[the head]

I'm with Bob. You run nitrous only occassionally (when you want it). Mashing the throttle down with other mods (especially a supercharger) would put more load/wear on the engine more frequently. But to me there is little difference. I had 140,000 miles on the stock short-block of a 87 mustang with 200+ nitrous runs and it was still pumping out the same power off the nitrous as it was at 30,000 miles. The other side of that coin is that I also knew another mustang owner with 90,000 miles on his stock short-block going from a Paxton to a Vortech in that time and his was just fine too. We both were switching to stronger blocks so that's why we changed them out. Don't knock nitrous until you, yourself, have tried it. There are a lot of idiots and people who spray more than they should be that give nitrous a bad name. I'm a big fan of it.

I didn't notice any power from the Banks but my timeslips at the dragstrip bear out some gain.

Also, power feel can be deceptive without a dyno or timeslips at the track. A loss of power will feel like a "strong gain" when the engine is simply making the power as it comes out of that loss. This is a big-time thing in the sportbike world where people throw on an exhuast and don't jet the bike and swear it pulls really hard in the mid-range. They go to the track and run slower. I'm not a fan at all of the so called butt dyno because it can be deceiving and added noise from a mod can also throw in a mental thing that the vehicle is making more power because it sounds cool.

I have not run an intake system yet, but with all the feedback here it seems that is a good way to go along with the mid-pipe replacement that some folks are now doing.

Your mileage may vary.