When it comes to making power in a diesel, there is no secret that nitrous can yield huge power gains. Over the years, We have seen trucks almost double their power with the help of nitrous.
Many guys who don’t have a nitrous kit installed in the truck, will have a buddy or someone who works at the shop hold a bottle by the intake. As the RPMs starts to come up, the person with the bottom will open the bottle. This unrestricted flow of nitrous enters the turbocharger and works its way into the combustion chamber.
With a ton of fuel, the additional oxygen provided by the nitrous helps to burn the fuel resulting in huge power gains. Over the years many shops have perfected this technique and can really take the power level up. Looking at the video above, the shop doing the dyno run must do this all the time. They have an adapter hooked to the compressor inlet and the guy working the bottle is standing a few feet back.
Why is he standing back? Well it is simple, often times the other side of making big power is breakage. We have seen engines come apart and throw rods and other parts off the engine. These guys are making the pull as safe as possible and we give them props for taking some safety precautions.
Unfortunately for the owner of this rat rod, the engine couldn’t quite take the additional power and blew its headgasket!