History Research: Whiteman-Navarro Oxygen Injection

Hey everyone

I saw this in California Bills Ford Speed Manual (link to amazon here)



I have been thinking about this for years, and was suprised to see someone playing with oxygen injection back in the day.

I need to know anything anyone can find about this setup, the roadster, tech specifics, the whole thing. I want to try something like this sometime later this year. I need to know anything about the Whiteman roadster, the years it ran, the times it turned in, Barney Navarro and his experiment, the issue of Hop Up it may have ran in.. if anything ever ran in the mag. Also maybe info about the photographer "Trindle", maybe he has more pics...

From what i gather from the pic.. there was a compressed oxygen cylinder somewhere on the car with a feed line to the firewall.. where the hoses on the top of the carbs connected. From there the oxygen p***ed through the mount/valve body attached between the carbs. I believe the oxygen pressure was regulated with the long screws sticking out the side.
My big questions are.. if you are jamming more oxygen into the carb... what happens to your fuel/air mixture.. obviously you need to increase the amount of fuel.. was it adjustable? was it static? was it supplementary? and what happens to the vacuum levels in the manifold? you are forcing air in.. do you need to force so much in it negates or overpowers the vacuum? not enough will just reduce your vacuum to negligable levels.

I guess some of my questions are basic supercharger/blower questions, as i am not familiar with them.

Anyway.. thanks for any input anyone can give.

 

its the same EXACT concept as Nitrous?

with the same exact concequences...

 

If it's PURE oxegen, then it burns.
It and Hydrogen have the ability to produce more BPU's of energy than gas/air mixture.
I'm looking into running Hydrogen...
r

 

Nahh i think its toootally different than nitrous...

First you are not injecting a fuel.. Second nitrous injects into the manifold.. not above the carb.. ummm in most cases.

also you are just injecting a small amount of fuel.. here you are injecting m*** quan***ies of oxygen.. lots of oxygen.

Nitrous relies on the air already existing in the fuel/air mixture, cause its superflamable.. with oxygen injection you would be changing the fuel/air mixture

 

I am far from any expert on this but these are my thoughts.
It takes an exact amount of fuel and air to be effective in combustion. Regardless of whether your just ****ing in oxygen from a regular carb or blowing it in with pressurization the carbs will only use what the engine will bring into it on the intake stroke of the cylinder. My feeling ..blowing oxygen into an engine thats not equipped to do so will have no effect other than an adjustment of the carbs fuel air mixture may have to be made. The only way I see it.. The air?oxygen has to be highly forced in with something other that the intake stroke like a blower.
Just a guess...........

 

It's really a lot like nitrous...with one big exception. Nitrous (N2O) is inert, while pure oxygen is highly flammable. With a nitrous system, the nitrogen and oxygen are split chemically by the heat of the combustion process, leaving the oxygen to interact with the excess fuel that must be introduced at the same time. If no extra fuel is added, the mixture will go way lean, and burn holes in the pistons. The nitrogen left over just p***es out with the exhaust, still inert.

The oxygen and nitrous systems are similar in that the expanding vapor will greatly decrease the temperature of the incoming air, reducing the combustion temperature, allowing a richer mixture, and limi***ng detonation.

I believe the oxygen injection systems ideas were set aside with the advent of nitrous. Still a neat idea, but the flammability issue is very serious. I'm sure most sanctioning bodies won't allow it, either.

 

dude im sorry man but OXYGEN is FUEL

and N2O is NITROGEN and OXYGEN


The benifit to NOS over pure OXYGEN is that the nitrogen produces a dense air mixture, all the atoms are tight, you can get more oxygen/air/fuel into the cyl.


Tuck

 

Kommuter pulled that off with way more tact than me...

 

ok .. 02 is a fuel... i was meaning in the traditional sense.. like liquid fuel at standard atmospheric pressue..

seriously though.. yeah you will have to increase the amount of gasoline... just like having a big old blower sitting on top of the motor.

