Dyno Day #2  8-20-2007

I had my usual Monday morning meeting this morning and explained to my employees that I really needed to spend the next couple days on this project as that’s the only window of time available. Left the shop about 10:00 to find Walt already blasting some parts at the hot rod shop. Stopped at Pro max carb and bought two cans of leaded 111 octane racing fuel. Also asked Ben if he could do me a favor and freshen up the 600 Holley carb we ran at Bonneville last year. I not only wanted it freshened up but I kinda needed it by lunch if possible. (never hurts to ask?) He said no problem he could get it done and tested on his dyno as a big dodge motor was sitting there missing the carb.
(I mentioned in the last report that it takes friends to make these things happen)

Walt and I got to Richie's and started flushing the fuel and installing new plugs in the first motor we tested. Rich fired it up and although it may have sounded better it really didn’t want to pull the dyno with NO load, let alone loaded. Rich felt we had better check compression and we pulled all the plugs and gauges each cylinder! WOW, 165-175 lbs per cylinder! Looks great! I called Ben to see if he found any problems with the carb and if it was done. No problems found and it ran his big Mopar to 413 horsepower at 6500 rpm !! Good carb for our dead motor testing. I ran over picked up the carb and hurried back to run it on the engine. Once mounted we have eliminated another question in regards to this little engine not making any power. IT STILL DIDN’T RUN WELL !

Now what? The engine seems to be new and ok, the carb we know is good, the engine has good compression what's next? It appears all the internal items are in line and we only have one external force to check and that’s the magneto! It cant be the mag, Ed Starr is the mag wizard. Lets take the mag to Ed , have some lunch and then pick it up? When we returned from lunch Ed had the unit on the test bench throwing sparks on every cylinder with no problem and it will run a lot faster than we ever wish to go with a flathead.

We knew that didn’t we ??

Back at the shop we discussed the possibilities and my vote was to remove this object (I can't call it an engine any more !) from the dyno and test the engine we ran last year. Kinda our only option with time running out on dyno time.

Three problems exist with this “new “ engine. It runs terrible with only 75 horsepower at 3000 rpm, it now has an oil leak at the front seal when running, and there is a vibration (balance condition) off idle. Take it off the dyno !

Richie has been there and done that with these engines and has a really cool set up. Each engine is mounted on a cart with a engine plate and that makes it fairly easy to roll the engine out of the dyno room to change.
Walt and I got busy and stripped the engine and rolled it out to change.
Rich and I went next door to get the other engine sitting on the welding table and got very wet rolling it from one room to the other outside as it poured rain as we left the first building! Of course Walt enjoyed watching this !!
Once mounted we fired this engine up using the tested carb, Mallory dual point and basically the entire engine we ran the salt with last year.

Pull number one on the dyno sounded pretty good with a rpm shut off at 4300 rpm. A reading of 155 hp at 4000 rpm made us feel a little better. Not great but better! We noticed that the hp dropped quite a bit after 4000 rpm.
After some discussion we installed a new set of spark plugs, adjusted the spark timing and made another pull. Somewhat better with the max number at 3800 rpm of 161 hp. A third pull netted 171 hp at 3800rpm as well .

Now the discussion is how do we get a few more hp out of this engine?
There isn’t enough time at this point to fix the new engine and we really don’t wish to tear this engine down as well. So what's next ? We have now allowed the engine to cool quite a bit and decide to run one more cycle and quit for the day.

WOW, the engine pulled up to 4500 and 167 hp and then went to 4900 max rpm with very little change. This dude likes to be cold !! The colder the better! ( I had tried both ways on the salt last year, thinking hot was best with a warm up of 180 plus before taking off). At this point we called it a day and Walt and I discussed some intake mods, rejet the carb and make some timing changes (pull the distributor and put in the mag) tomorrow looking for some power . Tomorrow is our last day at Richie's and then we have to decide what to do this year, period…

Stay tuned , are we having fun yet????

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