Merlin Dyno – sort of…
01-28-2003, 02:38 AM
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Merlin Dyno – sort of…
http://stevenkamis.com/Cars/MyVette/Series34/dyno.jpg
Hey everyone – long time no speak! Hope you all are doing well. I apologize for being so incognito lately. I got really sick over the holidays after we played around on the dyno & I’ve just been so slammed lately. I wasn’t going to even post these numbers because we never got a good run in, but after re-examining the numbers they are quite intriguing. I have always tried to share everything about this project, both good & bad so I’m curious to hear analysis from the pros. After comparing the numbers to other dyno runs from other cars, I’m feeling a little better about them. I want to give a big thank you to Steve B – you know who you are! His help was indispensable. None of us really knew what the hell we were doing, but with Steve’s experience – we faked it pretty good. I couldn’t have done this without his help. Now I’m going to take it over to Craig Blood & let the pros have a try!
Here’s the scoop. We had all kinds of problems.
The car had been overheating due to insufficient airflow. I think we have that solved by adding this behemoth: http://www.vintageair.com/accessories/page66.htm This little dyno blip is just that – a quick blip of the throttle from 3,000 rpm to 4,000. The actual recording is just 3,200 to 3,800 as you can see. It is very challenging to keep this throttle steady. The response on the Whipples is so quick that just a fraction of a touch opens up those throttle bodies. I was afraid to really open the throttle because I didn’t want to destroy the wheels or the rear end. We drew a line on the half shafts to see if they twisted & they never did. This particular run was on about 3/4 throttle. I never did get the chance to really open her up. The car is a real pain to tune. We really need the pros to do it. We gave it our best shot. At first the car was running so rich that we flamed through some 600 degree aircraft quality tubing that was on the exhaust pipes! That was good fun. After a while we did get it to lean out a bit, but it never did run quite right. We also had 2 arcing spark plugs on the driver’s side. The boots are too close to the headers & we kept melting them. This run was on pump gas with the 4” upper pulleys. The highest boost we saw was around 13 psi, but everything was still climbing when I shut it down around 3,800 rpm.
I was so disappointed with the numbers that I was ready to give up. You just know when an engine isn’t running right & it’s frustrating. It was crackling & popping. The colors on the plugs weren’t right. Like I said, it did improve, but we just ran out of time & didn’t have enough expertise. Another HUGE mistake I made was going with the hydraulic lifters. NEVER USE HYDRAULIC LIFTERS WITH HIGH BOOST!!! One of the zillion things I have learned with this project. The springs just can’t take the boost. I let Steve B drive it on the last run. Mr. Leadfoot had no problem flooring like mad! The numbers were actually worse under heavy acceleration. All that boost & fuel just overwhelmed the springs & the valves started making all kinds of racket.
Ok, so there are all my excuses & problems. Given all the crap, the numbers on that run were pretty astounding, I think most would agree. Keep in mind these are rear wheel numbers. We used a correction factor of 1.18 to get the gross numbers. You can see the flywheel numbers written in at the top. Notice that as soon as we started recording at around 3200 or 3300 rpm it was over 800 pounds of RW torque. By 3500 it had just about reached 875 and when I shut it down at 3,800 rpm, the torque was right around 900 pounds & climbing. What got me so excited about that was looking at Monty’s numbers & noticing that he didn’t hit those numbers until 5,200 rpm. Believe me, Monty has set an extremely high bar, so I felt that we really had something when I saw that.
Given the fact that I wasn’t at full throttle & with all the other problems going on, I don’t think there is any doubt in my mind that Whipple’s claim of 1200+ pounds of torque on pump gas is accurate. What this graph shows me is the reason why hitting the gas on this car is such an adrenalin rush out on the street. When a car is crippled & still cranking 900 pounds of torque that low in the rpm range, it translates into seat of the pants power. The car has so much power that I never realized how bad it was running until we did the dyno!
Anyway, we never even got into the HP numbers – they don’t even cross until 5,200 rpm. We weren’t even close to that rpm range with this test. That 645 HP number was still 43HP higher than Monty at a similar rpm range, so I guess it’s not as pitiful as I originally thought. Monty – honestly, I’m not trying to show you up here. You are just the only I can compare too & get a sense for how we are doing! Seeing your numbers actually gave me quite a renewed vigor for the project because it told me we weren’t in the boost enough to get the higher numbers. You gave me something to shoot for here & I really appreciate your project more than ever!! Without your car, I would have no baseline whatsoever & probably would have sold the car by now.
