A dyno and tuning session

The garage is alive with the sound of dyno

What better way to spend a hot, muggy 4th of July than on the dyno? That was what John McBride from West Palm Beach decided, so he, his dad and friend drove an hour down to the shop and broke our dyno in, giving him the honor of being our first customer dyno session. Click the pictures to get a bigger version.

As you can tell from the first picture, the car was backed onto the dyno because the driver and the tuner were one in the same and the display is on the wall. Having an all-wheel-drive dyno gives us the flexibility of using either the front or the back roller for 2-wheel-drive cars. In this case, he used the back roller.

John installed brand new Skunk 2 cams on a GSR motor with a ported head in his 1999 Honda Civic. He estimates that he had about 160 whp, good for a 15-second quarter-mile elapsed time, and was looking to get somewhere around 210 whp and a few seconds less.

This was a dyno and tuning session, much longer than a normal dyno run because the objective was to increase the horsepower by a significant amount through repeated dyno runs.

The car was strapped down at both ends. The bright orange fan you see in front of the car gave some airflow. There was no turbo or supercharger present, making this a “normally aspirated” motor, and hence, a trickier tuning session because the airflow inside the engine is not uniform.

After a bit of tinkering, connecting multiple laptops and configuring the software, our tuner Toni fired up the car and began the long process of revving the engine, studying the graphs and making adjustments.

The sound of the engine inside made for a deafening roar. While the dyno itself is virtually noiseless, the braking system was not. A huge whine, akin to a public address system with lower-frequency microphone squeal, made for an ear-splitting moan, as the braking system kicked in. This proved to be temporary – after several runs, the brakes were broken in and the whine went away . From then on, the dyno rolled to a quiet stop. The picture you see shows a little bit of blur, as the wheel spins.

We forgot to strap other large objects on the dyno, notably the orange fan. The vibration of the car rattled it right off its perch onto the concrete floor, knocking it out of commission permanently. This leads to the important rule: Always secure everything on the dyno before proceeding. This includes fans, laptop computers, vehicles and anything else resting on the dyno.

The tuning session ran into snags and much discussion ensued. I’ll get into that in my next post. The lesson to be learned is that with dyno time at a premium, it’s important to make sure your car is in top condition. If your car develops problems and there are cars waiting behind you, you could be asked to drive your vehicle off the dyno. Here, John and Ron discuss the situation, probable causes and possible solutions.