Author Topic: Moron's and nitrous don't mix  (Read 1397 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

gregaba

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 927
    • View Profile
Moron's and nitrous don't mix
« on: July 20, 2022, 11:15:29 AM »
Looking at streetmusclemag.com just now and they show the aftermath of a nitrous bottle explosion in a Pontiac G8.
The owner had removed the burst valve on the bottle and installed a pipe plug.
Brillant move.
Greg

Falcon67

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2151
    • View Profile
    • Kelly's Hot Rod Page
Re: Moron's and nitrous don't mix
« Reply #1 on: July 20, 2022, 12:07:38 PM »
You really have to wonder what some people are thinking.  Or not thinking, in this case.  That's nuts and a potentially deadly hack. 

I have seen a lot of spray installs and way too many look like they were installed and wired on Friday at 5 PM to be tested at the track TnT at 6 PM.  Hoses with kinks, red wire everywhere with crappy splice connectors, switches taped to steering wheels, etc.  Even a bottle in the passenger seat with a seat belt. Oy. 

cjshaker

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4449
    • View Profile
Re: Moron's and nitrous don't mix
« Reply #2 on: July 20, 2022, 03:20:19 PM »
Seen that a few days ago, and the bottle literally exploded. Anyone who survived that is lucky! I cringe when I see videos of people using a propane torch to warm them up to increase the pressure in them. They have heated blankets for that purpose.

Here's a short video of a small extinguisher that gets dropped and knocks the valve off. Now imagine a bottle twice that size releasing all its pressure in a fraction of a second. Or worse, an Oxy or Acty bottle.

https://v.redd.it/1o09mlbws0491/DASH_720.mp4
Doug Smith


'69 R-code Mach 1, 427 MR, 2x4, Jerico, 4.30 Locker
'70 F-350 390
'55 Ford Customline 2dr
'37 Ford Coupe

Stangman

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1685
    • View Profile
Re: Moron's and nitrous don't mix
« Reply #3 on: July 20, 2022, 11:39:03 PM »
Wow Doug had no idea that could happen with an extinghisher. Crazy

Falcon67

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2151
    • View Profile
    • Kelly's Hot Rod Page
Re: Moron's and nitrous don't mix
« Reply #4 on: July 21, 2022, 10:00:22 AM »
Pressure is nothing to screws around with.  I was talking to a guy yesterday and he described an accident where a man lost his hand and part of his arm when a low pressure bladder tank on a water well exploded.  Unknow what caused the tank to fail, possibly could have been the pressure switch not shutting down the well pump at the usual 50 PSI.  Imagine a 900~1000+ PSI NOS tank letting go.  My air compressor in the shop has a 175 PSI safety release valve in the pipe feeding out to the lines, in case of compressor runaway.  When we leave town, I close a valve at the compressor tank and lock out the power.

gregaba

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 927
    • View Profile
Re: Moron's and nitrous don't mix
« Reply #5 on: July 21, 2022, 02:10:43 PM »
i used to know a few people who had a monster truck back in the 80's when they were getting popular.
I would go over and have a few beer's and give them a hand whrn they needed it.
One night one of the guys tripped and knocked over the acy tank,broke off the head unit and sent the tank though 3 concret block walls accross the shop.
Lucky no one was in the way.
A few month's later while working on the monster truck the throttle stuck and pinned a friend of mine on one of those wall's. Needless to say he died.
 These guy's were shade tree and ignored any safty rules that anyone would suggest. I never went back.
Greg

cleandan

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 359
    • View Profile
Re: Moron's and nitrous don't mix
« Reply #6 on: July 25, 2022, 09:40:55 AM »
When I was in the military I witnessed a tank being dropped and turning into a rocket.
This was a 4.5 foot tall tank that did not have the safety cover over the valve....Yes the guys moving that tank without a cover got in big trouble.
While it was being moved it was dropped....in the most perfect launching spot ever.

The tank tipped over, end over end basically, and rolled up exactly at the ladder.
It then tipped, valve down, down the ladder with the hand rails acting like guides on the way down.
Imagine a football rolling the long way and you get the idea how this tank tipped and then went down the ladder.

These ladders are at about an 80* angle so the tank basically fell to the next lower deck, valve down.
When it hit the deck below it broke the valve off and all hell broke loose.

The tank released its gas very violently and this launched the tank like a bottle rocket.
It went up the ladder like a launch pad and hit the near wall at the steep angle of the ladder...This put a big dent in the steel wall.
This caused the tank to ricochet and it was now headed directly at a steel bulkhead......which it simply went through like a bullet through a car door.

Out into the bay it flew and finished its run, sinking out of sight....and it was done.

Everyone in the area was stunned, as well as almost deaf....My gawd was that loud.
Nobody was injured, which was pure luck because there were quite a few people in the area.

Take a few seconds to screw on that safety cover before moving the tank....Even the little tanks carry huge power potential.

cleandan

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 359
    • View Profile
Re: Moron's and nitrous don't mix
« Reply #7 on: July 25, 2022, 09:55:29 AM »
We all get to see people doing stupid things from time to time.
I told my daughter, "You can learn a lot from other peoples mistakes", but she did not have enough experience yet to really hear those words.

