When I opened the box, I was greeted with a nice looking Nitrousaurus-X unit. When I took a closer look, I found it to be a quality unit that is well built and designed. While it looks bulky at first glance, it's very light and easy to handle. The controls are easy to use and labeled clearly.

As a degreed Mechanical Engineer and hardcore racer, I quickly became curious about its performance. So I dug up a 12 volt, 5 amp DC power supply and fired the unit up with a full 10 pound bottle inside. I first heated the bottle from 80 degrees F to 94 degrees F in the time of 1 hour, 9 minutes. That was an increase of 160 psig. The ambient temperature ranged from 82.6 F to 83.8 F over that time span.

Next it was time to see how it works as a bottle cooler. Starting from 92 degrees F and 1000 psig, it cooled the bottle at a rate of 40 psig/hour. Ambient temps were again in the 85.1 to 82.9 degree F range. At first, this seemed slow, but then I thought about how you'd use the unit on an extremely hot day. You would mainly be trying to keep the bottle from gaining pressure, which would require excessive purging or wet rags to drop the pressure.

So that led me to see how well it would remain temp and pressure. I heated the bottle back to 1000 psig/92 degrees F and left it running overnight in my 75 degree garage. The next morning, the temperature and pressure were exactly the same. No change at all. This to me is the biggest strength of the unit.

That was enough playing in the garage. It was time to go racing! I wanted to see how the Nitrousaurus-X would perform in a race setting and also how it would respond to higher voltage. Carnivore advertises the unit as compatible with 12-16 volts, so I ran the unit off my truck's cigarette lighter on my 2 hour drive to the dragstrip. What I found was much faster heating and cooling at 13.7-14 volts (alternator voltage). It easily heated the bottle from 75 degrees F to 94 degrees F in the two hour drive. In fact, it reached 94 degrees with time to spare, so I lowered the set temperature and found that it cooled much quicker at the higher voltage as well. I have not tested at 16 volts, but I have no doubt it would work even faster when pushed to its voltage limit.

At the track, I used the unit to maintain the bottle pressure until time to use that bottle. Talk about a time saver! Things get hectic between rounds of qualifying and eliminations. Having to take time to watch a normal bottle heater is time that could be spent making other changes or repairs to the race car, studying the data from the previous run or even just resting or getting a bite to eat. As long as there is at least 12 volts supplied to the unit, the temperature stayed right where I set it. When the time came to put the bottle in the car, there was no rush or thrashing to get it to the proper pressure.

The Nitrousaurus-X is not just for use outside the race vehicle. Its designed to be mounted in the vehicle, therefore taking the place of traditional bottle brackets. It has threaded inserts molded into the bottom for easy mounting. So you get four functions at once...bottle brackets, heater, cooler and blanket. Battery drain is very low, only 5 amps when heating or cooling and about a half amp When maintaining. That's a lot lower current draw than your typical resistance style heater that can suck a battery dry quickly.

The controls are very simple. There is a digital display that shows the temperature of the bottle and the set temperature when either the heat or cool buttons are depressed. A probe inside the unit senses the temperature of the bottle. To raise the set temperature, hold down the heat button until the display shows the desired setting. To lower the set temperature, hold down the cool button. Hard huh? Lots of things take skill...this isn't one of them.

Another advantage of precise pressure control is reduced purging. Nitrous is typically $4.00-$4.50/lb. Depending on how much pressure you have to purge off to get to your desired tune-up, you could easily be spending $2-$6 extra on each pass. With the Nitrousaurus-X running in the staging lanes in your car, even if there is a big oil down and a long wait, the bottle will be at the desired pressure when its time to make your run. The only purging necessary would be after you change bottles to get the air out of the line or to rid the line of any gaseous nitrous. Over the course of a typical race season, that could add up to a considerable amount of money. If use the average purge for example and say that you purge $4 of nitrous per pass and only make 100 runs per year, that will more than pay for the unit. So the return on investment is favorable.

At this time, only a 10 lb. bottle version is being produced. If you'd like to see a 15 lb version or even a dual bottle setup, go to www.gotsqueeze.com and contact Dennis Clark. He can be reached at 866-405-8795 or info@gotsqueeze.com, Let him know what you'd like to see available.

Overall, I've had a very positive experience with the Nitrousaurus-X and Carnivore Performance. Its my recommendation that anyone serious about the performance of their nitrous-fed race or street car will benefit from the Nitrousaurus-X. Check it out.

E-mail Craig if you have any questions.