Power in a Can

Words & Snaps by Ben

So a friend of mine recently told me about Ozygen, a magic potion that is stated to turn your regular pump gas into race fuel.

I am usually skeptical about fuel additives. While they sometimes bring about better performance and fuel efficiency, they also tend to wear out the seals and gaskets, which is not something anyone enjoys.

While fuel additive brands all claim that their products work wondrously well, most have been proven to have little to no effect, or even detrimental effects to your engine's life and performance.

So what would make Ozygen any better? It was time to find out.

Fuel additives are liquids that you add to your fuel to increase your engine performance, restore your lost power, and reduce your fuel consumption. Fuel additives are mixed with the gas in your tank, and burn with it to provide their benefits.

Ozygen, however, isn't a fuel additive, it's a fuel modifier. What's the difference?

When added in the tank, Ozygen mixes to the gasoline and modifies its composition to race fuel standards, making it more consistent and stable.

The bottle claims a few benefits, such as, aside from increased torque and horsepower, a better fuel efficiency, and cleaner fuel pump, injectors and spark plugs.

There was only one way to find out if the claims were true, so the guys at Ozygen passed me a bottle to try, and I used my '06 Toyota Vios, powered by a 1.5L 1NZ-FE NA running stock internals and intake, and an E-manage Blue piggy back ECU as a test mule.

The 1L can is made to treat up to 85 litres of gas, thus I poured about 500ml in my 45-litre tank before driving off, leaving the extra half liter for my next fuel tank.

I quickly felt a difference - especially in terms of torque. My Vios was suddenly much faster to get up and go, it almost felt as if it had shed a few kilos. In addition to that, the engine ran quieter, and smoother, something definitely enjoyable on a daily basis.

I have to admit that I might not have the most precise butt dyno around, and I also know that there is always a sort of placebo effect when using power enhancing products. I don't want to tell you, reader, information based solely on my averagely accurate feelings, so I decided to get some proper, quantifiable facts.

The best way to see the difference in power and torque is on the dyno, so I took advantage of when my car was on the rollers for a new ECU tune to add in a couple of pulls using Ozygen.

And the results were there to prove me that my butt dyno wasn't wrong.

On the dyno graphs, the thicker line represents the power curves before Ozygen, and the thinner is the engine performance after.

As you can see, there is an improvement in both the torque (blue) and horsepower (red), with both starting earlier and peaking higher.

The torque indeed kicks in earlier with Ozygen, and the dyno shows that at 2,600rpm there's a notable increase of 16.3Nm, which is why my car felt so much better from the get-go.

The Ozygen-enhanced torque then follows the original closely, and smooths the overall curve, fills a dip with an extra 3.6Nm at 5100rpm, and rounds up the top end with more Nm from 5,300rpm onward with up to 4.2Nm @6100rpm.

The horsepower curve gets a similar treatment, with an added 5.76 horses at 2,600rpm. It then fills the dip at 5,100 with an extra 2.6Hp, and gradually delivers more power from 5,300rpm to a peak of 3.7Hp @6100rpm.

I will not be able to comment on the fuel efficiency as I do not have any quantifiable results, and I might have been enticed to step harder on the throttle to enjoy the added power and torque more than I would like to admit.

I do not either have any data on the cleanliness of the fuel pump, injectors and spark plugs as I would need to run on Ozygen for a longer period to be able to get any reliable data.

What I can share however, is that in terms of power and torque there is an improvement, even on a stock engine. I would love to see the effects of Ozygen on a race-built engine. This will be for a later stage.

Stay tuned!