Cheap Tricks To Increase Horsepower - HorsePower S12, E9

[Music] wait-wait-wait hey what more horsepower in your street machine Sifl just drop one of these in it I've blown big blocks with twin carbs nothing to it but seriously this week's show is all about horsepower cheap tricks oh and we're not talking about an 80s rock band buddy I think that was a record hook in a motor yeah that was pretty cool all right now what we're talking about today our new and old budget-minded parts and procedures designed to make more horsepower now the first two involved this 383 small-block in our trusty dts engine dyno we got this mule motor as a short block from GM then added a set of dart heads and an aluminum intake manifold all right the first trick we're going to try is not only cheap but a no-brainer to install it's a stub stack from K&N and the whole idea is to increase air flow in the carburetor by decreasing restrictions around the choke horn goes on like so now install a stud okay after the wing nut we can fire this baby up and see what our done [Music] after making runs with and without the air cleaner we picked up a few horses but it seems like the stud stack will get better results at the track with more incoming air next many people swear that the cheapest power comes right out of a bottle Spray giggle gas squeeze whatever you want to call it it works and it's relatively cheap with single-shot kits starting at about four hundred dollars now we picked up the slightly used nitrous express sent man kit for right at 200 now it'll fit all 4150 style intake manifolds and the thing I like about it is most nitrous plate systems use a spray bar but this kit uses a billet plate that has holes drilled in it to introduce the nitrous and fuel to the intake manifold plus it comes with jets that range from 50 to 200 shots well first of all nitrous oxide itself is not combustible that just helps fuel burn faster because of the oxygen content how much we'll just check this out the air you breathe is 72 parts nitrogen 23 parts oxygen the oxygen content of nitrous oxide 50% per cubic foot that's some good info Joe higher octane gasoline burns slower than lower octane gasoline which is critical in a nitrous environment so you need to step up the premium fuel for a 50 to 150 shot of nitrous anything over that requires race fuel now they may call it laughing gas but it's actually a liquid before it comes out of the bottle and it creates a lot more cylinder pressure and stress on the rotating assembly so it's a good idea to run a forged piston and racing application heavier-duty connecting rod even a forged crankshaft okay what are the bottom line benefits for a weekend drag racer generally speaking if your car runs 12 to 13 second ets 100 horsepower shot of spray is good for a whole second off your time well time for us to get busy and get to work on this kit now in the car this nitrous bottle would probably be installed in the trunk in a safe place with this nozzle facing forward of course the other end will go to our nitrous solenoid once we get it hooked up don't forget on your plate to make sure your holes on your spray bar are pointing down into the engine very good boy gotta ask you a question what's your reaction when you hear those kids call this stuff nos oh man I just wanna I can't say it on camera but I just think you could well now the carb can go back on next the 50 horse nitrous jet goes in place followed by the blue Knight for solenoid well now the fuel solenoid and I don't know about you buddy but I like the way they got the inlets and outlets marked yeah it makes a lot easier of course we didn't need that there they were yeah and now the throttle activation switch now we're talking they had a little wiring work to finish up the installation and that's that I had a customer come by one day and he says hey my nitrous on my motor you want to check it out open up the hood and it looked like this it looked like you just threw all the wires on Thomases hey how you like it see ya [Music] man at 475 horsepower that 50 shot of nitrous gave us 57 more torque is 498 foot-pounds which is an increase of almost 90 well now that the motors cooled off a little bit we're gonna turn our attention to something a lot of people ignore were there first nitrous experience and that's the spark plugs after your first blast down the track you want to check each one for signs of detonation and that would be little tiny black and green dots around the electrode I looked pretty good so we can put them back and make another run our second run over the dyno is with jets good for 100 horsepower [Music] finally a set of 150 horse Jets and taking out more timing before the final run [Music] now we're up to 560 horsepower and 625 foot-pounds of torque we're going to go ahead and quit while we're ahead see we've been conservative on the timing because we want to keep this motor around for more tech later on plus our pistons are hypereutectic not forged anyway though 140 horsepower over baseline 216 foot-pounds of torque it's easy