Hightower; I can tell you this..........you need A LOT of octane!!!
Let me give you an experiment to do. Take a cigarette and light one up and hold the tip of an oxy/acetylene torch to the filter like you are trying to blow through the cigarette. Just turn on the O2 only and let it blow through the cigarette. This is what happens inside of an engine running N2O or nitro or any agent that introduces O2 into the engine.
Let me talk about a few things that I have not heard talked about yet: (LOL or maybe I missed!!!)

RPM- If you inject at a low RPM your going to need more octane.
LOAD- If you have a great load on the engine, your going to need more octane.
HOT AMBIANT TEMPS- If you have high ambiant temps outside, your going to need more octane. (you guys talked about this one)
LOTS OF N2O- If your injecting lots of N2O your going to need more octane. ( hydrocarbon + O2 + ign = explosion)
STROKE- If you have a large stroke, your going to need more octane.
LEAN- If you run lean you better have more octane. (ever yank the choke on when it starts to ping?)
CAM TIMING, AND DURATION- If you run a high capture cam, (no bleed off) you better have more octane.
SHARP EDGES- If you have any sharp edges (wedge pop-up) you better have more octane
IGN TIMING- If you run a lot of lead, you better have more octane.

How much more octane? No one can answer that. You might have two or 3 of the above but not all and 87 might just be fine. Or 87 might just be fine at 70 degrees but if it gets to be 90+ your going to det the motor to pieces.
Far too many variables for me or anybody else to say what to run. Ball park.......yes.......But not "you should run this and you will be ok."

Hey 650viper I have a picture for you to look at. I went out and found an old piston of mine. This piston was a high silicon forged Speed Pro piston. It was right at 8 to 1. I was running a 671 blower with 15psi of boost. The thing went like hell in first. Then the thing would just lay over. Well, I kept my foot in it and this is what happened to 5 of my pistons. This damage took no more than about 6 or 7 seconds!!!!!!!! I fould a bad fuel fitting which would not let any fuel into the carbs. It would run the bowls dry and lean the **** out of the motor. This was not det damage and it went lean only. You can look at the picture on my profile. Check it out and see what you think. It's hard to believe that a well built piston like that can melt in about 6 seconds.

My two cents on this whole deal is this. Some of you guys are really pushing it. A rule of thumb is 50% augmentation for the stock HP of the engine. If you have a 50HP stock engine you can shoot a 25 shot.
Some of you are shooting way more than this. That is ok, but you better be on your game and tune it like a piano or it's going to go bang.
I said it once and I will say it again. If you are shooting a big shot you better get a N2O control box. You will go faster and you won't run over so many parts. 5 bones is not cheap, but nether is a rebuild.
Someone on here is going to buy a box and slap it on and go like hell. Then they are going to say; "why didn't I do that years ago?"

BTW, GREAT discussion with some REALLY smart guys. No wonder modded bombs are so fast!!!

 

thanks Doc, the big pic has come together, I never realized that you needed to increase octane for nos since you were also adding extra fuel along with the liquid o2 and maintaining proper a/f ratio. your breakdown shines new light on the matter, this is a discussion that has been a long time coming to say the least.

can you explain more about the "control box" please...inquiring minds here, wanting to know.

 

WOW!! I just did your cigarette and o2 from the torch experiment - that was awesome man!

 

Doc, thanks for that info. I looked at your piston, and now if mine had looked like that, I would have known right away. I have a few two stroke pistons that look like that. By the way, 6-7seconds? Dang, it got right down to business.

Some very good info there, thanks again.

 

Ha ha ha ha..........some old man taught me that years ago in a class. Funny how things like that stick in your mind!!! That was over 30 years ago!!!!
Ya, I was less than half way through the run and the blower belt broke and the engine coughed.

Hightower, we will talk about boxes tonight. I'm late for work today and my boss dosen't think talking about qauds improves my quality of work. What's up with that? [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]

 

So jed, A while later and 1500 opinions. What do you think the culprit was, and mor importantly, what changes are you making?

 

To be honest. I think the problem was my lack of knowledge about this new system. I can say all I want as to what caused the failure, but its me that does the work, and makes the decisions, so I am to blame.

My remedy for the solution is this. Do different the things I did before.[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-tongue.gif[/img]


I dont have any cool skills, just some numb chucks skills, ninja fighting skills.............

 

Sorry Hightower, I had nothing but problems with my car I drive to work, and our race car. I apologize I did not get back to you sooner.

Ok, lets talk control boxes.
Way back in my street racing days I went through a lot of N2O. I was fortunate enough to have a good hooking car. But even at that, I always dreamed of having some sort of a N2O system that was adjustible while going down the track. A system that would leave at maybe 75 HP so it would not blow the tires off and then ramp up to total augmentation. This was not possible at the time and the only way to do this was to go the multi stage system route. Multi stage was alright but it was sort of a band-aide in my mind.

I got out of street racing many years ago and then went with a blower so I did not check into the multi stage systems anymore and I put the nitrous gear away.
A few years after that I started to hear about control boxes. I heard these magical boxes could do what I dreamed about so many years before.

When I first heard about them I thought it was some sort of a BS story. After all, solonoids are either "ON" or "OFF". There is no in-between; period. If not, how in the hell did they do this with a little black "box"?????

I had to find out!!! I started to read about them and here is what I learned.

