2001 Pontiac Trans Am Intake Manifold Nitrous Install - F.A.S.T. On The Gas

Wiring everything up inside the car is rather time-consuming and the only thing standing between you and the enjoyment of your new nitrous system. Though it looks like a mess of spaghetti here, I could actually tell you where each of those wires is coming from and going to, but I doubt you'd bother reading about it. We had to make an access hole so that we could run some of the wires into the center storage compartment, where our nitrous pressure gauge would be hidden.

Thar she glows, matie, and in a brilliant red hue to match the Pontiac's instrument lighting. Auto Meter now has a line of replacement LED bulbs that provide a much-improved look and greater visibility to its gauges. You're looking at PN 3284. Auto Meter also gave us blue, green, and amber LEDs to try out, and we plan on swapping them in and out to keep things interesting. You can get them for about $9 a piece.

Also hidden from the cops (and competition) are the nitrous switches, which we opted to install inside the ashtray. The red button is for the nitrous purge; one of the switches is to arm the nitrous system, and the other is to turn on the bottle warmer. If you choose to drill your ashtray like we did, be careful, because it is brittle plastic. We ended up shattering a good bit of the bottom and had to make a metal reinforcement to sit in it.

The fuse box located in the side of the F-body's dash served as an excellent source of power to tap into. One wire goes into the ignition-switched port, providing a signal to the nitrous system that it can be armed. The other wire goes directly to the battery port, which has power all the time; this provides electricity to the bottle warmer. We wanted to have the bottle warmer wired so that it too could only come on with the ignition, but were concerned that the ignition circuit couldn't handle all those amps.

It's all done, and man, does it look mean! With the exception of a good nitrous purge, nothing says intimidation like nitrous lines running all over the engine and a huge "F.A.S.T." emblem on the intake manifold. This WS-6 is a sleeper from the outside (as much as a Ram Air Trans Am can be, anyhow), but not under the hood. No gripes here. Ready for some results?

At TT Performance in Clifton, NJ, the Dynojet 224x was the setting for some power numbers and some tuning. The boys were nice enough to donate their time and make sure everything with the system was running properly and safely, using AutoTap to keep tabs on the engine's sensors as well as LS1Edit to do some fine-tuning for the nitrous (more on that in a moment).

Without any tuning whatsoever, the F.A.S.T. LSX intake and throttle body gave the LS1 4.4 horses and 6.4 lb-ft, bringing the totals up to 322.5 and 336.0, respectively. As you can see, there was no loss at the bottom end. Not a bad increase for an engine with the stock heads and cam; cars with modded internals would of course see a bigger improvement. We did note that for whatever reason the air-fuel ratio was a touch richer than during the pre-installation dyno (about 12:1 now), so some custom tuning here would bring an even bigger increase.

We did do a bit of custom tuning, and while it included leaning the mixture out to a healthier 12.7:1, it mainly involved retarding the timing to make it safe for nitrous use. ZEX recommended a 4-degree retard for our 125 shot, so we cut our timing to 19 degrees. Naturally aspirated, numbers were nearly identical to the stock tune. The moment of truth was upon us; we crossed our fingers, hit the spray, and were rewarded with 425.5 hp and 478.1 lb-ft, and the air/fuel ratio was a super-safe 11.5:1. The so-called lean spike seen upon system activation is a common thing for direct-port systems, a result of the higher-pressure nitrous reaching the cylinders a split second before the fuel. It also creates a momentary hesitation, but it's said to be harmless.