If the fundamental principle of building horsepower in an engine is to get more air/fuel mixture into your cylinders, normally we are trying to accomplish that by giving the air a simpler, smoother, less restricted path that stays open as long as possible. That is all well and good, but it is significantly limited by the cubic inch displacement of your engine. So the maximum capacity of your typical 350 small block Chevy is just that, 350 cubic inches of potential air space inside those cylinders.
What if we were able to create a way to actually cram even more air into those cylinders without physically increasing their size? That's what these power adders do! They either compress or inject more air/oxygen into those cylinders, thereby enabling them to burn even more fuel which thereby produces more of that magical horsepower!
Let's start with Nitrous Oxide Injection. It is by far the easiest to install and is usually the least expensive way to go. Listen up as the kid from the EngineeringExplained YouTube Channel explains the basics of using good ole Laughing Gas to make your ride rear up on it's hind legs and kick something!
So Nitrous works by injecting the N2O into the cylinders with some extra fuel where the Oxygen in the Nitrous gets separated from it's Nitrogen thereby giving the cylinder more oxygen to work with.
What if we could just simply use an air compressor to shove a whole lot more air into them? That's the principle behind mechanically driven Super Chargers and exhaust driven Turbos. You are effectively increasing the size or cubic inch displacement of your engine! Even as much as Double or More! Here's Summit Racing talking about the difference!
Here's Andy'sAutoSport talking about 3 different types of Superchargers that are available to us today and some of their pros and cons.
Then let's hear as he talks about the advantages and disadvantages of single turbos vs twin turbos!
So, you want to crank up the heat on your ride in a really serious way? Don't mind spending some serious cash to do so? Then Supercharge that Baby!