But lets not redirect this post to a conversation about the pro's and cons of nitrous... this is a research deal.. trying to figure out what Barney Navarro and Mr. Whiteman were doing.

The road behind my house... has no sactioning body

 

Oxygen is not really a fuel, it is an oxidizer. It allows fuel to burn. Most fuel is carbon, hydrogen or a combination. For me to have said oxygen is flammable is really a misnomer. Fuels are flammable. If compressed oxygen gets ignited in the presence of any fuel, then it will burn. No fuel, no burn. OK, enough of the chemistry...

I think this type of system was tried on WWII aircraft, just like nitrous was. Trying to gain the advantage at al***ude, without putting the stress on the parts all the time. Could these guys have been using some war surplus technology and parts?

 

Kommuter is right i stand corrected... it like in a fuel cell the hydrogen is the fuel (reducing agent) and oxygen is the oxidizing agent

 

throw a match in a bucket of oxygen...



anyway...

Yeah i think the regulator was homemade.. was Barney Navarro in the war? did he have something to do with aircraft? maybe he brought the technology or idea with him.

I dont know either way, its cool as hell. I want to try something like it.. with just regular compressed air. I think the principles involved would be just like setting up a big gear driven or belt driven blower only the air source you are blowing in.. is coming from a compressed tank.
also you can fine tune the amount of air.. make it adjustable.. like it looks like they did.

Anyone with info?

 

Did you ever see the guy who lights his charcoal with a bucket of liquid oxygen? Takes like 3 seconds to get the coals ready to BBQ.

Didn't Moon run a FED with compressed air tanks? Seems like I remember seeing pics of that. Maybe it, too, was oxygen. Seems like it would be good for a short duration boost. If you set it up with an on-board compressor, it could be self recharging.

Kinda like how the Lightning pickup uses the A/C to super-cool the intercooler, for a short boost. Extra power on tap, and renews itself. Cool idea.

 

yeah, hitting the "Blow" ****on would be cool.. but then you would have to automatically adjust the fuel mixture up... a ton.

an interesting fact i just found out..Barney Navarro was a member of the Glendale Strokers car club before world war II.

I know almost nothing about the so cal/salt flats/early 30's/40's/50's people or cars... being a midwesterner.

 

Oxygen isn't a fuel? I thought the space missions use LOX in their tanks. Or was that bagels?

Anyway, what kind of fuuueeel am I....

 

Let's get the differences straight.
Air (that we breathe and that is compressed into the cylinders via blower or normal induction is not O2. Oxygen is approx. 12% of what we breathe.
That's why it's (air) not a fuel.
Pure O2 if extremely flammable. Have you ever been to a hospital ward and seen someone on pure oxygen? Have you ever seen someone smoking while on pue oxygen? If you have you're too close.
If you inject pure oxygen into the induction system, you will increase the flammability of the fuel mixture by the increase of atomization and the addition of a combustable. You can run a vehicle on pure oxygen, but hydrogen is better...
r

 

yup

 

I knew I started that with the wrong tone...

BTW, the Shuttle uses liquid hydrogen (fuel) and liquid oxygen (oxidizer). The combustion produces m***ive amounts of energy and... water, H2O (or steam, 'cause it's really hot).

Sorry to geek up a perfectly interesting hot rod history thread, I've just always thought this chemistry stuff was interesting.

 

Well, I stand corrected.
A PHD in chemistry beats me out.
r

Oxygen and Combustion
Technically, combustion (burning) occurs when a substance reacts with oxygen to produce combustion (oxidation) products. Since oxygen atoms cannot react with themselves to produce anything except oxygen molecues or ozone molecules, oxygen does not burn. The nature of the reaction when oxygen forms ozone is different from the electron transfer which occurs in traditional oxidation. Therefore it would be splitting a hair to say that because oxygen atoms can form ozone molecules, oxygen has been oxidized (burned). Thus, oxygen does not burn. It merely supports combustion.

