Monday 17 November 2008

Go Go faster gadgets!

Buying gadgets seems to be a recurring theme this month, I'd been watching a few items on eBay but they kept going for more than i wanted to pay.
One of the things that i needed was a nitrous bottle warmer. Not to keep it snug at nights but to keep the pressure at the same level for each run. Basically, the nitrous pressure changes depending on the amount of nitrous in the bottle and the temperature of the bottle.
The pressure dictates how much nitrous can pass through the jets. So a lower pressure sprays less nitrous into the inlet tract, and a high pressure sprays more. The fuel side of the nitrous system however is always the same pressure, so you always get the same amount of fuel sprayed in regardless of the amount of nitrous.
So on a cold day there will be lower pressure in the bottle and less nitrous through the jets creating an overly rich mixture, and on a hot day the bottle pressure will be higher and more nitrous will pass through the jets creating a lean mixture. Too lean and something could melt, too rich and it will just run bad.
The reason for the bottle warmer then is to get the pressure up on cold days and jet the system for that particular pressure.
I recently bought a Nitrous express pressure gauge so i can monitor the pressure, and now I've got a couple of bottle warmers to try, not the full pressure regulated kits but just the blankets.
One is a Dynotune 130watt and the other a Nitrous Express 230watt. I'll try both and whichever is most suitable I'll keep... the other will go back on eBay.

So ..... that's bottle pressure and nitrous system consistency taken care of. Whats next? well, I've been told that the jetting ratios I'm using on the nitrous kit are probably a bit rich, this would make sense as on the dyno run earlier this year using size 16 nitrous and 18 fuel jets it ran just a touch rich (nicely on the safe side).
I'm now using larger jets however (size 22 fuel and 26 nitrous) and have not done a dyno run to see the condition of the air/fuel ratio.
I'd love to do another dyno session but it ain't cheap, and ideally I'd have to fit a road bike tyre on as the mickey thompson will overheat and wear very quickly on the dyno. It'd be a £150-200 mission at least, and all i want to know is the air/fuel ratio....... there are cheaper ways of finding this out!
A lambda sensor in the exhaust connected to a computer is what the dyno center uses to measure this ratio of fuel and air. You can get both handheld and permanent install versions fairly cheaply now. I'd been looking at the Innovate LC-1 all in one unit, it includes a wideband lambda sensor and a control box that has a serial output for a computer and a couple of programmable analogue outputs, but no display or gauge of any description. This is ideal however as the Schnitz PNC-3000 nitrous controller just happens to have a facility for an analogue wideband input and is not only capable of storing all the information from a run, but can also be set to disarm the whole nitrous system should an overly lean condition occur. Potentially saving the motor from meltdown should the fuel pump or other system fail.
I've now come across someone selling a similar model and decided to buy it, the Innovate LM-1 is the exact same system but with a datalogger come display built in. It still has the analogue out to feed the Schnitz box but can also display AF ratio in realtime and log data on 5 or 6 channels (should i wish to feed it other info such as RPM, wheel speed etc) which can be downloaded to a laptop and analyzed after a run.

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