'82 Bracket Beater Camaro 250 HP Nitrous How-To

It's go or blow on today's horse power. When we see how much dire

we can squeeze into the Chevy Bracket beer.

Then it's off to a Georgia Bash where we get to play on a playground of high performance.

Hey, welcome to Horsepower and our brand new digs. Yep. We just moved into the power block tech center and to this shop full of cool tools. We think it's quite a layout. So before we get to work on today's project, here's the nickel tour for you.

Here's our engine building area where everything stays neat and clean and check this out.

It's one of Patton's Quincy's 7.5 horsepower rotary compressors. Now, this thing puts out 100 and 75 P si at only 59 decibels, things quieter than a microwave.

Now, over here's what we call our metal fabrication area where we park this date, 25 ton hydraulic press with an extra three ton ratcheting Arbor press. That's pretty cool. Now, over here, one of their three inch belt Sanders moving along a Lincoln power make 255 welder huge blasted all cabinet and finally this 16 speed drill press from Dake over in this part of the shop. Somewhere about here, we'll have a two post lift any day now and soon

over in that corner, something we've always wanted a dyno Cell with a state of the art 2000 horse engine dyno. In

fact, you'll get to see it installed in a couple of weeks. Now, our biggest and baddest toy is behind that rotary lift. This is an above ground dyno Jet chassis, dyno

with adjustable twin rollers.

Each one can measure up to 1000 horse power. So now we're ready to test everything from an all wheel drive rally car to a monster four by four.

And this is what we're going to use to break it in with.

Now, don't judge a Camaro by its cover. This 82 Z 28 bracket beater belongs to one of our crew members and he could really care less about how it looks. All he wants is it to go down the track in the low tens? It's equipped with a built 13 and a half to 1 406 cubic inch small block Chevy with Pontiac race heads and a monster solid roller cam. It's backed by a power glide, a 5000 sta

converter and 410 gear nine inch. But hey, enough tech talk,

I say we get a face line on this bow tie beater.

By the way, we're moving the car to the back rollers so it'll be closer to the exhaust tubes, then we ratchet it down and let her rip.

Well, there it is 411 horsepower at the rear wheels, about 374 ft pounds of torque. We expected more, but we'll definitely get it when we add some new nitrous technology.

It's called a perimeter discharge system from XX. And here's how it's different from other nitrous kits.

A conventional plate uses a nitrous and fuel spray bar running straight through the center

but the plate we got from XX. Well, it sprays nitrous and fuel from 12 holes around the entire perimeter. And we're going to show you why that creates great nitrous and fuel distribution.

It cools the upper intake faster and creates a low pressure under the carb to help increase airflow

when I say cool, check that out negative three degrees. Now the rest of the kit comes with heavy duty

solenoids, all the line you need fittings and a bottle that we're going to go ahead and mount one of these pressure gauges to.

We're going to use that Nitro system to make about 250 horsepower in that motor. Maybe more. Anytime you make that kind of power, you got to back it up with a secondary fuel system.

Now, our starts with this one gallon fuel cell from Jazz.

Notice how we

fed up these straps here to attach them of the brackets from mounting

we drilled and tapped some holes in the radiator core support for our fuel cell. By mounting it up here, we'll help prevent fuel starvation from hard launches

from the cell. We're running a piece of Earl's dash eight line that's connected to one of their filters

from the filter, more braided line to our Haley fuel pump that we're mounting here inside the engine compartment. By the way, this is one of their blue pumps that flows 100 10 gallons an hour. We found a convenient place just above the pump to mount our regulator and well, this completes our fuel system upgrades.

Here's a little tip for you. When you're adding this much nitrous, you've got to change the spark plugs to a cooler racing spark plug. Now I'm gonna go ahead and get the carburetor out of the way and we can install that Nitrous kit.

We can replace the original studs with longer ones from the kit

followed by the ZEC plate that sits on top of the intake manifold. Now, to finish all this up, all we have to do is mount up the carb.

After tapping the holes in the carburetor, we can go ahead and install a wide open throttle switch.

Finally, we can install this trick billet bracket with the solenoids already attached over the carburetor studs.

Now is a good time to install our jets and we're starting out with 100 and 50 shot.

We're getting close to winding up our nitrous install and making some big horsepower with this old Camaro bracket beater, but like you guessed it, we're going to finish up the install after the break. So stay with us.