to see why a lot of people swear that the best bargaining power is good old nitrous whether it's nitrous express or not right oh here we go with the dirty words again I'm like I'm making any more comments on that word okay we're back with more cheap horsepower tricks now here's one that most of you do it yourself guys can accomplish over a weekend the best part it only cost you about 75 bucks now as most of you know an engine is nothing more than a glorified air pump with this intake manifold the more air you can move through it along with the additional fuel you can add the more horsepower the motors gonna generate even though you don't have a professional porting booth you can still do a professional porting job at home in your garage all it takes is a little bit of patience and a few simple tools plus you won't be spending the two hundred to two hundred and fifty dollars a professional engine shop charges to show you how it's done we're using a Victor jr. small-block Chevy intake manifold from Edelbrock and the first thing we need to do is clean the services using a little lacquer thinner cleaning the intake flanges gets rid of any dirt or oil that's a chicken unless you want to look like your cartoon character you're gonna need a pair of gloves for this now we recommend you get some of this dye chem machinists layout fluid and brush it all around the ports of the manifold after it dries which only takes a couple of minutes you can lay your gasket down and either tape it or silicone it in place now using a metal scribe or even a pick scribe the intake around the edge of the gasket all right now we can go ahead and remove the gasket now check out how the dyke hem allows for a clear and precise scribe mark into the aluminum now before we get started on the porting here's a little tip I want to share with you if you don't want to loom them saving x' all over your garage go ahead and put your shopback to use now I made this little contraption using the piece of sheet metal and exhaust tubing that bolts to the top of the intake and sucks up all the aluminum shavings now you'll want to use a variable-speed dremel tool or a die grinder with a regulator attached to it that way you can control the speed of the burr and prevent it from jumping around and possibly damaging the runners now I'm using a matte code die grinder with the regulator that has a gauge attached to it the burr we're going to use is a cylindrical ball nosed bird but first we want to spray the runners down with wd-40 to keep the heat generated by the porting down very important you want to let the bird do the work with just a little pressure on the grinder also to get that additional flow you only need to go in about an inch and a half although it won't hurt to go a little deeper after every couple of minutes of porting make sure to reapply the wd-40 when you get really close to your scribe marks go ahead and swap out the burr for a 40 grit cartridge roll now this will allow you to smooth out the roughness that the burr left in the runner when you're done with the 40 grit move on to a hundred grit and that will allow you to give the runner a really smooth finish [Music] well that's it for the grinder and the tools now it's time to thoroughly clean out the intake manifold and please take your time the last thing you want are a bunch of aluminum shavings left in this thing that can get down into your engine now if you don't have a parts washer at home you can get this done with a pressure washer or even a garden hose and to break up the wd-40 good old brake cleaner does the trick after getting it clean go ahead and spray it out with there or let it air dry alright once again you're going to need an aluminum burr and some dye chem you can pick up at your local industrial supply house plus a variable speed grinder and some cartridge rolls you can get at your local home improvement store now this is definitely an easy project as long as you take your time plus you get the benefits of more air flow more power and the pride and no one you did it yourself now up next Joe's got another trick up his sleeve that's going to put a lot more power to the wheels of a zo6 bed hey we're back in action and still in the hunt for more horsepower that won't cost you an arm and a leg now by the way this is where we keep all of our engines for upcoming projects now carbureted engines have always been good candidates for power adders and they'll always be around for racers and hot rodders alike but now let's take a look at how to make more power out of a more modern pushrod engine in 1997 GM introduced the LS 1 now they started this design from a clean sheet of paper and what they ended up with was a 5.7 liter small-block that made 350 horsepower at the flywheel now you could first find them in vets and that's what started a new age of high-performance hi-tech horsepower we borrowed this LS 7 powered zo6 that belongs to a buddy of ours down at extreme auto accessories in Memphis we thought this little black beauty would be a perfect candidate for