What you're talking about sounds reminiscent of a staged nitrous system.

 

Now that you mention nitrous, I wonder in this case why he didnt just use nitrous as the propellant? I also wonder what would overall add more power to a car, injecting nitrous into the air/fuel mixture, or adding a rocket powered turbine to the rear end? Because if they already had 1300 hp turbonique systems way back then, Im sure theres alot more power potential in them. Then again, Ive never really heard of a set power limit on the nitrous injection systems of today. As Ive seen 2000+ hp nitrous cars. Monopropellants all of a sudden seem really cool how it is so simple to just get more power, add more fuel.

 

Nitrous oxide is not a fuel, it is only an oxidizer. It requires being mixed with a separate fuel. Before anyone mentions using pure oxygen instead of nitrous, it won't work without destroying the engine. N2O is a much more stable oxidizer than pure O2 and doesn't drive combustion temps nearly as high. The act of compression alone is very likely to cause the combustion reaction to start with O2. That is a reason why gauges and regulators for use with oxygen cannot have lubricants exposed to the gas.

Something I have not yet found is the flame speed of IPN, but I did find that it has a tendency toward compression-induced deflagration or detonation when it is rapidly compressed to a few times the previous pressure...exactly what would happen in an engine cylinder. I'm sure rocket scientists, engineers, racers, and gearheads had all thought about using various rocket fuels in piston engines before the '60s were over. Except for nitromethane, which is not a monopropellant, none of them are used because few, if any are suitable.

 

A 2000+ hp nitrous engine is typically a 1500hp mountain motor with two 250hp stages . . . . .

Whether it is nitrous+fuel or a monopropellant (if there was one capable of use in a piston engine), if it goes in as a liquid and out as a gas you are eventually going to be constrained by the exhaust side of the equation . . . . adding more nitrous+fuel with eventually have diminishing returns (assuming you don't detonate or break something first)

 

To this end with the advent of CNC based heads I am surprsied we have not seen a line of nitrous specific heads. Then again, you also run into the same problems with Nitromethane because it contains huge volumes of oxygen as well, what solutions do they use? I have read that some people reversed the intakes and exhausts with nitromethane in order to get more flow out of the engine. probably rather radical but at the same time it makes for some neat theory.

 

I think I see what you mean, the exhaust wont let it out fast enough? Is that what youre saying? And dang they dont make any bigger than a 250 shot?

 

Exactly, instead of 2.35 Intake, 1.88 Exhaust, a nitrous engine wants 1.88 Intake, 2.35 Exhaust (with the ports to match).

It wouldn't be a huge deal to flow a head "backwards" on a solid billet head like those on a nitro or alcohol dragster, but as soon as you are talking gasoline with water jackets the cooling would be all wrong if you tried to flow a head backwards.

Of course if you are doing custom heads from scratch, that can be addressed.

 

my bad double post.

 

Seen one of these on racingjunk a few weeks back, but can't find it or its gone already. Sucks as I would have taken a loan out for it.

 

I saw a picture of one somewhere, the drag axle looked just like the turbine side of a turbo hooked right to the pinion side of the axle. Also saw a version somewhere that pretty much was a turbo, but the turbine was propelled by the Thermolene so there was no backpressure on the motor.