.
We notice that...
The factory jetting ends up delivering more.
Ho are we looking on air fuel ration?
- Well, I have to tell you.
Part of that is because when the system is optimized
and you've looked at everything
as far as air fuel ratio and timing.
And it's all doing...
What it's supposed to do.
It's not unusual to make a little
more power than they're actually rated.
- So what's our call right now?
- I'm already impressed.
I say we just put it to bed.
- I know it's pretty happy.
- Put a blanket over it and say we--
- [Voiceover] That was good.
- So, this is a good setup.
Right?
- It is.
- Yeah.
Let's step it up.
- What would be better?
More power.
- Yeah.
- [Voiceover] Using your wrench.
- Just leading the pressure (air hissing)
out of the line so it doesn't seep into the engine.
Always a good precaution.
What we're doing here
is changing the jets in the nitrous system.
- [Voiceover] There's your jet.
- And these are very much
like jets in a carburetor.
They're just a metered orifice.
This thing has a whole in it.
It is a fixed size.
This one, I believe, we just ran
was 63 on the nitrous, 59 on the fuel.
- You never want to put more nitrous in it
without getting the right amount of extra fuel in.
Or you might just burn the whole thing down.
- Now that we're stepping up the power levels,
I don't want to smack the motor as hard.
So instead of going all the nitrous all in,
I am going to ramp it up so that when Steve
hits the button, it gives us 50% of the nitrous hit.
And then goes up to 100% over one second.
Now we've got it jetted to 250.
I think we're finally going to see that 305 crest 600, right?
- [Voiceover] That's the idea.
- Unless you pulled out too much tining.
- [Voiceover] Wow.
- [Voiceover] That would be awesome.
- [Voiceover] Just trying to be conservative.
- Yeah.
(dramatic music)
(engine starting)
(engine revving)
(yelling)
Two horsepower per cubic inch.
- Whoa.
That is awesome.
- That is awesome.
We've just made 620 horsepower with a 305 Chevy.
Exactly two horsepower per cube.
- [Voiceover] Wow.
- That's hilarious.
I've gone through the emotional roller coaster.
- Really?
- Because at first I was like, this is a junk 305.
We're going to scatter it against the floor
in Steve's Dyno cell. (chuckling)
And then I was like, I love that
warm and cuddly 305 that's making good power.
And now, I want it to make 700 and live.
I don't want to blow it up anymore.
- Well, you figure if anything pays you back
that high of a dividend, then it deserves to go back.
- You can't put it down.
It's no longer like Old Yeller.
- [Voiceover] No.
- Yeah, it's not. (laughter)
So next step, two systems, 150 each.
And I'm going to go into the control room
and we're going to ramp both of them from 50% to 100%.
- [Voiceover] Right.
- [Voiceover] That's the thing, I'll get the bottle ready.
(suspenseful music)
(engine starting)
(engine revving)
(groaning)
(engine sputtering)
- [Voiceover] Wow.
- There we go.
I'm going to call that head gasket, how about you?
- No, it slipped out the...
That was blow by.
- I let off the butt.
- I didn't like that, something went wrong.
Lot of smoke out the valve covers.
Okay, I think we owe it to the 305
to tear the heads off and see what went wrong.
I want to see how hurt it is.
- It's not catastrophic, though.
It's still in one piece for the most part.
- Yeah, rods aren't hanging out of the bottom of it.
- That's positive.
(laughter)
- Okay, and...
This one's hurt bad.
- [Voiceover] What do you see?
- Piston on it.
This is out of the number two cylinder.
And look how it's got silver all over it.
In fact, it's filled up the crevice there
between the porcelain and the metal here.
That is aluminum off the piston.
And there's some oil in there too.
This is the number four cylinder,
and you can see that it's got some of that also.
And it was a little wet when we first pulled it out.
So our guess is that it just killed a head gasket
between the number two and four cylinders.
But what we really want to do
is putt it apart and find out how dead that piston is.
- When you melt your piston
and completely fill up your spark plug,
that's usually not good.
- [Voiceover] Right.
(light music)
- What are those little chunky metallic bits?
(laughter)
- [Voiceover] That's piston.
- [Voiceover] Yeah.
- [Voiceover] Piston sand.
(drill whirring)
- We gather here,
not to mourn the death of the 305.
But to celebrate the nitrous horsepower in the 305.
- That's right.
This is not a funeral, this is a celebration of life.
- That's right.
(groaning)
- Yep, it pinched a ring.
What you can see here really clearly
is just classic nitrous failure
with an engine that is not nitrous ready.
Right here, the whole top of this piston is missing.
Just fractured, and it's beat up here
from the pieces flying into the chamber and getting smashed.
What happens is that the piston ring,
which I can see the end gap is right there.
It butts together and then lifts like this.
Because it's a circle, it's got nowhere to go.
It's got to expand somewhere.
It cracks the piston,
and then the piston just destroys itself.
We are lucky that the piston didn't shatter.
And then the connecting rod swings around,
just saws the block in half and you end up
throwing away everything underneath the carburetor.
This thing's actually saveable.
The cylinder wall's not even that bad.
Poor baby.
(soft music)
We made two horsepower per cubic inch
out of a 305 Chevy.
- And then we blew it up.
- You know, this was the completely
textbook, predictable result of what we were doing here.
But I think the real lesson is if you want
to do this, take the engine apart.
File that ring end gap wide open.
Just let it be junk.
And then you can spray a lot more than we did,
because the failure was nothing more than that.
- You're changing your tune, now.
It was a blown head gasket in the Dyno cell.
- [Voiceover] It did blow the head gasket.
- [Voiceover] Yeah.
- [Voiceover] After that happened.
(laughter)
- I guess you're right.
So we were both right on that.
But it did pretty well, I'm proud of the 305.
- You know, can you really call us engine masters
when this happens?
You can't, and that's a wrap until next time
on Engine Masters, presented by AMSOIL
and supported by Mr. Gasket and Earl's plumbing.
(gentle music)
You got to make sure not to touch
the nitrous when it's coming out.
It will literally burn you.
- [Voiceover] Wow.
That was dangerous for our burner.
- I know.
You know what this 305 is like right now?
- [Voiceover] What's that?
- It's like a puppy on your farm.
- Oh no.
- Yeah, it's a nice, cute little warm puppy.
You like with it and it's a good doggie.
But you know it's not going to last long.
(laughter)
- What are you saying?
Now I'm a puppy killer?
- It's true.
Well, we kind of know what went wrong.
But now we've got to tear it apart
and actually see what the level of death is.
'Cause death on an engine is not
really a black and white situation.
- Unlike a puppy, which is either alive or dead.
(laughter)
- [Voiceover] Here we go with the puppy.
- More definitive...
When you're talking puppies.
305s, there's more gray area.