Why does nitrous oxide have such a bad image?

Nitrous oxide has such a bad image for two reasons. One is the 2001 release of The Fast & The Furious. In this movie the main character doesn’t think he’s fast enough to beat someone in a race. He then is shown adding a lot of nitrous to his car. The movie continues. Several other instances other characters are shown using it to win races with an otherwise slow car. The subconscious seed is planted that “if you add nitrous to your car, your car will be fast.” People began using nitrous incorrectly in masses. As a result, many people had catostrofic damage with their engines.

 The second reason why nitrous has a bad image is because of it’s general usage history. It was used in World War II to give the engines of the combat aircraft a sudden “boost” of power to get the pilots out of a sticky situation. It was kept a secret mostly until the 1970s when race car drivers began injecting it into there engines for a sudden “boost” over their competition.

Image via Wikipedia

There is nothing wrong with either of these. The bad image came into play when companies began to distribute shoddy “kits” to the public without much knowledge of how it created extra power or testing it to understand what abuse the average consumer car’s engine would endure.

The first generation of “kits” that were introduced and continued to be used through until the early 1990s were mostly “dry” kits. They injected only nitrous oxide into the engine. Since nitrous only adds more oxygen into the engine, it’s up to the engine’s fuel system to add more fuel. These OEM fuel systems weren’t designed to provide extra fuel and in turn caused the engine to have a lean condition and caused internal damage to the engine.

Thus, twenty years of stories of engines scattering parts all over a highway or track began to be passed down from generation to generation like a dark children’s tale.

In the late 1990s  new kits were developed that made use of injecting extra fuel and nitrous into an engine. This was a lot safer and a whole lot more predictable. The kits even began to give you an estimate of the amount of wheel horse power you would see as a result of using this nitrous kit. These are commonly referred to as “shots”. Meaning a 50 shot would add 50 wheel horse power to your car. A 200 shot would add 200 wheel horse power and so on, and so forth.

So, now even though nitrous is safer than ever it is still stereo typed as the power adder you should stay away from. As though it was a tattooed biker at the end of the bar.

Just like people with tattoos who ride bikes aren’t all Hell’s Angels waiting to start a fight, nitrous isn’t a violent mystery potion cooked up by a witch that is waiting to destroy your engine.