After Craig has had a chance to tune the thing, we’ll give it another run & go for more rpm. I doubt we’ll ever see the max power in this configuration due to the lifters. My choices lately have been A) accept one of the Ebay offers & give up or B) tear the engine back down, expand it to 700CI & go with solid lifters. I’ve never been a quitter, so there is no telling what might happen. My only regret is that I never did an engine dyno. If we ever really floor this thing on the chassis dyno, I’m afraid parts will go flying!
[Modified by Merlin522, 11:46 PM 1/27/2003]
Hey everyone – long time no speak! Hope you all are doing well. I apologize for being so incognito lately. I got really sick over the holidays after we played around on the dyno & I’ve just been so slammed lately. I wasn’t going to even post these numbers because we never got a good run in, but after re-examining the numbers they are quite intriguing. I have always tried to share everything about this project, both good & bad so I’m curious to hear analysis from the pros. After comparing the numbers to other dyno runs from other cars, I’m feeling a little better about them. I want to give a big thank you to Steve B – you know who you are! His help was indispensable. None of us really knew what the hell we were doing, but with Steve’s experience – we faked it pretty good. I couldn’t have done this without his help. Now I’m going to take it over to Craig Blood & let the pros have a try!
Here’s the scoop. We had all kinds of problems.
The car had been overheating due to insufficient airflow. I think we have that solved by adding this behemoth: http://www.vintageair.com/accessories/page66.htm This little dyno blip is just that – a quick blip of the throttle from 3,000 rpm to 4,000. The actual recording is just 3,200 to 3,800 as you can see. It is very challenging to keep this throttle steady. The response on the Whipples is so quick that just a fraction of a touch opens up those throttle bodies. I was afraid to really open the throttle because I didn’t want to destroy the wheels or the rear end. We drew a line on the half shafts to see if they twisted & they never did. This particular run was on about 3/4 throttle. I never did get the chance to really open her up. The car is a real pain to tune. We really need the pros to do it. We gave it our best shot. At first the car was running so rich that we flamed through some 600 degree aircraft quality tubing that was on the exhaust pipes! That was good fun. After a while we did get it to lean out a bit, but it never did run quite right. We also had 2 arcing spark plugs on the driver’s side. The boots are too close to the headers & we kept melting them. This run was on pump gas with the 4” upper pulleys. The highest boost we saw was around 13 psi, but everything was still climbing when I shut it down around 3,800 rpm.
I was so disappointed with the numbers that I was ready to give up. You just know when an engine isn’t running right & it’s frustrating. It was crackling & popping. The colors on the plugs weren’t right. Like I said, it did improve, but we just ran out of time & didn’t have enough expertise. Another HUGE mistake I made was going with the hydraulic lifters. NEVER USE HYDRAULIC LIFTERS WITH HIGH BOOST!!! One of the zillion things I have learned with this project. The springs just can’t take the boost. I let Steve B drive it on the last run. Mr. Leadfoot had no problem flooring like mad! The numbers were actually worse under heavy acceleration. All that boost & fuel just overwhelmed the springs & the valves started making all kinds of racket.
Ok, so there are all my excuses & problems. Given all the crap, the numbers on that run were pretty astounding, I think most would agree. Keep in mind these are rear wheel numbers. We used a correction factor of 1.18 to get the gross numbers. You can see the flywheel numbers written in at the top. Notice that as soon as we started recording at around 3200 or 3300 rpm it was over 800 pounds of RW torque. By 3500 it had just about reached 875 and when I shut it down at 3,800 rpm, the torque was right around 900 pounds & climbing. What got me so excited about that was looking at Monty’s numbers & noticing that he didn’t hit those numbers until 5,200 rpm. Believe me, Monty has set an extremely high bar, so I felt that we really had something when I saw that.
