Lol, NOS is so overrated, what shot is that? People say that you get major performance boosts, but once you run out your screwed. Its much more cost effective to add some forced injection.

forced induction* (sorry thinking of two things)

Running out is only a video game thing. You can spray a 10lbs bottle all day long. For the money, nitrous oxide is the biggest horsepower boost you can get. For $300, I could build a nitrous system that gave you literally 300 horses at the press of a button, (granted your engine would have to be built for those kind of numbers.) I've got an 80hp 'wet' shot on my Shadow. It shaves a few tenths off, which is what it's supposed to do. I spray between 4k-6k in third and fourth gear.

The forced induction argument is a really old one, yes getting one half of your engine horsepower is nice, but the power curve is usually upper RPM. Nitrous systems can even be used to combat the lag you get with exhaust spooled forced induction with computer controlled shots through the lower parts of your power band.

Nitrous isn't overrated, just misrepresented by Hollywood and video games. Also, to dispel a few other common misnomers, nitrous oxide isn't flammable and is safe on engines if you know how to use it.

I understand, trust me I've seen cars with NOS, and the 300hp gains are rare. Most people that I know that use NOS basically get 80-90whp. I would be hard pressed to see a car gain 300hp from a dry NOS system. So dry NOS is essentially the same as getting it tuned and maybe a low end turbo. Wet NOS is a one shot deal, and a turbo is still much more reliable. If you're concerned with turbo lag get a supercharger. If you're concerned with not getting low end power, get a smaller turbo which spools at a lower RPM. In order to get 300hp out of a turbo you would probably need bigger injectors, fuel pump, large DP, ECU Tune and maybe pistons if your car is really bad. With NOS, you have to install tank, foggers and only then the car can only take so much NOS before the fuel pressure spikes or the pistons begin to warp.

Personally, I wouldn't use a dry nitrous system for any more than a 50 shot. Most stock high end V8's (LS-1's 2's, GT 4.6 (yuck!) 5.0, ect.) can take up to a 150 wet shot with no modifications other than installing the nozzles in your throttle body. When you install any kind of system that changes your engine from normal aspiration to a pressurized system, you're going to need more than bolt on fixes. N/A engines are designed to run with a negative pressure (vacuum) so just bolting on a turbo would be a very bad idea. Engines are all about tolerances, when you push the limits of a tolerance it breaks, so you need to expand the tolerances as you expand the demand on the engine.

Note that I said I could build the nitrous system if your car could handle those numbers, like built small blocks and big blocks, and those systems are super easy to install, bolt them on under the carbs and your good to go. EFI kits are easy too, most nozzles come with an adapter so all you have to do is drill a hole, thread in the nozzle and seal it with some teflon paste on the threads, and if you don't have anywhere to mount it at a straight shot into the throttle body, all you have to do is drill and tap.

What do you mean a wet shot is a one shot deal? The way my system is set up (as with all the wet EFI kits I've seen) it taps the fuel line with no loss to fuel pressure, mixes in the nozzle and sprays a mix of oxidized fuel into the combustion chamber via the intake manifold ... it's not a one shot deal, as long as both micro switches and the arming switch is on, it'll spray until the circuit is broken.

A good rule of thumb for building any engine is one half horsepower. If your modification adds more than one half horse for every horse your engine makes, you need to build the engine stronger. That's why it's not uncommon to see 100-150 shots of nitrous in the V8's, because for the money, it's still the cheapest way to go. Even on stock engines, nitrous still needs a little bit of work, cold plugs with tighter gaps, high octane gasoline (minimum 91 octane) and on the shots larger than 100, retarding the timing half a degree or so.

I can build a nitrous system for $300, tank, line, solenoid, nozzles, switches. I can't get a hold of a turbo system for less than $1500 ... and that's not counting the ECU reprogramming I'd have to do. If my engine could handle it, I could get the same gains from a nitrous system that I could from a turbo, when my new engine gets built, it's going to be build for a turbo, but it'll be a VNT (Variable Nozzle Turbine) as they have the least amount of lag across the band and only require a basic oil filter adapter kit, as opposed to a turbo timer and massive tweaking of the ECU. Plus there's no need for an oil change every 1000 miles, but if you race that's not an issue anyway, because you'll change the oil every time you run it on the track for a day.

Any system that requires extensive modifications to the engine should only be put on an engine built to handle it. That's where the perception that 'nitrous is bad for the engine' came from, because when you put a 150 shot on a Honda Civic, the engine tends to grenade (which is as bad as it sounds.) 'Fogger' is a Holley model name for a nozzle. The only systems that don't use 'foggers' are sneaky systems, that have a small tube that runs into the throttle body. These are dry only, up to 50 hp, (usually less,) and have a one pound bottle. As the name suggests, they're made to be sneaky, to conceal somewhere in your car to get someone off the line.