Yes I'm still having fun with words...I can't help it man, my funny bone and my imagination are permanently connected. I've always thought that God had just heard a good joke when he was designing my soul. You know, the kind that makes you continue to chuckle on and off for hours after the joke was told...The old guy really fixed me up good! Ok so this magic gas I'm referring to isn't methane but Nitrous Oxide! Yea the stuff that's all the rage these days amongst the gearheads and tuners trying to make really BIG horse power. I hear that it's been around forever (1775) but since it was so misunderstood, it didn't get widely accepted until the late seventies when it seemed to bust out all over in the performance vehicle world. In keeping to my style, I'll just cover some basics about it and its use as a performance enhancer. It's all about the addition of more oxygen to the combustion event to create a bigger BOOM! The engine guys have all been designing, cutting, grinding, flowing and laying awake nights trying to get more of the 14.7 lbs. per square inch of available oxygen into their motors than physics will allow. The most known methods are some sort of mechanical pump to pressurize the intake charge like turbochargers or superchargers. Both have their merits and detractors and pretty much carry a significant price tag as well as a host of complexity to implement. Well nitrous (N20) carries about 36% oxygen by weight and can be easily stored in a liquid form and dispensed under pressure into the intake system of an internal combustion engine and boost the power output by a huge amount. How's a "safe" 40% gain grab you!!! The performance gain figures for larger, heavier duty engines can be more than 100% but it all depends on the total heat and mechanical load that the components can handle. Nitrous has a cooling effect on the intake charge but it is quickly overcome by the increased heat generated in the combustion event. The total timing will need to be retarded a little to reduce the detonation potential. It also works best if your compression ratio is around 9.5 to 1 and that is way low by today's standards. A nitrous system is very easily "tunable" by varying jet sizes for the fuel and N20 and you can plan on incremented jumps in power right off a tuning chart. It's a little sensitive to total bottle pressure but once you have an established normal operating range, you can plan on when to re-charge the system to "top it off". For the street/car/drag race guys, it has been a "God send" because they can build a relatively mild engine that turns into a monster at the push of a button! So far it sounds real good but it has some level of complexity all it's own to safely utilize in racing conditions. First off, you can't just add nitrous on it's own for any length of time because it would make the intake charge way too lean and your engine would self destruct in short order. So you must add fuel with it to balance the boost charge back to a non-lethal dose. In our case of a carbureted engine, we will have to have a fuel pump and a mixing nozzle (fogger) that sprays the added mixture into the intake tract in between the carb and the head. The system also needs to be "on demand" and not constant so we will have to activate it with a button when we are ready for it. The altitude at Bonneville will rob us of the oxygen that we need to make decent power so it must be replaced. The nitrous system is just the ticket for speed record runs because it will only be used for a final boost after terminal velocity and RPM is reached normally aspirated. Our rider runs it up to flat out against the air drag and gearing while approaching the measured section and then hits the button and boosts the engine to more RPM and a higher top speed until it stops accelerating. This should help reduce the severe demand of an extended duty cycle that other methods like superchargers or nitro methane would require. They would be "on" all the time during the run up and since we are air cooled and vintage, we want to limit the heat stress to a short blast.   So our elderly Enfield now sports a battery, fuel pump, nitrous bottle, solinoids, relays, pressure switches & regulators and the assorted high pressure lines...Whew! The under seat area is starting to look like Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory! Yep, Dyno Dan has been busy gathering all the info and equipment to optimize our set-up and make some serious power. He has also discovered a terrific place for technical knowledge and that's Schnitz Racing in Decator Indiana. For us, these guys are the equal to a gold or diamond mine find.  I think you are getting the picture of how this process turns us all on and the learning experience alone lights up Dan's eyes like I haven't seen in quite some time! We just don't wish to leave anything on the table when we go for a top speed run 1400 miles from home.  More fun to come! Always Racing!  Phil