one of the most popular and easy to use power enhancers for late models a power programmer now this one from hyper tech is a max energy for the LX 7 they claim power gains up to 34 horsepower 35 foot-pounds of torque but first we got to get it up on the dyno jet for a baseline the new cars pone stock of course and we'll start the run at 2,000 rpm and clickin at 7 grand hey here we go [Music] you [Music] okay the car made 439 horsepower at the rear wheels which is pretty much on the money factoring the engine the chassis dyno differences okay time to plug the Hypertech Max Energy unit into the port well now gotta close the door make sure all the accessories are off that might be drawing power oh I don't think we'll need a radar detector for this next we can plug in the programmer and follow the prompts now in addition to maximizing power and fuel economy it's got features that let you raise the top speed limiter correct the speedo and odometer for bigger tire sizes and you can update it on the internet a few minutes later the programmer has done its job and we're ready to see what kind of job it does it pumping up the power [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] alright check this out with the Hypertech tune we made 460 horsepower now let's a peak-to-peak difference of 21 now our max gain was up here at 7000 rpm that came in at 34 horsepower too bad we don't have time to check the fuel economy benefits of the programmer that's important to everybody these days now these sell for 379 and 450 bucks less you can get this econ version got the same power and fuel economy tuning without all the extras well now it's time to crunch some numbers and see how much money we've spent don't have the grand total for you in just a minute [Music] okay well I guess I didn't need remedial math and school after all with this thing we just tried a handful of performance components and one procedure in hopes of a good payoff without a big payout now the first thing we tried was this $35 KNN stub stack on the car no appreciable results on the engine dyno but guys tell us these things are good with the incoming air out on the street and strip then with that secondhand nitrous express kit we bought for 200 bucks we made a hundred 40 horsepower over stock easily the most power for the dollar but that's only power that's available in occasional doses the intake port matching might show you increases air flow into any engine and this allows you to add more fuel to match that error labor-intensive but materials only cost $75 well finally the Hypertech Max Energy tuner produced 21 more horses and a new zo6 now that's full-time power plus reportedly more fuel economy cost three hundred seventy nine dollars for a grand total of 689 not too shabby here on horse power we show you the basic steps of power producing projects but there's only so much time available in each week's show so here's a way you can learn all those fine points step by step power building videos is a DVD series with sets that cover subjects like superchargers nitrous carburetors and rotating assemblies it's hosted by race engine builder Aaron Johnson and he goes into detail covering everything you need to know about all kinds of applications it's all covered in plain English with special tips and insight from Aaron now the power building DVD sets will cost you about 30 bucks we get emails every once in a while from guys who want to know do any of today's additives really work well we decided to put one to the test on our chassis dyno and the one we're going to try as px threes new Xtreme oil booster now according to their test is joining horsepower increases up to 5% we baseline a 6.1 Hemi with conventional oil you got 358 horsepower at 5400 our and 365 foot-pounds of torque at 4600 rpm then we added the PX three synthetic oil booster [Music] well the numbers speak for themselves 367 horsepower at 5700 rpms 379 foot-pounds of torque at 4600 rpm well they say the dyno doesn't lie it's right of course they recommend that you add a bottle every other oil change we don't have time of course to check out the other benefits but hey 9 horsepower 14 foot-pounds of torque I'll take that any day finally a hot part that fits in perfect and what we've been doing today in the search and more horsepower end performance now a while back we saw some impressive results on the engine dyno using a Fitch fuel catalyst but they also make these drop-in pellets that improve fuel economy emissions and horsepower now they use a special metal alloy that refines fuel to its factory-fresh state you can get a box of eight and this installation tool for a little less than 120 bucks well that's it for the show today we hope to see you next time

Channel: POWERNATION

Views: 513,071

Keywords: Car, PowerNation, howto, how-to, diy, automotive, cars, trucks, automobile, do it yourself, automobiles, auto, horsepower, cheap, budget, tricks, nitrous, nos, engine boost

Id: Zaa48dJGfQ8

Length: 17min 59sec (1079 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 27 2020