The engine...

I have added a few things to the engine, but I never took care to document the installation and stuff. I could not get good shots from everything (i.e. the headers) because they are covered and so on.

This is my engine, I think it looks really different from the stock one.

Left view from the engine compartment. The air intake tube was covered with a reflective material to prevent heat comming from the headers warm up the incoming air.

Left view from the engine compartment. You can see part of the fuel setup for the nitrous.

The traditional stuff; K&N filter. I also changed the MAF sensor for a Granatelli. (now the air filter is placed in a CAI setup, I'll upload pic from this later).

This is a comparison of the stock MAF with the PRO-M one (on the right). There is noticeably a larger area on the aftermarket MAF.

I recently modified my intake to a CAI type one. We saw on the scanner that the intake temperatures were really hot since the engine bay heats up a lot, even with all the insulation I have installed. I took a 3" flexible hose from the MAF and passed it all the way in fron of the radiator, so the K&N is placed right behind the fron grille, getting only fresh air from outside while still sitting pretty high above the bumper in case I want to do some off road driving. you can barely see it, I removed for this the red K&N prtective foam from the filter you see in the picture.

This are the nitrous and fuel solenoids. This is where the real power comes from!. The system has a fuel pressure safety switch to prevent lean mixture situations and a RPM switch at 2500 RPM to prevent early activation of the system. The current gains from this setup are 66HP for a total of 193HP at the flywheel.

Currenly I have changed from a single fogger setup (as shown) to multi port.

Multi port setup will give me a more reliable nitrous system because the intake manifold was designed to transport ar only, not gas. This will allow me to rise the nitrous gain to 125HP more because I can pour some more juice on the engine evenly distributed. The jetting now optimized. It looks like this now.

My fuel supply installation now has braided lines.

This was the old fuel line...

I added a separate fuel tank and fuel pump to feed the nitrous system. This way I can use race fuel for the nitrous, this helps a lot to prevent detonation and to have a stady and reliable fuel flow. I used a 1 gal. reservoir tank from a chrysler (on the left) with it's fuel filter and you can see the red fuel pump on the right side of the steering pump (it says NOS), the pump is an inline type and runs only when I arm the nitrous system. The setup looks stock.

The nitrous bottle is located in the toolbox, I added a pressure gauge, nitrous blanket and a remote valve opener. The system is Edelbrock for holley carbs, I replaced the nitrous plate for a NOS fogger injector.

This were the Hotwires from Nology. They feature a built in capacitor to make a better spark, each has a ground strap. They have a lifetime guarantee. I removed them because I think they did not match the multiple spark Jacobs ignition due to their capacitance.

Now I use Ford racing 9mm wires.

This is a pic of the autolite racing spark plugs I use, the one in the right is powered by the Jacobs ignition and the other one with the stock coil only. After 4 months use there was a .70 gap on the plug that was fired by the Jacobs ignition and still worked fine, see the wear difference?, wow!.

Even this racing spark plugs can break if you get too lean...

I tried Beru Silverstones and they cooked...

Splitfire triple platinums were the worst ones for my application...

According to Joe Pettit's nitrous book you should look for a thick electrode and a low profile on a sparkplug for nitrous use. See the difference in design between the Berus, Splitfires and Autolites (shown in this order).

This are my new Ford Racing 9mmm wires, I got also Moroso show separators so they would look nice.

I had a Superchip installed but had to remove it when I installed the nitrous due to the timing advance it makes. APTEN performance tried to make a custom dual program chip for my truck, did not work and I gave up after trying four versions of their "custom chip" for my truck.

The exhaust is a Flowmaster, I removed the catalyzator because is restrictive (mostly while using nitrous), I had to modify the rear O2 sensor in order to get rid os the "Service Engine" light.

you can download a video of the sound here

I added the A/C. this is a picture of the thermic isolation at the evaporator to make the system more efficient.

