Dyno results

Hey fellas, checking in from Illinois since it's raining outside and I have nothing better to do.

Saturday afternoon I headed down to Axis Power Racing in Belleville, IL (just across the river from St Louis) to get dyno-tuned by Jorge (RiftsWRX from NASIOC). There weren't as many people there as I figured, including the guy who was scheduled in the slot before me, he never showed.

We had my car on the dyno within 10 minutes of me getting there and got everything set up. Ron's shop is pretty weird, one half of the building has the dyno, the other half is an indoor skateboarding park, LOL. Ron and Jorge tuned my car for 2 hours and I left with 40whp more than I arrived with. I had 93 octane in the tank, so Jorge made a main map and then 2 variations of it in case Minnesota gas ends up being substantially different, one with less timing and slightly richer, the other the same but also with less boost. Between those three I should be able to handle all situations.

The best thing was that I had ZERO knock all day. Jorge had det cans and was listening in, everything sounded fine. He lowered the knock sensitivity values in the UTEC in the upper RPMs so I probably won't see those occasional ones I used to get as they were probably false. I've got a rock-solid boost curve that quickly gets to 17 psi and tapers off to 15 at redline. Fueling was a real mess out of the box, I had been running 10.2 or 10.3--once he got this to about 10.9 tapering to 11.3 at redline, it made a HUGE difference.

Now for the numbers. They aren't eye-popping but you have to remember that this is a Dyno Dynamics, which they call "the heartbreaker" because it reads the lowest of ANY of the AWD dynos. A stock WRX on Ron's dyno does 140whp. I left with 220whp and about 210wtq. The more conservative map for octane safety was 208whp. On most of the other kinds of dynos this would be in the 260s, and probably in the ballpark of 320s to 330s at the crank (guesstimating, there is no way to say for sure). But wait till you see the torque curve! It's just sick. The car has been completely transformed. I cannot underestimate the value of proper professional dyno tuning. If you have been putting it off, RUN, don't walk, RUN and get it done *cough*Garrett*cough*.

Might head over to the college and my dad's office to get the plot scanned in later today. I'll catch up to you guys sometime next week.

Joel

 

O MY GOD}


Congrat's on your new ride, JOEL }

 

Joel, thanks for the recap... can't wait to see your car in action.

 

Hey beeyotch, I told you that isn't the right dyno for the kind of tuning I need to do. And I offered to rent a trailer and mount a hitch to your car but you wouldn't even hear of it

I'm sure I'll get around to it eventually. It would be fun to see how your torque curve and mine compare. Power curves I can imagine are gonna tend to be in your favor still. Not unless I get with that boost controller and point it toward .6 bar. I just blew a grand on my car this month so no more buying until the end of the summer, I still have to buy a pair of Xeons this month [xx(]

Numbers sound about right. One other thing to keep in mind is that when dyno tuning you aren't getting near the airflow over your IC so you should be seeing better performance on the road. Or did they ice-bath the IC during pulls?

 

Now your car is totally a stage 4, right? Sounds good! What was the total charge for tweaking and dyno-tuning? Did Jorge get your car done in one day or did you go back to him more than once? Does he do ECUTek reflashes?

 

Well I'm not really convinced that it's the wrong kind of tool for your car Garrett...they can create any kind of load with it and Ron was describing how they tuned a couple race cars on one of these back when he lived in California. They can move to any specific load site and RPM, make changes, watch the curves adjust, and then move on to the next cell. In any case, the concepts aren't really going to be different. I vote to ditch the Xeons and go get tuned...somewhere...ANYWHERE. Your car will thank you, just like mine is since it's not running pig rich anymore.

I got two hours of tuning for $225, which is pretty much an unbeatable price (limited time offer only good for the Axis dyno days last weekend..hehe). Not sure if Jorge has the EcuTek equipment, best thing to do is ask him.

 

You didn't tell me if they cooled your IC during pulls. Also I'm sure they can tune my engine but you run into variables from tire noise. I've been brainwashed by the public in Australia over the packs that mount directly to the hub, but I guess anything is better than where I'm at now. You'd be surprised how much you can road-tune after driving it for two years though. Mostly I'd want to work on my 104 map since I only got to mess with that up at OFPR a couple years ago.

So how does their dyno compare with the one we've supposedly got up here? The guys working there need only to know how to operate the dyno, I think I'd rent Todd for overseeing my tuning. I wonder what he charges outside of his shop? $225 isn't that great a deal to those of us who don't have family down there since we'd be paying for the drive, hotel stay, etc. I could have gone out to Dearborn to dyno-tune as well but it's still a drive. Lucky you there's something else to do on your trip down there

Werd, I need the processors. Those are for my second job which earns me money to spend on my car. I wouldn't have new tires and brakes without it. A means to and end it is

 

I saw Ron in action on the Dynapack last February at GRD in Naperville. To quote him, he says he doesn't like those because "they put so much stress on the drivetrain", not to mention that you're removing ~160-180 lbs of rotating mass. The kind Propulshun has is a Mustang, on which Ron opines "I don't know how anyone can do any real tuning on those" but he said that in passing and didn't offer any specifics underlying that comment.

My IC was not getting cooled apart from the fans...I thought about taking a spray bottle with me but ran out of time, since I barely had time to shower and eat at my folks before heading down there. It would have helped, but only to achieve a larger power figure. With about an hour gone we stopped for awhile to let it cool down, since you could see on the graphs the bumps where the IAT correction was kicking in. Obviously on the road the IC will be at ambient much of the time so it can work better, and getting a bigger one will be a huge help.

You totally lost me with the tire noise comment. After watching the process I cannot for the life of me understand how that would affect anything at all. No way you can even hear the tires at the top of 4th gear, it's PLENTY loud as is.

If $225 for the actual service of tuning is not a great deal, all I can say is "good luck" because you will be hard-pressed to get anything close to that for two hours of unlimited pulls with a WBO2, not to mention the skills of someone with lots of knowledge and experience. Yeah you have to factor in the cost of travel, but if an extra $100 or $200 is a major hindrance, then that just means tuning isn't very important to you, since it doesn't sound like you will do it unless it becomes cheaper, which I find extraordinarily unlikely.

As far as road-tuning goes, believe me, I've done plenty of it. And I now know that the lack of the right tools meant that there was quite a bit left on the table. It's not very often that you'd be able to do pulls to the top of 3rd or 4th gear on public roads with a WB02 and det cans.

 

skate park in the same building....

ROAD TRIP!

 

On dynos that read through the tires you get vibrations in the rollers from the contact between them. Maybe slicks would reduce this. It also makes it completely possible to jump your car off the dyno if not properly secured, something that just doesn't happen with the Dynapacks. However I wonder what would happen if the torque on one hub was able to whip one of those heavy mothers around

 

I may not have taken adequate pictures of this, but I can assure you that the mechanism securing my car on the dyno was plenty robust. There are probably only 2 or 3 Subarus on the planet with enough power to make hopping off a roller dyno even a remote possibility. Mine is not one of them, neither is yours.

On the other hand, I do think I have pictures of a guy's WRX on the Dynapack. When I get home tonight I'll post one.

 

Good numbers, Joel! I wonder what I'll get.

 

Moky Okee Batman, that looks great