Miata Mailing List: March 1995, Message #90
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   From: mgorelick@aas.com
Subject: Nitrous-powered Miatas?
   Date: Wed, 1 Mar 1995 23:56:07 -0500

Hey, LOOK! I'm starting another thread, and it's about Miatas! Or, at least
it's about making them faster using nitrous, anyway...

I was talking to a very good friend of mine (who is my mechanic), and we were 
talking about things we could do to my car to speed it up. I was saying that
most Miata owners seem to be putting superchargers into their cars and that 
this seemed to work very well, but that it was expensive.

He suggested that I consider nitrous oxide (for my car, not me...that comes 
later) as a possible means of doing this. He listed several advantages, but
the most intruiging were a claimed 50(or so) HP gain, as well as the fact that
it could be done with the flick of a switch, from inside the car. This all 
sounded very good, since most of the time the Miata is fast enough for me, 
but as we all know, there are times that it'd be really nice to be able to 
bury muscle cars at stoplights!

I asked him all the usual questions, like "won't this wear out my engine 
faster?" or "don't the pressures blow up the engine if you're not careful?" 
and he said that, in essence, these were less of a problem with nitrous than
with superchargers, mostly because of the much lower level of engine 
modification required. Additionally, since nitrous is only used part of the 
time, the rest of the time your regular engine just does it's thing.

Anyway it all sounded interesting, especially since he uses it himself on 
several of his cars, and swears by it. He assures me that there are several
kits that would work with the Miata (or other 4 cyl engines) and that the 
costs are much lower then supercharging.

Obviously, supercharging is there all the time and you don't have to go and
get your little bottle refilled, but it still sounded like an interesting idea
so I thought I'd mention it here and see what you all thought, and ask for your
experiences regarding the subject. I've heard about nitrous for years but never
really took it seriously. Should I have?

-Marc Gorelick and Mitzi 
(Mitzi hasn't heard a word about this yet!)

p.s. NOS Inc. puts trace amounts of something nasty in their N2O "to 
discourage substance abuse." Drat, there go my plans for the in-car dental 
mask.