More power "how it works"

You know a turbocharger can make a small engine feel like a big one. But have you ever wondered how turbos actually work? "Internal combustion engines are 'breathing' engines. That is to say, they draw in air and fuel for energy. This energy is realized as power when the air/fuel mixture is ignited. Afterward, the waste created by the combustion is expelled. All of this is typically accomplished in four strokes of the pistons. "What a turbocharger does is to make the air/fuel mixture more combustible by fitting more air into the engine's chambers--which, in turn, creates more power and torque when the piston is forced downward by the resulting explosion," notes Garrett. "It accomplishes this task by condensing, or compressing, the air molecules so that the air the engine draws in is denser. Now, how it does that is the real story here. "A turbocharger is basically an air pump. Hot exhaust gases leaving the engine after combustion are routed directly to the turbine wheel side of the turbocharger to make it rotate. That turbine wheel is connected by a shaft to a compressor wheel. As the turbine wheel spins faster and faster, it causes the compressor wheel to also spin quickly. The rotation of the compressor wheel pulls in ambient air and compresses it before pumping it into the engine's chambers. "As you may have guessed, the compressed air leaving the compressor wheel housing is very hot--as a result of both compression and friction," adds Garrett. "So what's needed is a way to cool that air down before it enters the chambers. That's where a charge-air cooler (or 'heat exchanger') comes in. It reduces the temperature of the compressed air so that it is denser when it enters the chamber (heat causes things to expand, as we all learned in science class). The charge-air cooler [or intercooler] also helps to keep the temperature down in the combustion chamber. All together, the engine, turbocharger and charge-air cooler form what is known as a 'charge-air system.' "

Nitrous makes big power by adding a lot more oxygen to the air/fuel mixture that is injected into your cylinders naturally. In fact, nitrous gas contains about 2.3 times as much oxygen per cubic foot than air does. More available oxygen means that more fuel can be injected, and more fuel means more power. But that's not all nitrous does. Because nitrous is stored in liquid form in a bottle at high pressure, it cools significantly as it expands. Remember high school physics? Gases condense when they cool down, so besides adding a lot more oxygen into the air/fuel mixture, Nitrous also helps cool the intake charge, thereby topping out the raw oxygen level in your engine's cylinders.

The engine draws into the cylinders when the pistons are moving downward in the cylinders. This creates a pressure in the cylinders that is less then the air outside the engine. The air outside the engine tries real hard to move into the area of negative pressure in the cylinder. What this means is that air is not sucked into an engine but forced in by the higher air pressure outside the engine.