High Performance

HOT BOAT MAGAZINE

Chuck Goodman's company, Hydro Dynamics, is probably the best kept secret in the world of outboard performance. Chuck and a small staff run a very specialized shop in the small town of Benton in northwest Louisiana. The shop is dedicated solely to the science of building the parts necessary to propel some of the world's fastest outboards.

While Hydro Dynamics builds a wide variety of outboard-related performance products, including some of the trickiest jack plates, foot throttles, modules and Mercury go-fast parts in the business, their most impressive offering is the Nitrox line of nitrous oxide injection systems for outboard motors of every kind. I first met Chuck on a cold winter day in February of '94 while at Mirage Boats of Texas laying out plans for the new Mirage Jet Boat. It was months later that I became aware of Chuck and who he was. It seemed that every time I observed a really fast outboard, I learned that it had a Nitrox Injection kit on board.

I was even more impressed when I began talking to drivers of these boats and found that the kits were not only fast but reliable as well. For many years, I had loosely followed the sport of outboard racing and knew that, while nitrous oxide provided tremendous power for outboards, it also had a tendency to turn them into piles of scrap after two or three passes. It was readily apparent that Chuck had discovered the secret to making tremendous horsepower with nitrous and making the outboard live as well.

I called Chuck and we talked at length about his systems and why they work. (I feared he'd be very tight-lipped, but I was pleasantly surprised when he talked openly about them.) Chuck explained to me that, as an outboard racer for many years, he had suffered through one motor meltdown after another using other manufacturers' systems before deciding there must be a better way than building a motor every weekend. Chuck's solution was to build a nitrous system himself.

"I just decided that I couldn't do any worse" he recalls with a smile. "Hell, I was breaking motors every other pass anyway." It took several months to perfect the system, but soon Chuck had it not only fast but dependable.

"It was really fairly simple," he explains. "I just had to start thinking in terms of what was happening in the engines. All the systems I had used were being built by guys building kits for cars and inboard boats, and they simply did not have a clue as to what was going on in a two stroke outboard.

Two-stroke engines on gas build tremendous heat and tend to seize because of that heat. The first step was to bring the heat down. That was accomplished with the use of methanol as the enrichment fuel injected with the nitrous. Methanol burns much slower, and therefore cooler. An added bonus was that the methanol also makes more power. The second breakthrough came when we realized that many of the motors were seizing after the button was released and the motor was slowing down. Therefore, we came up with what we call a "wash down system" in which we basically inject methanol and bean oil into the engine for several seconds after the nitrous run to both cool and lubricate the engine as it decelerates. Once that was accomplished, longevity increased to the point where it was very rare for someone to have catastrophic engine failure related to nitrous."

WHERE'S THE BEEF?

I listened to all of the above and, truthfully, I was still a bit skeptical. I asked Chuck if he would mind if I tested one of his lake systems designed for use by the Sunday lake racer. Chuck readily agreed and a call to Unlimited Outboard racer Albert Broussard was all it took to get the test boat. While Albert races an Unlimited Hydro on the DSRA (Deep South Racing Association) circuit, he also owns a 21-foot Liberator with a 300-hp V-8 Evinrude bolted to the transom that he uses as a Sunday go-lake-racing family boat. (Apparently the boys on Lake Charles, Louisiana, are serious. Albert says that if you can't run 100 mph, you'd better stay on the trailer.)

The first step in installing the kit was to have Albert remove the manifold from the Evinrude and send it to Chuck to be drilled and tapped in order for the nitrous and fuel spray bars to be inserted. Chuck and his staff completed the work and turned the parts around in less than three days. (Chuck reports that normal turn-around time is three to five working days.)

With the return of the manifold came the kit itself, and I was impressed with each item's workmanship. Our kit contained the methanol wash-down system, which is an option on the lake packages. The basic kit consists of the solenoid pad assembly, a lightweight aluminum pad with rubber anti-vibration mounts and the nitrous and fuel solenoid mounted to it. The V-8 requires fuel and nitrous to every cylinder, so the kit also contained two eight-port color-coded (blue for nitrous, red for fuel) distribution blocks and high-pressure (2,500-pound burst strength) nylon delivery for the distribution of nitrous and fuel. Also included was a pre-wired electrical terminal that took all the hassle out of the wiring. Finally, a bronze nitrous filter was included to ensure the nitrous remained free of contaminates.
Albert completed the entire installation in less than six hours using standard hand tools. Everything fit the way it was supposed to, and the finished product was neat and clutter free.

It was necessary to install a separate fuel pump and regulator dedicated to the nitrous system to deliver the methanol. The fuel pump, methanol tank and nitrous supply bottle take up little room and fit neatly behind the backseat in the Liberator. Despite the 16 extra lines, the system is neat in appearance.
An optional exhaust-gas pyrometer monitored the exhaust temperature, which was actually cooler than without the system.

DOES IT RUN

Once installation was complete, it was time to go to the local track and see just what kind of performance gains, if any, the kit had produced. I've run nitrous before and know its capabilities, and I expected some noticeable improvement. Still, I can describe the resulting of our test with one word only! Startling, with a capital "S."

With two people riding in the boat and without nitrous, it radared at 86 mph and had a quarter-mile elapsed time of 17.3 seconds. With the system turned on, the boat ran 103 mph on radar and the quarter-mile elapsed time was 14.9 seconds. In short, the Stinger system added 17 mph and took 2.4 seconds off the elapsed time. I cannot think of any other bolt-on modification, or, for that matter, any modification at all that will deliver that kind of performance for under $800.

If it's bang you want for your buck, the Nitrox Stinger is hard to beat.

The complete installation takes very little room and is completely hidden under the cowling.

Product furnished by Nitrox
Test Results conducted independently by Hot Boat Magazine