So….more header talk….this had me scratching my head
I learned from Chris a dyno doesn’t measure horsepower, just torque and rpm, didn’t know that
Dyno’s only measure torque and RPM. Horsepower is calculated from those numbers. It’s accurate.
The other thing dyno’s do not do, at least in the full definition of the sense of the term is measure the rate of acceleration, or the change of the rate of acceleration. That’s far more important than the fact a dyno doesn’t measure horsepower.
What you are asking ANY engine in ANY form of Motorsports is to accelerate from one point to another. That’s it. The faster the engine accelerates the car, the better the ET slips or lap times.
There is at least one dyno that will measure acceleration rates and that is the Revolution Dyno. It’s not cheap. I almost had my hands on one. The second one ever built. But a fat, lying shyster screwed me out of it. That dyno will measure the rate of acceleration and the rate of change of acceleration.
You can overcome this liability of the water brake dyno by changing from the magazine standard 300 RPM/second to 600 RPM/second or even faster. That way the dyno is not holding the engine back as much as it will at slower acceleration rates. But, the byproduct of that is you WILL get a lower HP number.
I think that slow rate of test is why some things look good on a water brake dyno but don’t produce on the track and why things don’t show power on the dyno but go faster on the track. In fact, I know that’s true and I have some graphs and data to back that up.
You have to know the limits of your testing equipment. Just like the flowbench, more flow isn’t always better. You have to KNOW what you see, hear and measure and how the interrelate. Otherwise you will port for a number and kill power.