Hey, welcome back to horsepower. Squeeze. Play on this 82 Camaro bracket car.

After upgrading the fuel system on this Beater to handle some serious nitrous. We're just about ready to see how much it'll handle. Now, during the break, we mounted the bottle back here, ran our Nitrous line up to the engine bay. So what do you say? We finish up up front.

One cool thing about the XX kit is it only needs this dash four line to deliver Nitrous up to the solenoid

and we're connecting it using this T fitting.

That's because we got this other line that runs up here to this Z

purge kit.

All right, let's see what we got.

Cool. I think it's working now. Not only looks cool at the track but also clears the line of air and make sure that Nitrous is always ready. Now, while Mike's in the car, he's going to install this mini progressive controller from N OS, which comes in pretty handy when you're running a lot of nitrous. Yeah, this thing will allow the nitrous to progress as the car goes down the track. Otherwise you blow the tires off when you hit that wide open throttle switch,

they were feeding this bow tie with some BP racing C 16 with 100 17 octane. Now it's made for motors with less than 17 to 1 compression ratio. If you got more, might want to go with some of this. No two. It's rated at 100 20 octane.

There's one more important step before we make our first nitrous run. You see, for a proper nitrous tin, you want to make sure you have 6.5 P si at the fuel jet, which we put here inside this fitting. Now to check it, we're going to use this flow check tool to make sure we're on the money.

Looks good. We're ready for a run.

Remember, we made 411 horsepower in our base line and this time we're using that 150 horsepower shot of knife.

Also, we back the timing out six degree.

All right, 547 horse power. That's 100 and 36 over the baseline. And remember

that's at the rear tires. Ok. Let's get ready for that. 250 horse hit,

man, 633 at the rear wheels, 222 over the baseline. And that's pretty respectable. Now, we should point out that this car's motor was not set up for Nitrous. So we gave it a pretty soft tune. So Mike, I

guess would be kind of crazy to go with that maximum 300 horse hit. Oh, no. Remember it's not our car.

He built the motor. We've got the jets. Let's see if this thing goes or blows. Ok.

In case you're wondering, the 300 horsepower kit sells were just under 550 bucks.

662 horse power is our final number for this bracket beater. And strangely enough, the motors stay together. So, pretty good day's work here in the new shop. Yeah. Not bad at all. Now, for all that work, it's time for a little bit of play. When we come back from the break, we're going to take you to the year one experience to experience a wild and crazy weekend. Can you say off road golf carting?

Hey, welcome back from the break and to a real fun horsepower experience called the year one experience. Now,

if you've never been to one of these things, it's like a big playground for big kids like us. Yeah, there's all types of motor sports from the road course to the drag strip and even a couple of unscheduled activities. You'll see

day one road Atlanta

where we could take on the turns and straightaways of the two mile road to feast our eyes on some awesome competition, show cars or test corner cutting skills on the dry auto crops.

But for the muscle car guys and us, the wet course offered up a better source of competition and some serious cone killing.

We're gonna see how far we can drift these cars and

see how horsepower compares to the muscle car guy. Pretty much. You're gonna see Mike get his ass handed to him.

All right.

Listen, man, a lot of pride is on the line here are these muscle car guys are a couple of pantsy, so don't worry about it. Tell me something good

is like an old lady. Don't worry about that. Just hit as many cones as you can.

Oh. Did you eat a cone? Did you eat a cone?

I can't tell you're going too fast.

No, no.

Nice job. Now, we gotta see if old muscle car Jar Boy can get a hold of that. He should go to jail for what he did to this thing. It's not even right.

And that's my turn. Let's see what you got. All right. Let's see it.

Very nice

up.

That's what I'm talking about. Muscle car. Yeah. Represent and stuff.

Hey, let's go drag race.

You want to lose. Let's go

geo performance parts brought this tricked out trailer to show off some of their freight motors and give racing fans a chance to gab with the great one, Warren Johnson.

But for Mr Santiago and me it was a time to go inside for heads up competition on the drag race. Simulators.

How does that feel?

That feels great.

You better watch out with him.

This is your trans,

your

controls up above

petals, down below

green. Right here. It is the only one I need to be worried about. Right. The gas,

your red button

and your trans break. But

green light let it go.

Even the burnout feels like the real deal.

But winning here is all about reaction time.