There "is" an in-between with a solonoid. The solonoids are used like an EFI injector. They use them like an on and off valve. If you want a lot of fuel, (or nitrous in this case) the box feeds current, 100(s?) (long ON time)of time a second to the solonoid. If you want a little fuel (or N2O), they slow the amount of pulses of current down which keeps the valve closed a lot more (short ON time) than it is open so you get less HP. Now they put some sort of timing circuit in to make things work when you want them to. Now they had something!!!!! You could control the mount of time the solonoids are on and what time they do this.
To give you an analogy, driving a car with a normal N2O system was like having an engine that was either full throttle or just off. There was no in-between. Driving a car with the control box was like driving a normal car with an accelerator peddle.

WHAT A GREAT IDEA!!!!

After they got this down they started to add many more things to our little box. Things like an RPM window switch, and things like that.

What can all of this do for you?

A LOT!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now you have a box that you can put on a car/ quad or whatever and it will do this:
You put this system on your quad and try her out. OOPs, to much juice off of the line and it goes a little flat at mid track. Ok, lets put a little less "ON" time right off of the line and put a little more "ON" time in the middle of the track.
This box is like your programable ign system some people have. You have total control of your timing curve.

Now, we all know that you can't inject a ton of nitrous at low RPM or bad things will happen. This being known, people with a regular system cut back their total shot so they won't run over their crank right off of the line.
WOW!!!! with your little box you can now run a small shot off of the line and ramp up to a BIG, BIG shot on top end where you can use a lot of juice without hurting parts.

With a system like this it will give you a BIG advantage!!!!!! You now have total true control over what happens with your N2O system!!!!!

It takes 3 things to win races:
Skill
Money
Luck

Quads are about 10 years behind cars in technology. Someone with a lot of money and luck is going to figure this out and start using parts like control boxes and data loggers. When this happens, that person will dominate the sport. Look what happend to top fuelers when some of the teams got a hold of computers.

Could that person be on this board? I think so. Maybe someone reading this sentence.

 

Dr Turbo,

I think you have some interesting thoughts regarding N20 power being variable by pulsing the N20 Solinoid like an injector. The things that my brain thinks about, especially in the position I am in, are things like how many pulses per minute can an nitrous solinoid take and still be reliable for a long duration, say two or three years. Also, there are variables such as pulse width to consider. And even if all that pans out, are there injectors out there that may simply do the job better than a solinoid? Are we also pulsing the fuel solinoid, and how will those system behave together with thier different physical properties? I dont know the answers to these questions.

One thing I am absolutely certain of ...... The problems raised from this thread are E X A C T L Y why EFI quads and dirt bikes will be rolling off all major production assembly lines within 5 years. The core issue is air/fuel and how to tune for it for different conditions. ALL EFI production motors have sensors that adjust for air temp and elevation. The way I see it, and I mean no insult at all, how can we even think about pulsing N20 solinoids to get variable power when most of us struggle with the variables of tuning?

I know, I know, there are guys that will never let anyone tear thier precious carb from thier thier cold hands. They wont let anybody do that because they have the tuning knowlege of that carb totally down. Where are these people when you need them??????

 

ODP, these are all very good questions.

I can't answer the first one other than it shortens the life of the solinoids considerably. As a mater of fact, if you run a control box you have to run two solinoids on the N2O side of things just in case the seat wears so much you don't get a leak when the engine is off. That is no concern to me because solonoids are rebuildable and the needle and seats are cheap.

I can only say that I know of no other injector, valve or solinoid that will work. Now that does not mean they don't exist. But I have only seen the typical solonoids at the track. Believe me, I'm the nosey sort and if I would have spotted something weird at the track I would have asked about it.
I know what you are saying. But here is the way I see it. All of this stuff I'm talking about is not for the casual racer. Even I really have no use for this stuff, even for what I do. I bracket race so I have no need to N2O anymore. I also circle track race and the tech staff says"no no no" to N2O.
But there are people on this board that have the big 3 as I call them: SKILL, MONEY and LUCK. It's these people that need to hear about things like this. These people have the skill to tune anything and everything and really know what they are doing and have the skill to put the whole package together.
Now if they have the $$$$'s to buy the best parts and the skill to install and tune their quad, they only need one last thing; luck.
If they have all three, these are the people that you see in the winners circle at the end of the day!!!!
IMHO, there is only 3 brands that are really in the racing game. Bomb, Yamie, and sometimes Kowie. It's the Bomb board that these types of questions come up, and come up often. IMHO, that is why I read things like Bomb cleaning everybodys clock at the races. These people happen to own Bombs and have the big 3 and ask the questions that count. They learn, learn and learn some more. Next thing you know they are holding the trophy.
Ha ha ha ha.....I know what you mean. 20 years ago I said I won't be caught dead with an EFI on my engine. Well...........aaaaaaaa......crow tastes good!!! I bought an EFI several years ago to convert a stack injection over to EFI. Nothing better looking than a Hilborn on a big block!!!!!
I like carbs too. Nothing wrong with them. All of the classes that I race call for them. EFI is not allowed. Maybe someday??? They aren't hard to tune, just very tedious to get things just right in all of the circuits.

Personally I applaud people like 650viper and others. Some people would hide this type of thing for what ever reason. Many of you on this board come on here and talk about your mistakes and problems so the rest of the people can learn from their expensive mistakes. Kind of like a "Bomb breakfast club." IMO that is why you guys are going faster and faster.

Got to go racing guys. I have #1 (I think?? ha ha ha) I have #2. Now all I need is a little LUCK!!!!