How to prepare for engine dyno?
Dyno a motor. Getting ready. I would say get over there and look at the set up. See what it takes to mount the motor onto his cart. His set up might bolt directly to your block. Or you may need to bring motor mounts. Will your motor plates work? It all depends. Does he have a plate that bolts to your crank that accepts another plate that's spliced for the dyno input shaft? What if you need flywheel bolts and you got flex plate bolts? Does he got dyno headers? Will they clear your pan with the lockouts? Will your pan clear his cart? Does he have an electric water pump for your motor? Will your big oil system allow room to hook up to his cart? Oil pressure hookup is simple. Do you have a source for manifold vacuum? He probably has a Morse cable for throttle. Do you have the right size ball stud? A bracket to mount the Morse cable? Is your distributor compatible with his boxes? Need to bring your coil? Will your plug wires clear his dyno headers? Fuel hook up? It's easy to say that he has everything. Sure about that? Are mopar his bread and butter? Probably not. It's pretty frustrating when one item stops the whole show.
This^^^^^
My dyno guy sets the engine all up the day before so usually its ready to run when you get there, but other guys are different. Have the engine primed and set to #1. My guy doesn't like the thermostat in, it fights the water pump on the dyno, have it dressed with whatever you want to run on the street (distributor, Wires, plugs etc).
Bring everything you need to tune, jets, air bleeds, different carbs even, carb spacer and longer studs, even your own tools in a tool box (if you don't need them you can leave them in your car) shop rags (if you are changing jets to clean up the spilt gas), timing light, spare plugs, cap, rotor, ignition wires (even if this stuff is all new I have the old stuff on hand).
If you are going to change the oil after break in bring oil, filter, funnel. If you are setting valves bring gaskets.
Time is money and the less time you spend looking for stuff the more time you have for dyno time.
The last dyno session went like this (friends engine)
Break the engine in 20 minutes total, varying loads and RPM's, set timing to 32 ( I think) total during break in. No leaks, good oil pressure. Do some light pulls to redline to make sure everything is good.
1st real pull, not the power expected, not pulling the air expected and vacuum still remaining in the manifold at WOT, suggestion change out the vacuum secondary spring.
2nd pull, power is better, air flow and manifold vacuum is good, overall mixture is good but the primary vs secondary fuel flow is way off (secondary is using way less fuel than the primary), change out the secondary jets to bigger ones.
3rd pull, Fuel flow is better, mixture is richer, down jet the front of the carb.
Pull 4 and 5 to get the mixtures good.
Pull 5, 6 and 7 setting the total timing for optimum power.
Pull 8, try a carb spacer to see if it makes a little more power (it did 10 HP!)
Pull 9 and 10 (I think) just to confirm and for video.
Engine broken in and I think we wrung out all the power this almost stock 383 could make. I think we gained 60-70 HP from the starting point ( the secondary spring was the biggest impact.).
Garth
