Chassis dyno questions Options

[Cevan]

I want to mazimize the tuning of my carb'd 2056. Short of seat-of-the pants tuning, I figure using a chassis dyno is the way to go. I haven't checked to see where the nearest one is or how much it will be, but after spending all this time and money building it, I'd hate to leave any power on the table. I'm just not sure how you go about using it to tune the engine.

I assume I should have the engine pretty well broken in and running well with the carbs jetted as good as my seat-of-the-pants dyno can tell.

Do I go there with a variety of idle and main jets, air correctors, venturis, etc and start swapping things out one at a time based on a baseline run?

[Jake Raby]

The dyno experience is only as good as the dyno operator.. Most chassis dyno operators are "tuners" that are accustomed to flashing ECUs, adding bling and looking for some magical HP gain.. Usually these gains are made at an RPM that is absolutely unusable on the street and are virtually worthless.

If you find a dyno operator that knows carburetors you'll be lucky..

I have a chassis dyno downstairs under my office... I love the chassis dyno because it affords the ability to test the entire car and all of its sub-systems at once and then lay AFR data over the TQ and HP plots..

Load that baby up and make a trip south, typically I can tune 15-25 HP into an initially tuned engine on the dyno in less than 4 hours and thats not 800-1K bucks worth of my time:-)

You are better off with a WBO2 and driving time than a chassis dyno experience with a less than knowledgeable operator.

the key is concentrating the tuning at the point where the engine will live the majority of its life.. big HP gains in the top end are virtually worthless for you.

This post has been edited by Jake Raby: Jun 15 2010, 02:48 PM