Rookie N2O Questions

[DanStokes]

- I left the bottle valve on overnight at the last meet and had no N2O in the morning - air pressure but no nitrous. Is this normal? Should I be searching for system leaks?
- Why don't they pull a vacuum on the bottle before filling it? That would result in more N2O and less residual air - I think.
- The local shop freezes the bottle overnight before filling it. Is this a good thing?
- I have a used back-up bottle on the way for $120 including shipping. Is that an OK deal?

Thanks for whatever info y'all have
Dan

[IRONHEAD]

Re: Rookie N2O Questions

yes look for leaks.. but more than likely the selnoid. leaked..
don't start the engine.. or boom..
crack the throttle blades open and leave them open for awhile

[DanStokes]

Re: Rookie N2O Questions

I fired it up at the track that morning after the all night leak and nothing fell out. I guess that's good. I'll hit all the joints with soapy water and see what I see. Learning.........

Dan

[Bamfster]

Re: Rookie N2O Questions

The solenoids do seep a bit that why you need to be sure the valve is closed for extended periods of time. Never heard of freezing the bottle to fill it, but that doesn't mean it not normal practice .... I know when I pick mine up from being filled they're really cold.

$120 for a used bottle is about right as long as it's still in test ... hydrostatic test required every 5 years.

[BangShiftChad]

Re: Rookie N2O Questions

I've known guys that freeze the bottle. It fills faster and more completely supposedly.

Always turn the bottle valve off after every run, or anything. It's a good practice to get into so that you always know when it is off and when it is on.

The solenoids do seep sometimes, but check for leaks because that seems to be a good sized leak.

[Bamfster]

Re: Rookie N2O Questions

I run Teflon plungers in my solenoids to eliminate the fuel swelling of the rubber ones, they tend to seep more.

[DanStokes]

Re: Rookie N2O Questions

I know to turn the bottle off after a run. I just didn't DO it. Maybe I'm getting so old and feeble-minded that I need a pre- and post run check list.
Pre-Run
1) Get into the car.
2) Get out of the car and turn on the N2O bottle
3) Get back in the car
etc.

Post-Run
1) Stop the car
2) Remove helmet, sun glasses
3) Exit car
4) Remove seat belts and try to exit car again
5) Go to rear of car
6) (what am I doing here?) oh, yeah - open trunk
7) I wonder why the trunk's open. Did I make the whole run that way? As long as I'm here I might as well shut off the bottle. Someone left the darn thing on - hope there's still some left.

Like that.

Dan

[BangShiftChad]

Re: Rookie N2O Questions

Dan, that is super funny. My dad actually has a piece of tape on the dash of his Camaro that says. "Turn on the fuel pump stupid"

he wrote it to himself to remind him that he needs the electric pump on at the track. It cracks me up.

[TC]

Re: Rookie N2O Questions

Dan check the AN fittings on the lines. Open up the bottle so the line is pressurized, take a solution of water and dish soup and spray it on each connection and see if bubbles appear. If they all check out fine, then spray everything, even the bottle valve, you never know where a leak can form(middle of a hose ;)). If everything checks out, then most likely your nitrous solenoid is leaking.

[Ron Ward]

Re: Rookie N2O Questions

The purpose of freezing the bottle is to reduce the pressure in the bottle. Think about it... a bottle HEATER is used to INCREASE bottle pressure, freezing the bottle will DECREASE bottle pressure. As Chad said, this aids in quick filling of the bottle.

Unless the entire contents of the bottle has been emptied and the valve left open to the atmosphere, there will be no residual "air" in the bottle. The only gaseous substance in the bottle would be vaporized N2O. Once the bottle is brought back up to pressure with a refill, this vaporized N2O (or at least some of it) will return to a liquid state.

Even if there was a bit of regular atmosphere in the bottle, it wouldn't cause an issue. Keep in mind, an automotive nitrous bottle uses a siphon tube that picks up nitrous from the bottom of the bottle. This is why nitrous bottles are mounted with the valve higher than the base. This siphon tube will not transfer any of the "air" from the bottle through the system, because the vapor or "air" is lighter than the liquid N2O and therefore stays at the top of the bottle. Does that make sense?


Ron

[DanStokes]

Re: Rookie N2O Questions

Almost, Ron. I had to change the valve (broken stem) so I've seen the inside. Anyhow, if you start with a bottle full of air and add N2O on top of it you'll have air over nitrous (as you pointed out, the heavier nitrous sinks in the roughly horizontal bottle). So if you use up the N2O the air is still in there - assuming the air hasn't mixed with the nitrous, and I don't think it does. Add nitrous and the bottle returns to air over N2O. That's why I was thinking that if you drew as much vacuum as possible on the bottle before a fill you would stuff more N2O into the bottle. But I'm not sure I'm right on this.

