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Dyno Day in Douglas, MA

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Brosky

Brosky

Great Pumpkin
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Today, the good guys of the Boston Area MG Club and John Sansoucy of NE Dyno & Tuning, created a banner day for ten of us who wanted to check out their cars performance the best possible way.

John spent 7 straight hours in 95 to 100 degree shop temperatures testing and retesting every entrants car until a fix or course of action was determined to tweak the cars to max performance.

Hats off to Paul Seeberg of the BAMGC and John for offering this great service to those of us in the area.

ChrisS (73 MG Midget racer) and I were there, flying the BCF colors and talking up the great forums here as always.

I'll be adding a page to my website as soon as I have time to sort out all of the pics. The exact detail of who is who, will have to follow as Charlie emails me the roster.

I discovered that while my ignition system is working flawlessly, my air/fuel ratio at high rpm's is hurting me a lot. John and I are going to tweak that out in the next three weeks right on the machine, so that I know it will be tweaked to the max.

https://www.nedyno.com/

https://www.bostonareamg.com/
 
Paul,
If your cars running a little sluggish, it could be because there's some guy on a red mat that you've been dragging around behind you.
 
That's not the problem! I dropped him at the first turn.

I did a new page about this to my web site where I explain what I DID do that made it sluggish. And stinky, too! What a dope!!!

I will be updating that site with a lot more pictures tomorrow.

https://www.74tr6.com/dynoday2007.htm
 
Paul:
Tell me about the numbers. I think anything over 3.5k RPM's is high in my TR6 /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif What fuel ratios are the target; what were actual?

BTW, if my TR6 looked as nice as yours, I would buy another to drive and put the nice one on a trailer for show only /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/thumbsup.gif
 
Vette,

Thanks for the compliments, but I like to drive my car. Trailering is not for me, though it works for others.

I've added the sequence of just one pull, or run on the dyno to show the various stages of the process. The air fuel ratio is ideal in the 12-14 range. I never hit it and several MGB's with Webers were very close or right on the money, so the machine is correct.

If you look at the left of the screens you will see the speed at the rear wheels and on the right is the engine or tachometer speed. I'm happy to say that my tach and speedo match his perfectly, so I have no calibration issues on that end and the 205/70/15 tires are just fine.

So with that being said and if I did this correctly, you will see the gradual buildup of speed and rpms with the A/F ratio displayed. Oddly, I'm lean (red numbers) on one end, get close in the middle and go dead rich (blue numbers) on full throttle.

I have contacted Jeff Palya and he stated that he set my carbs 1/4 to 1/2 turn rich and that he and John will talk to develop a tuning sequence that should bring these right in.

Now what is the affect of all of this. Well, too lean is no good at the bottom, but the car doesn't have any detonation or even smell like it's lean, so sensor calibration will take place before next runs. Also, the sharp bend in the TR6 stock tailpipe can have an affect on the readings.

The dead rich issue is not good, as I'm blowing gas away and losing anywhere from 10-15HP because of it. You will notice that the scale read 10.0, but only because that's as low as it goes. It's probably worse, but again, the car doesn't bog down, stumble or hesitate.

I have a total advance of 37 degrees that hits about 2,800 rpms with my base timing at 15 BTDC. On this car it works well. We'll see after the tweaking and adjustments where I end up. I do have two other distributors with a more aggressive curve to test when we do the next round or tweaking if I don't like what I get with this one.
 
Vette,

This was an ideal setup on an MGB with a Weber.

You can also see the chart that you get that shows you where your car was on each run for power and torque at all of the RPM and speed ranges.
 
Paul, after you left I hooked up my wide band O2 meter since my ignition was still tripping out his electronics for the shop O2 meter and did about 6 more pulls. We found that my rev limiter was causing random break up above 5000. I pulled it and it ran smooth up to 7200. Nice to meet you by the way.
 
Naive question:

It seems that dyno testing is fantastic at showing what's causing loss of potential power and other problems. But do you have to be on a dyno while you do all the tweaking on the offending device(s)?

Paul - as always, your website is a goldmine. Dyno pictures are outstanding. Not sure why someone would run dyno tests on a big white hearse, however .... LOL

Thanks.
Tom
 
Yes, tuning is done on the dyno. The most important thing with dyno testing is to have a plan of what you want to do. If you are base lining a car, then schedule a three pull session and get the data. Most shops offer this for a flat rate, locally it is $60 to $80 depending on the shop. If you have an idea of the problem then schedule time with the shop. They charge by the hour and the rate depends on who does the tuning. Again, rates vary but it is about $100/hr for the dyno and operator if you do the tuning and $150-$175/hr if they do the tuning. Often times the rate after 2 hours drops a little. At $100/hr it is important to have a test plan, and write it down ahead of time, have a spare distributor, carb needles, plugs, coils, etc. for whatever problem you think you have. Once the car is strapped in the clock runs whether the dyno is running or not.
 
