When you hear the name “ZEX” you probably think of nitrous oxide kits designed with simplicity, safety, and ease of installation as their #1 priority. That might have been a reasonable reaction when their systems first hit the market, but today’s ZEX is focused on innovation as well. Case in point: Their perimeter plate system for LS engines, as seen here.
Available in configurations for cable-operated or drive-by-wire 4-bolt throttle body setups, ZEX’s perimeter plate system has a lot of advantages over an old-school spraybar plate or a “wet” nozzle system. The obvious plus is that with the perimeter plate, there’s no obstruction to the airflow into the intake manifold when the system isn’t activated, but there’s another trick up its sleeve as well.
All properly-laid-out plate or nozzle systems will help pull extra ambient air into the engine to a greater or lesser extent, but using the same principle as those crazy-expensive “bladeless” fans from Dyson, the ZEX perimeter plate is far more effective at drawing air due to the layout of the 12 nozzle orifices around the circumference of the plate. That same layout also makes the whole plate itself intensely cold – instead of just having a frosty brass tube across the inlet to the intake manifold, the ZEX perimeter plate transmits that cold to the throttle body which in turn helps cool the incoming air – an effect ZEX calls “Cryo-Sync.”