Regards,
ProfHoff

Since oxgen is 'used' in the combustion in that it
enters into the products of the combustion, I would say it is combustable. To act as sort of an "enzyme" in combustion and need to be present but NOT enter into the products of combustion would make it otherwise appear to be non-combustable.
Ric Rupnik

Combustion is the rapid exothermic reaction of some fuel with oxygen.
In the absence of any fuel [combustible material] oxygen does not react.
Vince Calder

Oxygen is an oxidizer, but it is not combustible.
Richard E. Barrans Jr., Ph.D.
***istant Director
PG Research Foundation, Darien, Illinois

 

Plus all the ice on the tanks from the rapid decompression.

Actually, the chemistry of the fuel is an interesting topic (and one I know jack **** about). I've heard people say that a large % of the horsepower gain from NO2 injection is from the colder intake air temperature that it produces. How much of that is true?

 

ok.. lets not hijack the post...

The goal here is to find out info on the "experimental" carb setup on the whiteman roadster...

a roadster i have never heard anything about..

 

does anyone have a website or a list of cars that participated in races at the flats in the early 50's? maybe the Whiteman car might be on the list.. that would help narrow down the years i am looking for. I would imagine it would be a big list.. but its worth a shot.

 

Okay, ya big galoot.

The Navarro Roadster started life with a 1927 Ford body on Willys frame rails and bodywork by Art Ingles. The car was raced from 1948 – 1953 by Barney Navarro of Glendale, California. The car was raced with California Roadster ***oc. (CRA) on the circle tracks around Los Angeles. It was also raced with the Southern California Timing ***oc. on the dry lakes and at Bonneville, setting many in cl*** fast times over the years. Many considered this car, with its ‘GM C’ roots industrial blower, to be the first successful adaptation of this combination – the grandfather of the modern blown drag race motor used today. Later, Navarro used a pure oxygen injection system in place of the blower set up. With a three litre motor, his fastest times were 146.9 with the blower set up, 136.77 with oxygen, and 78.670 using only four cylinders, setting an ‘O’ streamliner record at Bonneville in 1950.

 

Here's a pic from the NHRA museum...

 

Oxygen DOES NOT BURN!

The triangle of combustion is:

HEAT FUEL OXYGEN.

Remove any one of these and there is no combustion. Oxygen on its own is totally inert, but add it to a fire and it will increase the intensity of the fire enormously.

Light a cigarette in an oxygen soaked environment and your ciggy will burn down in seconds, rather than minutes, but the fire WILL NOT SPREAD.

If you want to boost an engine with it you can inject it directly into the carb, and it will displace the ****ty weak air mixture that the engine will normally **** in. There's 18% oxygen in the atmosphere, so, if you bung pure oxygen in instead you can add about five times the fuel you normally would, hence five times the power??

Downside? Enormous heat! That's why they use N02, as it cools the charge somehow as well as supplying extra oxygen.

Crack out them welding oxy bottles and stick some big electro controlled N02 fuel jets in your manifold, and give it a go

 

[ QUOTE ]
. Oxygen on its own is totally inert, but add it to a fire and it will increase the intensity of the fire enormously.


[/ QUOTE ]
Oxygen is anything but inert...hook an oil pressure gauge up to an oxgyen cylinder and turn on the valve...

 

oh boy.... what a can of worms i have opened

Hey Zenor, thats a wealth of info.. thanks, i would love to see pics of this setup he had on his roadster.. also any of the Whiteman.. if anyone has them

 

Magnet why dont you call Barney, a month or so ago he was still kicking.If you catch him right he will talk your ear off,his mind is still very sharp.

 

here is something...entries from Speed Week in 1949

#70
http://www.landracing.com/events/speedweek/entries49.htm

 

[ QUOTE ]
Oxygen is anything but inert...hook an oil pressure gauge up to an oxgyen cylinder and turn on the valve...

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh dear. What can be done?