Update:

Well, my "teflon tape blocking the nitrous jet" theory just flew out the window. I called up NX asking about a nitrous filter and they said that the filter is actually built into the nitrous solenoid itself. Sure enough, I examine the solenoid and there is a wire mesh filter on the solenoid, with holes small enough to block any piece of teflon tape. In fact, it was pretty much clear of any debris.

Now I'm racking brain to think of what else might've happened, I'm going to look over the dyno sheets again and see if I can find anything out of the ordinary.

Again, I'm open to any suggestions.

 

I am by no means an expert but mjedens car fuel solenoid stuck open because of a faulty wire if I remeber correctly, causing pudling, and split the intake wide open. Or could have been just a spark in the comustion chamber that made it past the intake valve. Just a thought.

 

OOOOOOOOOOOKAY!!!!!! i was tryin out my system for the first time since the TC mod and i had a backfire. i must of had about 3 heart attacks. VERY LOUD pop and some smoke.

i pull over to find out that the intake tube popped off (injen CAI). everything was still intact. the only thing that happened was that where the rubber hose connects to the metal piping popped off. that section is usually clamped down, but i never got a clamp for it with the kit so i never put one on. i think if that clamp would of been there, worse things would of happened.

i guess with the clamp not being there pressure didnt get high enough to tear anything. however, my filter looks a little bit like a marshmellow. there is charring on the inside of the intake which is how i know that there was a backfire.

i still have no idea what caused it. imma spend the rest of tonight trying to figure it out.
some possible causes:

1. a friend of mine might of put 87 octane in the car when he borrowed it. even though that was about 3 weeks ago, i still could of had some leftovers of the 87 octane garbage in my tank since different octance levels dont mix.

2. puddling. (as much as i'd hate to admit it, its still a possibility until i can disprove it)

3. valve body didnt open all the way like it should causing the puddling.

4. i just installed the hawker battery in my car so it could of been a power drain???

5. my fuel seleniod is failing and was leaking the whole time. there was fuel in my intake. lots of it.

im lucky that it wasnt something worse. ill post more details on here as soon as i figure out whats wrong. im sure its a combination of things that went wrong, but i dont know what yet.

 

Sorry man, let me know what you find and I'll do the same.

 

Not trying to be a butinsky, but I would lean toward puddling. Our intakes are a dry nature, not designed to carry a heavy fluid like fuel. This is whats keep me back from going with nitrous. I have been waiting to hear more feed back on edelbrocks system. Not much info out there yet. Glad there no major damage.

 

i had to order a new intake filter so i went ahead and got a K&N cone filter. the fibers on the injen filter were split apart.

i have yet to figure out what caused it though. all seleniods checked out. its gonna be either the new battery that caused it or ....? anyway the system is down untill the new filter comes in. i went back down to a 50 shot until i can figure out what the problem is.

 

Hey guys, I'm in the process of retesting the fuel solenoid. When I activate it, with the correct fuel jet installed, is it supposed to spray? Dribble? What?

 

its weird with our cars since the fuel pump is not on unless the car is on.

what your going to have to do is this.
make sure the nitrous bottle is closed and no nitrous is in the lines. disconnect the fogger from the intake (better way to go) or just disconnect the fuel line from the fogger. make sure that you aim the fuel feed line to a spot where it wont damage anything once its sprays out. put a piece of tape over the WOT switch so that its as if its activated. this way as soon as you arm the system it will spray.

arm the system and then turn it off right away. you should see a nice stream of fuel shoot out of the fuel line without any interuptions. if not then the fuel seleniod has gone bad. dont let it spray for too long (1 second is more then enough). it can strain your fuel pump and u might go lean doing it. i noticed the fuel pressure drop about 15psi when i did this and it bogged the engine down even though i was in park. i guess a way to not have to deal with that would be to just disconnect the whole fogger and test it out that way with the jets still in place. if you do that then you would have to look for a consistant cloud of fuel coming from the fogger without interuptions or signs of slowing down.

 

Here's what I did, I took the ground off of the nitrous solenoid so it wouldn't open when I activated the switch. Then I took the fogger, put the fuel jet in for the 75 shot then I connected the line from the solenoid to the fogger. I turned on the car and had my friend push the microswitch down manually with his finger. It was kinda dark and I had it spraying into a bag. But as far as I can tell it wasn't a cloud of fuel, I could've sworn it was just dribbling out. I'm going to have to retest it in the daytime.

 

daytime might help. just pull it out of the garage and make sure the car is cold when you do this just in case gas gets anywhere. dont have it spray in a bag, just aim the fogger out of the car and tape it down for the time being.

i was getting a 10-12foot stream of fuel that shot out. with the fogger still connected you should easily see a nice cloud of fuel.

 

I still haven't had a chance to do this yet but isn't the pressure of the nitrous what produces the fog effect, not the nozzle itself?

Also, what's the word on retarding the timing with nitrous use for our cars? My uncle was asking around and some drag guru said that I might want to look at my timing.

How's the investigation going with your car?

 

Update, I rechecked the fuel solenoid in the daylight and seems to squirt out just fine it also seems to close just fine with no leaking after closing. Looking at the design of the fogger, the fuel squirts out and the nitrous, at around 1000psi, basically vaporizes the fuel turning into a fog of fuel and nitrous. I only had the fuel line hooked up though so the fuel was just squirting out at what seemed like it could be 40 psi (our regular fuel pressure).

The next thing I'm going to test is my digital pressure gauge, I want to make sure its not giving me a bad reading.