Evidently my bottle had SOME nitrous left as there was still a little pressure in the bottle but not enough to get the engine to respond positively. I had a leak in my pressure gage and had to leave it off (I'm fixing that!) so I don't know the actual value of the residual pressure.

It's because of the residual air that starts off in the bottle that I was musing about making the bottle as empty as possible before the fill.

TC - been doing the soapy water trick for years. There's a commercial product called "Snoop" that we used in the Gov. It's essentially soapy water but packaged in a way that you can shake the bottle and dispense 100% bubbles over the possible leak. It's much more sensitive to leaks and easier to "read" to find the leaks. We have a Parker-Hannifin dealer fairly close-by and I may buy a bottle of the real stuff, mostly to have the groovy bottle.

OK - another question. N2O does, essentially, two things - it cools the intake charge and adds oxidizer so you can burn more fuel. So why don't we inject straight oxygen? Safety, maybe no cooling effect? I'm guessing here.

Thanks All for your powerful thinking

Dan

[TC]

Re: Rookie N2O Questions

TC - been doing the soapy water trick for years. There's a commercial product called "Snoop" that we used in the Gov. It's essentially soapy water but packaged in a way that you can shake the bottle and dispense 100% bubbles over the possible leak. It's much more sensitive to leaks and easier to "read" to find the leaks. We have a Parker-Hannifin dealer fairly close-by and I may buy a bottle of the real stuff, mostly to have the groovy bottle.

This is what I love about this place you can learn something new every day. 8)

Thanks Dan for the info, I did not know about that stuff.

[IRONHEAD]

Re: Rookie N2O Questions

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ likes holed pistons..
it be like hitting the oxygen lever on a torch..
in a n/a wet flow intake you'd never get enough fuel to match the oxygen, and burn the valves and melt stuff..

[SuperBuickGuy]

Re: Rookie N2O Questions

I can think of a couple answers to your oxy question. First, they do add oxygen - with a blower or turbo... but second probably is the bigger issue - pure oxy burns..... learned that when working on a hospital - they get concerned only when there's a oxy leak because when it burns, you can't see the flames....

As for removing the oxy - there wouldn't be a real point because by the time the oxygen got to the fill tube, the pressure would be so low in the bottle that it just wouldn't make a difference. I'm still thinking it's a myth that freezing the bottle would have any kind of meaningful effect on the pressure you can put into the bottle because simply putting the gas in the bottle would increase the temp of the bottle so quickly that in the end it'd not make much difference... also they raise the temp to increase the density of the oxygen in the bottle - so if there was a vacuum, heat would have no effect on the gas left in the bottle.

[Ron Ward]

Re: Rookie N2O Questions

Almost, Ron. I had to change the valve (broken stem) so I've seen the inside. Anyhow, if you start with a bottle full of air and add N2O on top of it you'll have air over nitrous (as you pointed out, the heavier nitrous sinks in the roughly horizontal bottle). So if you use up the N2O the air is still in there - assuming the air hasn't mixed with the nitrous, and I don't think it does. Add nitrous and the bottle returns to air over N2O. That's why I was thinking that if you drew as much vacuum as possible on the bottle before a fill you would stuff more N2O into the bottle. But I'm not sure I'm right on this.

Evidently my bottle had SOME nitrous left as there was still a little pressure in the bottle but not enough to get the engine to respond positively. I had a leak in my pressure gage and had to leave it off (I'm fixing that!) so I don't know the actual value of the residual pressure.

It's because of the residual air that starts off in the bottle that I was musing about making the bottle as empty as possible before the fill.

TC - been doing the soapy water trick for years. There's a commercial product called "Snoop" that we used in the Gov. It's essentially soapy water but packaged in a way that you can shake the bottle and dispense 100% bubbles over the possible leak. It's much more sensitive to leaks and easier to "read" to find the leaks. We have a Parker-Hannifin dealer fairly close-by and I may buy a bottle of the real stuff, mostly to have the groovy bottle.

OK - another question. N2O does, essentially, two things - it cools the intake charge and adds oxidizer so you can burn more fuel. So why don't we inject straight oxygen? Safety, maybe no cooling effect? I'm guessing here.

Thanks All for your powerful thinking

Dan

Dan,

Keep in mind, regardless of whether or not the empty bottle has vaporized N20 or air in it, the bottle is filled BY WEIGHT. Twenty pounds of nitrous oxide with air over the top of it or vaporized N2O over it is still 20 lbs of nitrous oxide. It has the same amount of oxidizer in it either way. Bottle temp will effect pressure which will impact the overall power potential of the nitrous. To take bottle temp out of the equation, consider a NANO system (nitrogen assisted nitrous oxide). The NANO system utilizes a pressurized cylinder of nitrogen that rides piggyback on the N2O bottle to stabilize the pressure of the nitrous. This allows you to have more consistent power from the full contents of a nitrous bottle rather than having supplying more nitrous when the bottle is full than when it is near empty. Check 'em out at http://www.nano-nitrous.com/

Ron