This is the metalic electric fan I got from summit, I set the thermostat a little bit lower than stock to have a cooler engine, I had to buy the thermostat kit spearately (forgot the brand). This helps to take less power from the engine from accesories, a really good addition to improve power to the wheels and gas mileage.

< IMG 88 R> This is the throttle body spacer (Airaid). It made a funny turbo sound at part throttle, I didn't notice much difference to be honest. One day we took it out and noticed that the opening was in fact smaller than the stock one due to the threads to "swirl" the air, I saw this a s a restriction instead of a benefit and we machined the hole to match the stock opening, so it is still a spacer and that helps but the threads are gone.

I don't have pictures of the thermic header covers, magnetic fuel saver. If I get pictures I will post them later.

This is the Jacobs Electronics ignition (the one I got didn't included the wire set). This is one of the best additions I have made to my truck, I noticed the mpg increase immediately. When you unplug a wire it sounds much harder than the DIS-4 ignition from my car, so far it's been there 4 years and no problems at all.

I removed the throttle body water cooling hoses because it supposedly warms up more than it cools, so far I haven't felt any changes ( by touching it) but will mease the temp with my neighbor's truck since he's is stock.

I have swapped the camshaft for a Racer Walsh #1 hydr one (I think its from Crane cams), there was a increase of around 40HP while using nitrous! and a 10HP gain on n/a mode. When I installed the cam I got the springs too, but forgot to get the retainers, so I could not install tyhem, when I install the turbo the stiff springs will go in too!.

This doesn't help anything for performance but this battery cover looks really nice, even more with the MSD ignition logo on it!.

I intend to get a custom made turbo for my 2.5L, I only need the money and time to take it to the shop!. I have already started listing the thing I need to buy, I already got the boost gauge and a double A-pillar pod. The idea is to set it to 5-8psi but without lowering the compression, to still have enough torque for launch, it a daily driver after all, I estimate a 40-60HP gain over the 135HP I have now. Serious power will come from the 125HP nitrous shot anyway.

I'll have to upgrade the fuel system pump because the stock one can barey keep with the injectors, I had to add a separate fuel pump for the nitrous system. For the turbo setup I'll get a 255 lph pump.

So far this has been my best time slip (I was number 35 on the left side, the other guy was a Chevy silverado pickup with a V8 Vortec engine), so you know my posted times are no bullshit!. Maybe it would be better wit slicks because it spins a little even with the Pirelli Zeros and the traction bars, but it is an everyday-drive truck.

The truck at the dyno...

This is a dyno run in normally aspirated mode. You can see that all the small mods add up.

This is a dyno pull from a 2.3L project from RPS. The Current performance upgrades on this truck are an electric fan, custom intake, and Flowmaster 50 Series Delta Flow. Notice the lower performance??, hahaha.

This is a dyno run with nitrous, the torque increase is amazing, over 100lb of torque!.

Here are both graphs overlapped so you can see the increase.

It is important to notice that this are HP and torque at the wheels, not at the crank, the number at the crank would be about 15% more if we compensate transmission power loss.

This is the latest mod, a 4 cylinder nitrous mastermind controller (had to wait 8 months to get it). I need it to avoid tire sipn at launch and be able to feed more nitrous (around 150HP) at high RPM. Just need some time to install it. Will post some pics of that later.

After like a year I started with the install. The nitrous mastermind could not detect the RPM signal from the truck, so it did nothing. I had to get this tach converter from MSD and install it on the secondary coil pack, since on the primary did not trigger either (probably due to the low compsumption of the inputs because of the Jacobs ignition).

The latest news is: IM GOING TURBO too, hehehe. I started already to purchase the boost meter, stiff springs, fuel pump, and have a long list of things I need to make the conversion. It will be on the same 2.5L I have. Probably a T3/T4 setup, low boost, same compression, but with a good flow intercooler to keep the intake charge cool. The nitrous will stay there in case I need more power, hehehe. Probaly justa smaller shot, 100HP, 75HP or so.