We all know (usually from cultish movies) that red button with inscription N20, which causes the car to accelerate wildly and everything around becomes blurred. But do you know what exactly is “nitro“ and what does it involve?
As you already know (OK, maybe you don‘t), by injecting the nitrous oxide into the cylinders, we cause short-timed increase of power. This technology was developed during World war two by German aircraft engineers. This kind of performance-boost was used by recon planes when they got too close to stronger enemy combat aircraft. Later, other countries started to equip their planes with nitrous oxide injection, even though they knew, that this reduces the reliability of engine.
Since 1950, NASCAR racers doped their cars with nitrous oxide. Also their colleague Smokey Yunick, who first applied this system on a car, used this trick. Up to present day, there are some cheaters in NASCAR races, that use this kind of power improvement. In the early eighties, they started to use Nitro in drag races.
Today, injection of nitro is considered the same kind of engine tuning as for instance much more aggressive modification of crankshaft, increased compression ratio, sporting exhaust system. All these improvements lead to better performance. The advantage of this is high power, the disadvantage may be the short-time effect (10-20 second use is recommended). To use nitro safely, the throttle has to be entirely open and the engine revs should be above 2500 rpm at the time nitro is engaged.
And what about emissions? All theories about exhausting bad emissions during combustion of nitro are groundless. Composition of substances in exhaust pipe in the moment of use positively affects the transformation of pollutants near catalyzer. Despite this positive impact on environment, nitro is prohibited in regular driving (we must take into consideration the danger of using nitro on road).
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