Desk Top Dyno

tvt59 said

Does any of my buddies on the have a desk top dyno ? I used to have the app years ago. You could plug in perimeters for and engine and it'd give you an approximate hp and torque figures. If someone does have this software I'd pay you for plugging the specs of an engine I'm going to build for my new braket car.

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Power output depends on the cylinder heads and there is rarely enough information for any computer program to get close. We use PipeMax and it can get close, but only if you know the VE. And nobody really knows the VE until after the engine is run on the dyno so that kind of makes the program useless for predicting power.

When you're dealing with something "weird" like W5 heads the best place to get a power estimate is from a W5 expert. And they most likely would want to know details on the heads before they gave you a number.

I can usually predict power within a few % just by looking at the parts a guy brings in to the dyno. But that trick only works for OOTB cylinder heads. Once someone starts whittling on the heads all bets are off. Power might go up but sometimes it goes down. Same thing with home ported manifold, home re-worked carbs, etc.

Good w5 heads with the right cam should be able to make 740 on that short block, but I'm not really familiar enough with W5 heads to predict a number. We just ran a 429 inch SB Chevy that made 780 hp on the dyno. So the question is if W5 heads are as good as a 15 degree SBC head. The 429 SBC had a much bigger cam than what you posted. I think the SBC was 280/290.