Given the fact that I wasn’t at full throttle & with all the other problems going on, I don’t think there is any doubt in my mind that Whipple’s claim of 1200+ pounds of torque on pump gas is accurate. What this graph shows me is the reason why hitting the gas on this car is such an adrenalin rush out on the street. When a car is crippled & still cranking 900 pounds of torque that low in the rpm range, it translates into seat of the pants power. The car has so much power that I never realized how bad it was running until we did the dyno!
Anyway, we never even got into the HP numbers – they don’t even cross until 5,200 rpm. We weren’t even close to that rpm range with this test. That 645 HP number was still 43HP higher than Monty at a similar rpm range, so I guess it’s not as pitiful as I originally thought. Monty – honestly, I’m not trying to show you up here. You are just the only I can compare too & get a sense for how we are doing! Seeing your numbers actually gave me quite a renewed vigor for the project because it told me we weren’t in the boost enough to get the higher numbers. You gave me something to shoot for here & I really appreciate your project more than ever!! Without your car, I would have no baseline whatsoever & probably would have sold the car by now.
After Craig has had a chance to tune the thing, we’ll give it another run & go for more rpm. I doubt we’ll ever see the max power in this configuration due to the lifters. My choices lately have been A) accept one of the Ebay offers & give up or B) tear the engine back down, expand it to 700CI & go with solid lifters. I’ve never been a quitter, so there is no telling what might happen. My only regret is that I never did an engine dyno. If we ever really floor this thing on the chassis dyno, I’m afraid parts will go flying!
[Modified by Merlin522, 11:46 PM 1/27/2003]
01-28-2003, 10:58 AM
#2
Le Mans Master
Re: Merlin Dyno – sort of… (Merlin522)
Steve,
Just saw this, I already responded to your email. I wouldn't put too much emphasis on this dyno run if the tune isn't right. You can gain ALOT of power and torque with seemingly minor tuning changes. On forced induction engines, a single degree of timing advance under boost can make a significant difference. On my engine it was worth 50hp at some rpms! The same is true with A/F ratio. We picked up almost 80 peak hp by leaning the A/F out from 11.9 to 12.1. I would just look at this dyno run as a baseline and a opportunity to weed out any problems. It soesn't sound like anything broke, except for an exhaust pipe (!), so at least it was a success from that perspective. Heck, It took me 2-3 days to finally get a decent pull on the dyno because the oil pressure wasn't what I was looking for initally. Projects of this magnitude are hardly ever successful the first time out. It's like in programming, think of all the testing we do after we've done coding something. Consider that dyno your first Systems Test.
Find yourself an expert FAST tuner who has some backgorund with forced induction engines. It will make all the difference. All that expensive hardware is no good if the the 1's and 0's aren't right ;). (An I.T. influenced perspective obviously, LOL!)
As for the valvetrain, you might just need a little stiffer valve spring, maybe just 20 more lbs or so to balance out the effect of manifold pressure trying to hang the intake valve open. Alot easier and cheaper to swap springs than lifters, I wouldn't give up on the lifters and cam just yet, unless you think you need to spin it past 6500rpm or so...
I also don't think you need to increase the displacement either. You should easily be able to reach your goal of with 522ci. 1200hp from a 522 is only 2.3hp/ci. A well tuned forced induction engine should be well above 2.5 ci, and even closer to 3.0hp/ci is possible with increased efficiecny on pump gas. I'm at 2.8 hp/ci on 93 octane and an air/air intercooler. Race gas can take that to 5hp/ci+.
It would not surprise me at all to see you reach your goal with not much more than some additional expert tuning.
Good luck!
[Modified by Monty, 10:20 AM 1/28/2003]
[Modified by Monty, 10:20 AM 1/28/2003]
Just saw this, I already responded to your email. I wouldn't put too much emphasis on this dyno run if the tune isn't right. You can gain ALOT of power and torque with seemingly minor tuning changes. On forced induction engines, a single degree of timing advance under boost can make a significant difference. On my engine it was worth 50hp at some rpms! The same is true with A/F ratio. We picked up almost 80 peak hp by leaning the A/F out from 11.9 to 12.1. I would just look at this dyno run as a baseline and a opportunity to weed out any problems. It soesn't sound like anything broke, except for an exhaust pipe (!), so at least it was a success from that perspective. Heck, It took me 2-3 days to finally get a decent pull on the dyno because the oil pressure wasn't what I was looking for initally. Projects of this magnitude are hardly ever successful the first time out. It's like in programming, think of all the testing we do after we've done coding something. Consider that dyno your first Systems Test.
