There are several reasons why this happened, but everyone in the racing community agrees on this one thing.
Photos circulating social media earlier this weekend show a Pontiac G8 drag car absolutely demolished from, by the story the photos tell, a NOS bottle that exploded.
Check out the photos for yourself below thanks to @IAmTAIBoogie and @PrecisionTurbo on Instagram below.
“An unfortunate encounter with nitrous ruined this guy’s week,” Precision Turbo captioned their slideshow. “Thankfully everyone is alive but one passenger is pretty banged up.”
It’s not clear if someone slammed into the back of this Pontiac G8, causing the nitrous bottle to explode from the collision but a close-up of this bottle shows the likely cause, this bottle’s been improperly modified, bypassing an important safety feature.
Facebook user Mike Taliercio commented a close-up of the bottle’s neck showing someone’s placed a plug where a pressure release device, dubbed a burst disc, would normally be.
According to Nitrous Oxide Systems,
“All standard nitrous oxide cylinders are equipped with safety burst discs in the bottle valve assembly. If the bottle pressure is raised to approximately 3000 psig, the safety disc will burst and empty the contents of the cylinder through the diffuser nozzle fitting.”
Here’s an expanded schematic showing where the burst disc is.
And, here’s a photo of one, up close.
Whoever filled this nitrous bottle should’ve done their due diligence, informed the Pontiac G8 owner that this bottle is modified, not safe, and therefore, shouldn’t be used.
Almost everyone in the comments agrees ignoring and bypassing safety devices is not only wrong, it’s dangerous and potentially life threatening.
Furthermore, commenters used this unfortunate accident to remind NOS bottle users that their bottles need to be inspected and re-certified every five years (three years for composite bottles.)
Street Muscle Magazine has a great post on what goes into a NOS bottle recertification (post linked here) but, basically, for less than $20 (googling around for average prices,) a bottle re-certifier will push a NOS bottle to its limit and beyond, injecting as much as 3,000 PSI of air into your NOS bottle, checking for leaks and an acceptable amount of expansion.
Obviously, they’ll also check that your safety devices, including the aforementioned burst disc, is working as intended.
NOS is a great way to make power and, when properly installed with all the right equipment, is relatively safe.
It’s when you skip safety checks, modify your NOS system in an unsafe manner, and ignore precautions, that your NOS system becomes a literal bomb behind your rear seats.
In this case, someone actually got hurt.
Bookmark this post just in case you have that one friend who just doesn’t give a hoot about NOS bottle safety.
You could be saving someone’s life.
