Propane nitrous?

[97ramair]

Hey guys! I am in the market to purchase a nitrous kit for my car. Someone told me to add a propane combo. Never heard of this. Does anyone have any info on this combo?

[BowTied]

Unless somebody has pulled something special...it ain't for power! Propane has a lower BTU I think 77-82 effective octane if I recall. When I was an Engineer at Ingersoll Rand we had standby generators that ran on diesel, propane, and natural gas.

Due to the reduced energy all the non-diesels had turbos. And the heat is greater! I once played in the driveway with gas and propane mixed....less power no matter what.

I wouldn't run it in mine and if I did it would be because the propane prices really dropped and then I'd run a passive 5 to 8% water/alcohol blend to reduce heat. If someone is playing with it now they are likely trying to save gas. (I've played all in this area and I wouldn't do it...it would take along time to get money back even if you got this right. I am playing with Brown's Gas, much more upside with water electrolysis!)

[predator]

The only think i can think of is possibly using propane as the wet part of a wet kit... I could see where it might be better than gas in a few aspects and if you ran LP it would significantly cool your charge, but unless its a boosted motor you prolly wont see much of a difference because of cooling...

I've heard the expansion of LP adda a few psi of manifold pressure also...

-me

p.s. propane basically is the nitrous of deisel engines so they may have gotten soem info mixed up somewhere...

[0rion]

Moving to the N2O section

[LT1 > LS1]

The only think i can think of is possibly using propane as the wet part of a wet kit... I could see where it might be better than gas in a few aspects and if you ran LP it would significantly cool your charge, but unless its a boosted motor you prolly wont see much of a difference because of cooling...

I've heard the expansion of LP adda a few psi of manifold pressure also...

-me

p.s. propane basically is the nitrous of deisel engines so they may have gotten soem info mixed up somewhere...

i'm sorry, but that is incorrect.....

propane acts as a added fuel burner. it allows for a more complete, and efficient burn. nitrous is nitrous to a diesel engine.

propane helps on the fuel side, and nitrous helps on the oxygen side.


oh, and to the O.P.

dont bother with propane injection to a gasoline engine. stick with nitrous, or if you are going on boost, you might want to look into water/methanol injection

[George141]

..we ran propane for years in taxicabs..you need very high compression..15 to 1 or better, if you want to make real power..some of the late model police cruisers..(Crown Vics) have a propane/gasoline system for idling and low speed driving..but when they hit the pedal hard it automaticly switches to gasoline..one advantage to propane is fuel does not go stale like gasoline if it sits around for months or longer..and you also don't need a fuel pump....it works very well on diesel because of the compression ratio..the power loss on a regular motor is not as bad as on the older systems because of the sophisticated systems on modern engines...but there will still be power loss as others have said unless you build a very high compression engine..one last point..from an economy stand point propane should be half the price of gas to have good savings since you tend to burn 15% to 20% more than gas on two identical vehicles.

[predator]

i'm sorry, but that is incorrect.....

propane acts as a added fuel burner. it allows for a more complete, and efficient burn. nitrous is nitrous to a diesel engine.

propane helps on the fuel side, and nitrous helps on the oxygen side.


oh, and to the O.P.

dont bother with propane injection to a gasoline engine. stick with nitrous, or if you are going on boost, you might want to look into water/methanol injection

I just wanted to clarify on this... I didnt mean it works like nitrous (im aware propane is a fuel not an oxydizer)... I meant it was used in deisels for instant high hp gains (as NOS is in gas burners)... very seldom do you see much of a NO2 shot on a diesel burner, but they do run large hp shots of propane...

-me

[0rion]

my understanding ( and this could be wrong) has always been the diesel guys run propane to control detonation so they can up the boost.

[BowTied]

Propane especially (somewhat wit Brown's Gas) I was playing with mostly for idle and low rpms alternate fueling.

From my theoretical understanding. Propane would do what Orion suggests, prevent early detonation. And actually I think it can do what everybody has said in different applications.
It could aid in fuel burn efficiency as it would ignite later in the cycle but once it did (being a gas) it would carry flame all over the piston face and cylinder. (Relating directly to Orion's suggestion.)With diesel's slower burn characteristic it could shorten the burn time (as propane has lower effective octane but much higher flash). Effectively shortening the energy release period. So if helped delay the ignition of the fuel then shortened the time of release it would put the burn more into the TDC area of the stroke.

Depending how much pressure is injected it could do some of the more passive assistance the nitrogen part of nitrous gives, more volume and pressure into the cylinder.

Then too, one down side (varying with stroke, CR, flow, and VE of the engine) is you add another fuel and your are running more rich...if you ran higher pressures...likely considerably more rich. An N2 shot would surely fix that!

[97ramair]

Thanks for your input fellas. I'm going to stick w/ nitrous system only. This guy was telling me that in his cobra he picked up .5 second in the quarter when using the propane combo vs. nitrous only. I didn't know what to believe.

[LT1 > LS1]

my understanding ( and this could be wrong) has always been the diesel guys run propane to control detonation so they can up the boost.

they arent worried about detonating, but more so more complete fuel burn.

if you dont burn all of your fuel efficiently, it will make a lot of black smoke, and will create high egt's, which will result in turbo, or overall engine failure.


what you need to control is fuel injector timing. its rated in degrees just like a spark plug. that will control when combustion occurs.

[HeadDown]

a propane/nitrous kit is typically installed where a propane/gasoline(wet) kit is not possible(or wise). some intake manifolds do not correctly distribute the gasoline of a wet kit, allowing gasoline to "puddle" in the intake. lean cylinders and intake explosions follow. this is the case of the viper and vr4. as such, you will see propane/nitrous kits frequently in those communites.

[GatorSS]

Just an FYI: The octane equivalent rating of propane is around 110, not "77-82" as mentioned above. It does have fewer BTUs per volume than gasoline. BTUs and octane are unrelated measurements. BTU is a measurement of energy, while octane is a measurement of detonation resistence.

[staminga]

Hey guys! I am in the market to purchase a nitrous kit for my car. Someone told me to add a propane combo. Never heard of this. Does anyone have any info on this combo?

hello, the only time I used both was on my 06 viper, engine cant take 150 shot without propane to cool pistons, most vettes can handle 150 wet shot.

[SMWS6TA]

ya'll both know you're replying to a 5 yr old thread, right?

[pajeff02]

I thought methanol injection was the preferred add on to a nitrous setup?

[35th-ANV-SS]

ya'll both know you're replying to a 5 yr old thread, right?

Almost 6 years old lol. The people who posted and commented are long gone.