Speechless in Bayamon, Puerto Rico.

The resources you lucky Triumph owners in the States
have available to you is simply awesome to behold.

How exciting to see with a computer analyzer the results
of your hard labor and buckets of $$ cash.

Simply amazing!! It must make you feel pretty good
about your car and everyone who has working with you
on it.

Congrats buddy!!!

tin
 
Dale & Co.,

You are correct about the resources that we have, particularly the help from this forum and inter club help like this opportunity with the MG Club of Boston.

I really wanted to see ChrisS get his car running for the Dyno run. He's too modest, so I'll post his car at the end of this post.

Speaking of resources, our good fellow forum contributor, Ron in Hawaii, sent me the following and it will help explain why I get away with my timing settings and why these type of tunings are so important to getting a car setup to it's max potential. I agreed with everything that he said in my reply back, as I'm familiar with dyno tuning as well, which is why I went Saturday.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:] Brosky. I have a concern about the total timing you stated you're running. You said 37 total. The fuel richness might be compensating for detonation. Does he have any knock sensors that can be attached to your head when running? Or temp sensors to attach to the headers at the manifold pipe outlets? I read, think it was Kastners tuning book that 34 was max. As far as fuel mixture. Ideally 14.7to 1 is cruise mixture, a target. Full power, pedal to the metal, throttles fully opened and manifold vacuum below 5 inches should be 12 to 12.5. This is from Clayton training manual as I ran a Chassis Dyno at a 14 car line dealership in the early 80's.[/QUOTE]

With Jeff and John collaborating on the path to follow as Chris stated above, I have no doubt that I'll have it tweaked properly in no time.

Keep in mind, I never reached the 14.7 level but once and that was in a very short RPM range. I stayed much higher than that, which needs to be corrected also. At full throttle, I was at 10.0 rather than the 12 range, but actually was probably lower, since that is as far down as the meter will read.

Detonation is a prime concern of John's and he monitors it closely. Part of his instruction to the driver is that if he hears or the sensors pick it up, he will force an immediate shutdown and correction before running again.

We found that out with Charlie's TR8 and his was mild, but there nonetheless. We now have a dead Sears timing light that is still spewing Lucas smoke to prove it!
 
Glad everyone had a great time and learned something about their cars! I know I did! Even when you think your car is tuned right..there is always room for improvement!

Hope to see everyone at the upcoming events! I know a few of our members will be coming to British legends... Here is a plug for our show.

Flyer for BAMG's 4th Annual British Car Day at Edaville USA

See everyone there!

If there is interest in doing this again next year, I can set it up again. Hope next year it is not about 100 degrees and they can actally light the grill! It was nice they had ice cream for us!

Paul
 
Thanks again for inviting us, Paul. I'll be at Edaville again this year.

Do you think that the Triumphs can be across from the music this year? I think that the Jags would do really well nearer to the speakers!! LOL!
 
Tom,

That hearse is a real sleeper, if you know what I mean. I don't think that it's moved in years.
 
Paul,
Is that barrel like drum under the cars weighted so you feel like you are taking off on pavement? Did you have the feel of actually putting your car through its gears like road driving?
 
Most chassis dynos use that drum as a rolling road. It is equipped with a braking mechanism, usually hydraulic. That the operator can apply a load against the car being tested. Go from no load(coasting off a cliff) to full load (trying to climb a vertical hill.
 
Ron pretty well describes it and since he's probably run thousands of these tests compared to a few hundred for me, I'll defer to his description,

This dynamometer is only a few years old and uses a locomotive brake caliper and rotor affect to load or slow the drum. It gets a daily workout. the big fans help keep air circulating through the shop to keep the cars cooled down. Even though it was nearly 100 degrees in the test cycle, my car never ran over 1/2 on the temp gauge readings.

The sequence begins and ends like this. The car is driven onto the center of the roller and stopped. It is then tied down from the front and rear of the frame to anchors that are cemented deeply into the floor.

After a short run up to about 20 mph, the car is shut down, The anchor straps are re-tightened and double checked then you are good to go.

Next is s stabilizing run up to 20-30 MPH through 2nd or 3rd gear to get the car warmed up and to check all instruments. You then run it up to about 3,000RPM's in 4th gear, which would be a good highway speed, while under a slight load. Then, if all is well, you get the OK to mash the pedal to the floor and watch the car try to beat the full load to get max HP and Torque readings.

Before starting the run, John will ask what a driver wants to use for red line. I picked 5,800 for all tests, until I saw where we were. After hitting a red line in fourth or the desired speed and John has all of his readings, you bump the car into neutral and allow the dyno to wind down accordingly.

Then the crew rechecks the straps, re-calibrates the gauges and lets the car cool for the next run.

So to answer your question, YES, it is just like driving through the gears on the road, except you never touch the brakes or turn and there is no police officer to stop you!
 
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