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In the first scene of The Fate of the Furious, Torreto disconnects some sort of a tube from his cousin's car in order to make it faster. What is that tube and does this trick work in real life?

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    I think it's a safe bet that nothing you see in a Fast & Furious movie will work in real life.
    – Steve-O
    Apr 16, 2017 at 22:18
  • Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't he just setting up an improvised Turbocharger and Nitrous line? Even the characters acknowledge that the setup may explode and is an emergency measure.
    – vinchenso
    Apr 17, 2017 at 3:39

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I believe your talking about the following scene

So essentially to improve performance:

  1. They lighten the car by removing a bunch of parts .
  2. Dom then brings a can of nitrous oxide
  3. Torreto adds the coke can ring and redirects the air intake tube (which he actually reattaches).

DOM: Pull the vaccuum line and hold on. Old trick the Boxer used to play.
LETTY: You know that's way too much boost for that engine, it's going to be a bomb.
DOM: Only needs to go a mile.

Essentially he is jury-rigging a Turbocharger and Nitrous setup. Turbocharge simply pulls in more air into the combustion chamber and the Nitrous acts an oxidizer to improve the ignition burn rate (any oxygen rich gas will improve combustion burn, but some gases have a detonation effect when sparked at high pressure. Both modifications improve the burn rate of the fuel which needs to detonate in order to generate torque. You can learn more about how a combustion engine works here.

The key word here is jury rigged, but theoretically the only issue here is that the setup is pretty unsafe/improvised and that they haven't calculated the air intake/pressure/nitrous rates for optimal burn and performance. So in real life turbo/super charging and Nitrous is a common customisation (but generally done with proper regulator gauges to control pre-calculated fuel/air mixture ratios and pressure). You can find about about viability and controls needed here eg. too much nitrous will probably damage the motor, especially with such sloppy "turbo".

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  • I think you're mixing up names here. The discussion is between Leddy and Dom
    – Mennyg
    May 7, 2017 at 10:54
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He removes the vacuum line off the waste gate. The wastegate lets excess pressure bypass the turbo and controls the boost level, all turbo vehicles have one. By doing this he creates unlimited boost.

This does nothing in real life except destroys your engine. Without the extra fuel, all that boost would add zero speed to the car.

The car already had a turbo, you can't just add one or redirect air to create one, it's a mechanical device.

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