Dyno Vs.Drag Strip Testing

There are a couple things that stick out in my mind about my dyno experience. The first is that with a 1" Super Sucker my engine picked up 13 hp. But more importantly the air fuel ratios from both banks came to within a couple hundredths of each other. before the install they were over a full point off. And on the last pull I hooked up the PCV valve, it was worth 3 hp. That stuff is hard to see at the track and unless I had been running dual o2 sensors I would've never known the fuel mixture were off bank to bank that much. Looking at the plugs would've had me scratching my head. LOL

The best part was the new friends I made, all Mopar guys and great people. The owner, Dale Meers and I actually knew a lot of the same people from years ago at dirt tracks and probably had crossed paths several times over the years. We all had lunch together and it was like going out with life long friends. Good times.

As I said in one of my other posts. I had a et goal when I started the build and had I not broke in and tuned the engine on the dyno to know it had the power to realize my goal I may have given up and never reached it. The dyno gave me a baseline to start from but it took a lot of work on small stuff to get where I wanted to go.

Guys like John who have their cars sorted out very well and have ran similar combos before probably already have a good idea where everything needs to be and may not benefit as much from the dyno time.

For me the time slip was the reward for the hard work to get there and the proof that my engine was making the steam it was supposed to, it backed up the dyno sheet. If I were a bracket racer it wouldn't matter I'd tune it to be consistent and leave it alone. The number on the time slip really wouldn't matter as long as the car could repeat it.

In the end for me the dyno was just another tool, like the O2 meter or timing light to help me achieve what I wanted. That time slip was the reward.