Find yourself an expert FAST tuner who has some backgorund with forced induction engines. It will make all the difference. All that expensive hardware is no good if the the 1's and 0's aren't right ;). (An I.T. influenced perspective obviously, LOL!)
As for the valvetrain, you might just need a little stiffer valve spring, maybe just 20 more lbs or so to balance out the effect of manifold pressure trying to hang the intake valve open. Alot easier and cheaper to swap springs than lifters, I wouldn't give up on the lifters and cam just yet, unless you think you need to spin it past 6500rpm or so...
I also don't think you need to increase the displacement either. You should easily be able to reach your goal of with 522ci. 1200hp from a 522 is only 2.3hp/ci. A well tuned forced induction engine should be well above 2.5 ci, and even closer to 3.0hp/ci is possible with increased efficiecny on pump gas. I'm at 2.8 hp/ci on 93 octane and an air/air intercooler. Race gas can take that to 5hp/ci+.
It would not surprise me at all to see you reach your goal with not much more than some additional expert tuning.
Good luck!
[Modified by Monty, 10:20 AM 1/28/2003]
[Modified by Monty, 10:20 AM 1/28/2003]
01-28-2003, 11:31 AM
#3
Safety Car
Re: Merlin Dyno – sort of… (Merlin522)
The only real data you can get from that set of pulls is the immense power the motor is capible of. It will be interesting when it is all flogged out. A pro tuner is a good idea. As for the valve spring issue, I do not need to say what a hung open valve can do to a piston. If you are floating the valves now, what is going to happen when the boost and rpms go up. If it were my $$$+++ motor I would fix that before I started it again.
Good luck
[Modified by 69 N.O.X. RATT, 4:48 PM 1/28/2003]
Good luck
[Modified by 69 N.O.X. RATT, 4:48 PM 1/28/2003]
02-01-2003, 11:00 AM
#4
Re: Merlin Dyno – sort of… (69 N.O.X. RATT)
The only real data you can get from that set of pulls is the immense power the motor is capible of. It will be interesting when it is all flogged out. A pro tuner is a good idea. As for the valve spring issue, I do not need to say what a hung open valve can do to a piston. If you are floating the valves now, what is going to happen when the boost and rpms go up. If it were my $$$+++ motor I would fix that before I started it again.
Good luck
[Modified by 69 N.O.X. RATT, 4:48 PM 1/28/2003]
Good luck
[Modified by 69 N.O.X. RATT, 4:48 PM 1/28/2003]
02-02-2003, 11:03 PM
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Re: Merlin Dyno – sort of… (backtrail69)
:eek: :eek:
02-03-2003, 01:49 PM
#7
Melting Slicks
Re: Merlin Dyno – sort of… (vader86)
My gawd Steve, that's amazing. There is one other crazy guy that I know of that you might be able to compare to. He's currently designing a 640 cubic inch roots-blown Merlin big block. His dyno estimates are around 1600 hp.
Except his motor is going into a street-legal 1969 Pontiac GTO.
It'll be a drag car though, rather than a street racer.
On yours, amazing power. Considering you're not even cracking 4000 rpm to get those numbers, it's astonishing. I can see your reluctance to open her up until you get the fuel curve right. Be careful of washing down the cylinder walls with that rich fuel mixture. Might want to check your oil. I'll bet you have a quart of gasoline in the oil pan. You'll smell it on the dip stick if you do.
What are your estimates of peak power?
As far as my "lowly" 427 big block... :leaving:
Except his motor is going into a street-legal 1969 Pontiac GTO.
It'll be a drag car though, rather than a street racer.
On yours, amazing power. Considering you're not even cracking 4000 rpm to get those numbers, it's astonishing. I can see your reluctance to open her up until you get the fuel curve right. Be careful of washing down the cylinder walls with that rich fuel mixture. Might want to check your oil. I'll bet you have a quart of gasoline in the oil pan. You'll smell it on the dip stick if you do.
What are your estimates of peak power?
As far as my "lowly" 427 big block... :leaving:
