Nitrous has been around and used in engines for many decades, and yet more recently, in particular after a certain Hollywood blockbuster, it has been become almost a fad to have Nitrous fitted to your car.

I have taken the time to produce this article to try and better inform you of the realities and benefits nitrous can offer your fast Ford today, and show that it is not merely a trend or a fad, and that it can offer you one of the best bangs per buck!

The best producer and supplier of Nitrous products outside the USA are Highpower, ( AKA The Wizards of NOS). I took one of their kits and fitted it to a MK2 Fiesta XR2 using twin carbs to see what sort of effect it would have on its performance.

For each application the kit you require is likely to be one of a few variations, all of which Highpower can advise you on, the very basics of the kit are the bottle, pulsoids, injectors, pipes and electrical wires / connectors etc although as mentioned the number of injectors for example may vary depending on the vehicle.

Everything you need is provided in the kit and after a good read through the instructions it was time to undetake fitting the kit

Everyone will have there own personal preference as to which order you fit the kit, but it is a good idea to try and mount the key parts (or at least position them) where you want them so you can see where you need to run cables / pipes and to see if it is actually feasable.

There are a few rules that MUST be adhered too, to ensure safe and effective performance, these include mounting the pulsoids in as cool a place as possible, mounting the bottle with a slight incline, and keeping the pipe runs as short as possible to mention but a few.

I decided which side of the car I was going to run the Nitrous pipe from the bottle on by deciding upon the pulsoids best location and then the bottles best location, this lead me to run the pipes, mount the bottle and also the pulsoids all on the left hand side of the car.

The bottle does come with its own mounting clips but due to the way the bottle had to be mounted in this case, I decided to make a platform to add a few more degrees to ensure correct dispensing of the N20.

Once this was made and carpeted I mounted the bottle to it - ensuring the output nozzle faced DOWNWARD (Anodised blue output nozzle in picture above)

The next thing to do was to mount the pulsoids (which feed the fuel and nitrous to the injectors when the system is armed) in there pre-chosen location. This was done by drilling a few holes and securely bolting them to a suspension support (as found in the MK2) (remembering to always try and keep these pulsoids in the coolest and closest position to the injection point in the engine bay)

With these two components in place I unscrewed the cars sill covers and neatly ran the nitrous feed from the bottle in the boot upto the front of the car, through a gromet (a hole was previously drilled and then gromit inserted) and as neatly to the pulsoid input as possible.

All the connections in the nitrous kit are made using olives and an external nut that you tighten up onto either your bottle, pulsoid, injector or distribution block. This simply requires the right size spanner and anyone can make the connections! Just ensure when you cut any pipe down that it is done with a sharp blade so that as neat and as straight a cut as possible is made.

Due to the way the accelerator works in the MK2 it was nigh on impossible to mount the throttle switch inside, therefore it was neccessary to mount the switch on one of the carbs. (Or as the Wizard reccommends to the throttle body - if you have one) This was fixed such that it was activated only when the throttle linkage came fully down (at full throttle). One wire runs to earth, one to both negatives of each pulsoid.

A switch is provided in the kit, but as I like to be a bit different I swapped this for one of my choice that incorporated a L.E.D. to cleary show when the system was armed or not, if you want to do this YOU MUST USE A SUITABLE RELAY or may suffer system failure (either way it is HIGHLY reccommended to use only the supplied parts in the kit)...a suitable position was found inside the car and once wired up ensured a positive feed was allowed to the pulsoids when the ignition was on and the switch activated.

As you may or may not know Nitrous on its own is a formiddable thing and something that will quite happily lean your engine off to a point where you can shake hands with a conrod through the side of your block! Thats why modern day Nitrous systems feed a quantity of petrol in with every activation of Nitrous. This keeps the optimal mixture and ensures the car does not run lean.

To get this additional fuel to the engine you use the suplied T piece connector in your exisiting fuel line and tap off a pipe running to your fuel pulsoid. This is very simple to do and looks pretty trick too!

With fuel and Nitrous getting as far as your pulsoids its a good idea to give everythign a check and make sure nitrous is getting to your pulsoid as well as the fuel. This can obviously be done by allowing a small amount of nitrous into the pipe, before activating both switches...if fuel and Nitrous appear, you are heading in the right direction.

Now came the worst and hardest part of this particular installation, as this XR2 is running twin carbs an injector is required for each cylinder (aka Direct Port). To do this either tapping or drilling of the inlet manifold is required (either way it needs to come off the car) So after allowing myself a day for this job I went about removing the twin carbs and manifold and went about marking up and drilling the required holes to mount the injectors.

The injectors come with a plastic collar which you can sand back to ensure a perfectly tight fit with the injector facing the right way to fire the Nitrous and fuel into the head. As a precaution after all the right depths of collars were assatained I applied a coating of silicon...just to make sure there were no air leaks otherwise it would make the engine run very lean - possibly to the point of the engine destroying itself. All I can say about this is take your time and make sure you do it properly.

With all four injectors safely mounted it was time to mount the distribution block to equally split the nitrous and fuel to each injector and to connect all the fuel and Nitrous pipes up.

A suitable home was found for the distribution block and then it was a case of simply connecting all the appropriate pipes up form the injectors to the distribution block, and form the distribution block back to the pulsoids.

The system was now complete and all that was left to do was to speak to the head man himself (Trev - aka THE Wizard of NOS) to follow a few simple checks to ensure the system was functioning as it should.

With this knowledge safe in the fact that the system appeared fine it was time to give it a test run...

The system is running a 50 shot of nitrous which some people may think will give you a 50bhp increase...this is not the case, it can vary from engine to engine as to the actual real BHP increase you get. In this case a guess at approxiamately 25bhp and as much if not more torque would not be far wrong. Which in a light little fiesta is very noticeable and very effective.

After doing a side by side comparison to an equal known car to myself it was clear that with the nitrous on it makes a huge difference enabling me to pull a substantial gap in a matter of seconds. To give you some idea this 50 shot of nitrous is roughly equivalent to an air filter, exhaust, cam and probably head work all in one convenient punch when and where I want it, enabling normal (or as normal as possible with twin carbs) fuel cosumption when the system is not activated (something you cant chose with a head or cam etc.)

Watch this space as I will be having a rolling road session and visiting Santa Pod in the very near future to get some accurate BHP, 1/4 mile and 0-60 figures as to the difference with and without N2O...but regardless of what timing gear or a rolling road says, I know already that Nitrous makes a substantial and VERY noticeable difference, and one which will be extremely hard to beat on a bang for buck basis, particularly on small engined cars or cars that are normally hard to tune.

For more information on the world of Nitrous and for answers to every question you could possibly think of check out www.noswizard.com