 

i just sprayed again earlier today @ a 35shot. everything worked fine during the 2 times i sprayed.

however as soon as i pulled over i heard a clunking sound, i dont know weather it was my exhaust or what. im gettin annoyed man. imma take it into the dealership and see what they say. imma get every possible thing checked out.

i actually thought of selling my nitrous kit for first time today. sad sad day.

 

Can you describe the sound in further detail? What it a continuous clunking sound? Was it a one time clunk?

I been thinking about selling my kit but its just that I've put so much time and effort into this nitrous system. And I love the novelty of it. Is it worth risking an engine rebuild, that remains to be seen. I really want to figure out what caused the backfire. I figure regardless of which road I take to more power there'll be speed bumps. I figure if I take my time and go over the bumps slowly I'll get over it. But if I take the speed bump like a ramp, I'm likely to **** some shet up, know what I mean.

 

the clunk came from the exhaust somewhere. i still have the stock exhaust so it could of been rattle from it that i heard. it was continuous until i turned the car off and never came back once i turned it back on.

ne way i just finished dropping in the new filter. i think im done with nitrous for this year. naw, im talkin crap again. imma up the shot tomorrow and try again n see what happens.

here's what my filter looked like after it went poof...

 

Well guys, I believe I've finally got the answer, let me know if I'm wrong or if my logic is flawed. Try to follow this:

Around Dec 2003
I install my nitrous kit 75 shot with 1 step colder NGK coppers. I can only guess on mileage but I had my tranny replaced in Feb 2004 with 30000 miles so I'm guessing it was about 28000.


July 04
I take it on the dyno, and get decent numbers with the 75 shot and 100 shot but 100 shot runs very rich towards the end and drops below 10 on the A/F. I currently have 39000 miles, so I would guess that I was at about 37000 miles in July.


Aug 29 2004
Around 38500 miles. S.D. dyno day, I go to the dyno with a smaller fuel jet in hopes of leaning out the A/F a bit with the 100 shot. Unusually, the A/F shows even richer. Drops under 10 pretty much as soon as I spray. Tried it like 3 times with similar results.


Sep 4 2004
I go back to the dyno again with original 100 shot jets that I ran back in July 04 to see if the problem was the jet sizing. Still ran rich...checked the bottle psi and it was at around 1000. Try the purge and all that comes out is clear air. I think I solved the problem, I was just out of nitrous. I empty out the air, go to refill the bottle, heat it up to 1000 psi. Purge to make sure I had a nice white cloud. I take it up to 5th gear and 3000 rpms, hit the switch and BOOM! Intake blows.


I think the culprit is my spark plugs. I have NGK 1 step colder plugs. I just found out that you are supposed to replace these every 10K miles if not sooner especially if I'm sprayin. In July when I went to the dyno, my plugs were already due for a change. I was told that when plugs get old or in need of replacing the spark isn't as strong. The 75 shot did o.k. netting a A/F around 11.5 but the 100 shot went rich because the spark plug couldn't produce a strong enough spark to ignite the mixture.

On dyno day Aug 2004, my bottle was running close to empty so I had an even richer A/F because of the combination of air (not N20) in the bottle and weak plugs.

On September 2004 when I came back with the original (richer jets) I dyno'd before I went to refill my bottle. When I dyno'd I ran very rich again because of the combination of the plugs and air in the bottle. Thus fouling my plugs. I left the car on dyno so it didn't have a chance to clean themselves off. Came back on to the dyno, got it up to 5th gear again, sprayed, spark plugs couldn't ignite the nitrous/fuel mixture so it ran rich and blew the intake.

Car runs fine now even with the current plugs but that's because I'm not adding additional fuel and nitrous. I have noticed decreased gas mileage though.


So what do you guys think, valid explanation? I really hope you guys think so because I'm pretty much out of ideas.

 

I've just thought of a better explanation! I don't think it's your plugs since they have always checked out good. When you did a pull on the dyno you ran out of n2o and fuel "puddled" in your intake tube. This has happened to me back when my nozzles were inserted into the tube but at that time I took the intake tube off and cleaned all the excess fuel out. You came right back with a full bottle the very next pull and when you sprayed both n2o & fuel again you ignited all the excess fuel left over from the first pull (causing a backfire). This could have happened but like we discussed earlier you're probably not going to feel 100% certain what the cause was. Go back to the smallest shot possible and work yourself back up to 100 while checking A/F at each level. (on a dyno of course) Most of the excess fuel is now gone but for safety purposes ck the inside of your intake tube for excess fuel when increasing your shot size back to whatever level your going.

Mike

 

Hey bro, thanks for the input. See I don't think it would've puddled because the bottle wasn't really empty, just full of air at 1000 psi. Wouldn't the compressed air still have vaporized the fuel?

And as for checking the plugs, the first time I checked the plugs was about a week later when I did the compression check. Wouldn't that mean any reading that would've helped to diagnose the problem have been burned off by then?

But you're right, I probably won't be 100% sure of what the cause was. But I'm waiting for my plugs in the mail. And I will be starting with a small shot. Thanks again.

P.S. I've heard of people using MSD ignition systems to make for a stronger spark to be able to ignite the added fuel and n2o mixture. Has there been anything like this used for the Z? Or is it not needed? Have you used anything to improve your ignition with your high shot?

 

I do not have a MSD ignition system. Off the subject a little, I do have an e-Manage where I retard the timing though.

 

retard the timing meaning you delay the spark a little longer right?

how has that worked for you?