Dear Pro Mod Wad:

Would it possible to run an engine entirely on nitrous oxide and fuel without any air from the outside atmosphere being used? If so (as I believe not only that it can, but that the injectors system to manage the amount of nitrous and fuel would be no more complicated than the current EFI systems, pulsing injectors and solenoids, or even just solenoids like a progressive nitrous system) why hasn't anyone done it before?

Think of the performance advantages this engine would not rely on the outside atmosphere for air, so it would not be affected by it. Also when the air is hot and thin, or at high altitude tracks that have thin air by way of nature, a car fitted with this type of engine would actually run faster as the thinner air would be easier to push the car through, and the exhaust gasses would face less pressure as they are escaping the engine. Do I have to get off the grass or is this possible?

Simon GONZO Travaglini
Blitzd Racing Team

Hey Gonzo,
What a great question! Let me try to explain what I know about this for your answer. Back quite a few years ago a friend of mine showed up at our shop door with a small block Chevy engine on the back of his pickup. Dr. Rudy, as he was know, has a 230 inch long front-motored dragster. The small block was 383 cubic inches and had the most insane manifolding I have ever seen in my life! There were 96 NOS fogger nozzles and a gazzilion solenoids plumbed on this thing! There were distribution locks and lines everywhere. The manifold looked like another motor on top of the motor! Somewhere on this mess was the four barrel base that was going to allow this engine to start and idle and then as the N2O and fuel were applied to accelerate, this base would seal shut to allow for the nozzles taking over. Now the problem was to try and figure out what we needed to do for jetting gaps etc. to get this engine to run and accelerate properly. It would require a bank of switches and such to be able to ramp this thing up, as at this time EFI was still in its infancy and the electronic knowledge was not available to us yet. Before we bolted this monster on the dyno we would need to do a lot of research on fuel supplies, N2O supplies, amperage and power draws and a few other parameters to make this all work.

Because we could not baseline the engine on the dyno we needed to guesstimate base horsepower and supply that fuel and N2O through some of the nozzles and then figure what horsepower we wanted to add through the N2O systems and figure what fuel we would need to supply for that HP through the rest of the nozzles. The bottom line was that we did not have containers large enough to hold the race gas or the N2O to allow this program to run for more than a minute or two, let alone do any kind of dyno pulls!!

I am sure that today with the new technologies and equipment available, this would be more of a reality, but I still fell not very probable. It would be very possible in a stationary test situation, but to try and put it in a race car with tanks large enough to hold the fuel and nitrous for a quarter-mile? I don't think so. Anyway, that's my story and I am sticking to it Gonzo! I really hope that this answered your questions as it really is fun to discuss and. No, don't get off the grass, especially if it is comfortable.

I have had this discussion with many people in the last few years and there are some really interesting theories on how this could work, like really long supply hoses and so on.

Wady

Thanks again for a "killer" letter.