Years later she specifically talked to me about this and said now she understands because she witnessed a couple people doing stupid stuff, with plenty of warning signs being ignored along the way, as they arrived at a poor result that was pretty obvious.....From this she learned to listen to the warning signs and stop when the warning signs are telling you something is not right.

Which ties into one of my favorite nitrous poor results....That happens much too often.

We have all seen the guy at the track with the new engine and nitrous set up.
He has high hopes and is certain his tune is correct.
They are now trying to fine tune the set up and having some troubles.....but they will not hear others trying to tell them anything.

Eventually they pull into the burnout box and begin heating the tires....with the engine popping, backfiring, and generally running terrible...and they continue.
One or two dry hops with the same breaking up engine....Then they stage.

As they rev the engine it is yelling at them to stop with the way it is running....nope....we know how to build and tune an engine.

The lights go down and the green comes on, and six tenths of a second later the hood gets blown off the car as the nitrous grenades the brand new engine.....and it is now time to get a hot dog because the clean up will take about a 1/2 hour.....Thanks....your engine was talking to you the whole time but you did not want to listen.
« Last Edit: August 15, 2022, 11:45:02 AM by cleandan »

Joey120373

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 372
    • View Profile
Re: Moron's and nitrous don't mix
« Reply #8 on: August 12, 2022, 03:57:20 PM »
The most tragically stupid one I’ve ever heard of, and I’ve heard of quite a few, was a crew of oil field workers, dealing with a bunch of water in a pipe that had frozen.

What I find so tragic is how there were many full grown adults who were present when it happened, and how no one called out for the stupidity to stop just baffles me.

So here’s what happened…..
A crew of guys, probably 12-20 guys, we’re trying to pump water under high pressure into a well, the process is called fracturing, or Frac-ing, you may have heard of it. The pumps are massive, usually a v12 or v16 diesel mounted on a semi trailer. Water comes into the pump through a 4 inch low pressure hose, and leaves the pump through thick “iron” pipes, these have a bore of about 3.5 inches and the steel is about an inch and an inch and a half thick. These are designed to withstand 10,000 to 15,000 psi generally.
Frac-ing in winter time always is a challenge.
Well, these guys were not having a good day, and they froze up a length of iron solid with ice. The iron is usually in 4 foot to 8 foot long sections.
So they pulled the iced up length of iron from the rest of the stuff, set it up where they could work on it better, and proceeded to heat it with a propane weed burner to melt the ice. By now you can probably guess where this is going. The guy who was standing in front of the open end of the pipe died instantly when a 4 inch round chunk of ice blew a hole clean threw his chest.
How no one involved saw the danger there, still just boggles my mind.

cammerfe

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1655
    • View Profile
Re: Moron's and nitrous don't mix
« Reply #9 on: August 12, 2022, 10:33:37 PM »
I am a scuba instructor. More than 50 years ago, a story went around regarding a scuba tank being filled in an interior room of a concrete block building. At that time, scuba tanks were steel and filled with 72 cubic feet of compressed air. A filled bottle contained air at 2250 pounds of pressure.

A filled bottle was dropped so as to break off the valve. The bottle went through the interior block wall, through the block outside wall and buried itself in the ground several city blocks away. Doan dropem!!

I have had a newly filled N2O bottle setting in the grass in my pit, in the shade provided by my framed canopy.. This was in North Carolina. The temp was 106. As the sun 'moved', the bottle got direct sunlight. It popped the safety on the tank and vented the bottle to atmosphere. At the time, I was getting my bottles filled at Livernois Motorsports here in Metro Detroit. They commonly slightly overfilled to make sure I got all that was coming to me. I like the attitude but it WAS a bit scary on that particular day.

KS

Heo

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 3281
    • View Profile
Re: Moron's and nitrous don't mix
« Reply #10 on: October 16, 2022, 12:29:14 PM »
Seen that a few days ago, and the bottle literally exploded. Anyone who survived that is lucky! I cringe when I see videos of people using a propane torch to warm them up to increase the pressure in them. They have heated blankets for that purpose.

Here's a short video of a small extinguisher that gets dropped and knocks the valve off. Now imagine a bottle twice that size releasing all its pressure in a fraction of a second. Or worse, an Oxy or Acty bottle.

https://v.redd.it/1o09mlbws0491/DASH_720.mp4

 ;D ;D ;D that video made me laugh so much ;D ;D ;D
The extinguisher took of  looks to be in Russia im not surpriced
























t



The defenition of a Gentleman, is a man that can play the accordion.But dont do it

66FAIRLANE

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 558
  • Andy
    • View Profile
Re: Moron's and nitrous don't mix
« Reply #11 on: October 16, 2022, 06:32:23 PM »
I was an apprentice at the railways here in Australia. You can imagine the size of the workshops. Big old sawtooth roof buildings with massive old steam hammers, presses etc. There were two holes in the roof of that building. One where the oxy bottle went out and another where it came back in.