In my previous article, I discussed the basics of nitrous
oxide, what it does when it enters an engine, and basically what happens when
the air and fuel mixture ignites with the nitrous. Now, I want to continue this
series on the difference between wet kits and dry kits. We have all heard of
both kinds, but what does it all mean exactly? I hope one of us can find out
after this!
Dry kits. Dry kits, as they are called,
use just a bottle and a nozzle. Probably the most medieval version of this system
can be described as having a bottle with a manual valve, a braided steel line,
and the other end somewhere on your intake. Crack the valve open, and off you
go! Now a days, thankfully, we don’t have to resort to such “ghetto”
setups. It’s a little easier than that. A dry kit consists of one nitrous
bottle, 2 nitrous lines (one from the bottle to the solenoid and one from the
solenoid into the engine), one nitrous solenoid, and one WOT switch (Wide Open
Throttle). We will get to wiring these things up in a future article, but for
now we will concentrate on how this plethora of parts works as a unit. As you
arm the system and activate the WOT switch at full throttle, the solenoid will
open up and begin to inject raw nitrous. As we learned before, this nitrous
will CRACK down and become part oxygen and part nitrogen. This extra oxygen
is what allows you to burn more fuel (remember air/fuel ratios), which, in turn,
will make more HP. But, unfortunately, with all this oxygen being moved through
your motor, you’re going to need more FUEL. Without the proper air/fuel
mixture, your motor will do what we call “LEAN OUT”. Which basically
means you have too much air in your air/fuel mixture. This excess of oxygen
causes a massive amount of heat build up, which can cause engine over heating,
detonation, or even burnt valves. To solve this, you will need more fuel injected
into your motor when you spray. Sometimes you can get away with a smaller shot
of N²O (as in a 50 or even possibly a 75 shot) but that is going to be
the limits until you bump up your fuel pressure. Unfortunately as you bump up
your fuel pressure to make up for your fat nitrous shot, as you run “all
motor”, you're going to run incredibly rich! A result of you running rich
is that you're going to “bog” down your motor with way too much fuel,
which is going to make your car run even worse! This is going to be constant
battle you will have with a dry kit; trying to get a “stoicheometric”
(man I hope I spelled that right!) or perfect air/fuel mixture, but yet staying
a hair on the rich side on motor, so that you wont lean out when you spray.
The best way to monitor this situation is through a gauge called an Air/Fuel
Mixture gauge. This is a MUST for anyone running a power adder! If you don’t
want to fool with all of this mess of mixtures, there is always the alternative!
This is an example of a Fuel Pressure
Gauge. This is an example of an A/F Gauge, you'll need both to do it right the
first time.
Wet kits. Wet kits, which is called this
because not only do you run N²O, but also you piggy back raw FUEL with
it. As we learned in the last paragraph, nitrous that is injected into the motor
and then cracks, will release OXYGEN into the motor, which can cause a motor
to run LEAN. This is a problem a lot of dry kit users face. With a wet kit,
however, there is NO worry for this. You don’t have to worry as much about
leaning out with a wet kit. The selling point on this setup is going to be that
you can run extra fuel with it, and only run that extra fuel when you hit the
WOT switch! This means you can tune your car to run its best on motor, and then
turn around and tune it to run its best on nitrous. This allows you to run the
most efficient on either setup (motor or spray). The way a Wet Kit works is;
you still have your basic nitrous set up, but off of that you tap into the Schrader
valve on your fuel rail and run a braided stainless line to a Fuel Solenoid,
which in turn, will run into your Nozzle or Throttle Plate. With this set up,
the only thing limiting your amount of spray, is going to be how much HP your
motor can handle and, when you start to make big HP, you're going to need to
make sure you can provide enough fuel. You can do this by either installing
a bigger pump, or installing an INLINE pump. To figure out how much fuel you're
going to need, you'll need a formula. HP divided by 2 = lb./hr. (pounds per
hour) lb./hr divided by 6 = gallons per hour required (min) Multiply GPH by
1.15 for safety factor. For example: Example: 600 HP divided by 2 = 300, 300
divided by 6 = 50, 50 multiplied by 1.15 = 57.5 (minimum gallons per hour)(This
formula is for gasoline only.) Other than that, the sky is the limit. This,
in my opinion, is the best bet for anyone who wants to throw on a quick and
easy power adder! It costs just a little more, but definitely not as much as
a new motor would cost! This is a throttle body plate for a Chevy (sorry) in
action! This is a basic Wet nozzle.
With an adjustable spray pattern.
I hope this has given you the ideas of the differences between the two kits.
They both wire up the same and take about the same amount of time to install.
If you have any questions or pricing needs. Muscle Car Performance and Audio
can give you an estimate on a full kit, or even parts of one. Just drop me an
email with your question.
Russ Conrad
Muscle Car Performance and Audio
Director of Marketing
RusConrad@yahoo.com
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