Ok. Even a blind squirrel gets a nut sometimes.

Hey, don't tell the people at year one about this. But Jared and I discovered an event that wasn't exactly on the schedule.

Got it.

And you say extreme off road golf carting,

Ian and Jessi ain't got nothing on us.

All right, kids. Can we get serious? A minute before they throw us out of here?

A

major highlight of the event was competition for the coveted year one cup.

This year, everything showed up from a 59 fury

to this 65 fast back fused with an 03 cobra.

But for our money, the 67 Chevelle was top ride

down.

Builder Dan Wickett gave it an integrated frame with vendor welded on for power. A twin turbo Lt five and for a way cool touch. How about that custom stainless grill?

You pretty proud of this. Extremely,

probably the nicest car built to date

with his 67

Chevelle here. The black and silver one Jack Jenkins. Congratulations.

And can we pick them? Owner Jack Jenkins was beaming about grabbing the top prize and anxious to take this priceless beauty on the road.

If you can't drive them, don't build them.

That's right.

Yeah. And right after the break, we'll take you to phase two of the year one experience this time on the quarter mile strip of Atlanta Dragway.

Welcome

back to Horsepower's coverage of the year one experience time. Now to experience some outrageous eight mile competition.

Thanks to the outlaw racing street car association.

It's awesome organization. It's a fun class. You know, it's just, I mean, these calls run real fast for where they are. That's outlaw 10 5 racer, Hank Hill, a top contender in the top heads up class of Orsa

Hank covers the strip in a gorgeous 06 mustang

powered with a savage 738 inch Fulton big block on Nitrous

while it takes tons of power to win in this blast. It also takes some serious science to plant those horses on small slick

horse

also has three index classes for cars who are not as quick but definitely consistent. Like David Goodman's Camaro,

it's a convertible. He toned down to be competitive in the 530 class

with clear skies and mild temperatures. Track conditions seem perfect for Sunday elimination

but not for last year's champ Terry Robbins who went to the trailer early in the quarter finals.

Same deal for Hank Hill who had problems at the lower end losing to Jack Barfield

but 10 5 veteran Steve Kirk was cool consistent and quick

here knocking out Bobby Cole

in semifinal action, Jimmy Blackman's slower off the line and loses to Craig Miller who runs a 471

and it's a close one but Kirk comes through again beating Warfield by a couple of hundreds.

Now the heads up finals and Dave Cox wins easy streak with a 572 over Tommy Brewer

in limited streak, Ke Sabo

in the right lane runs down Jeff

Koner to win with a 509.

And now the two remaining big dogs of outlaw 10 5.

And Craig Miller finds trouble at mid track as Kirk runs a winning 470 at 100 61 miles an hour. We did a little bit of uh adjustment this morning and we've seen that we had a power who went cooking everybody else first round

and then uh we pretty much just played everything else round by round.

And that's the finale of another year one experience. An annual celebration of cool cars, heads up horse power and all around high performance fun.

Here's a hot new way to boost the power levels in your Mustang pony car. It's an Sts Turbo system that uses a Garrett Turbo to produce 5 to 7 P si A boost for a horsepower gain of 57% at the rear tires. Now, it comes as a complete kit and it has

for a front mount intercooler or Dir

sport programmer. Now to lubricate the turbo, they use one of STSS patented oil systems and the whole kit is upgradable to a twin turbo set up for a higher boost level. The price, well, that's not too high starting out at four grand.

It takes more than just a fast car and quick reflexes to win at the strip these days. It also takes information you can only get with a data acquisition system.

Well, now Edelbrock offers this quick data system

that gives you adjustable high speed data logging. Thanks to a 32 bit processor, you'll get real time display on your laptop and you'll be using software

that's simple to use intuitive and has a windows interface. Now we're going to show you how to install one of these in a few weeks here in the shop. Meanwhile, here's something you should log into your memory prices start at a bit over 800 bucks. Finally, Coker tire has the perfect tire for your muscle car. It's a BF Goodrich red line radio made by Coke

in the original V block T A molds.

So you don't have to settle for rep, pops, re grinds or retreads anymore to have the real deal. Now, each one is tested, inspected and guaranteed against defects for the life of the tread.

Now there's new sizes coming out all the time with prices starting at 100 and 36 bucks. Well, if that's it for hot parts, we'll see you next week for more horsepower.