Ralph,
We have a shop in San Diego called "The Dyno Shop", clever, huh? His work is
split between commercial/truck and race/hobby. He does fleet work on trucks
because it saves gas and at two bucks a gallon it adds up. He also does a lot
of motor homes. They are only getting 3 mpg when they drive in and if they can
get it up to 4 mpg, they're ecstatic.
About 30% is race/hobby, from a Hot Rod, to Formula Mazda, and even Michael
Lewis' Trans Am car. His charge is about $225 plus parts. Includes setting the
valves, curving the distributor, jetting the carb primaries and secondaries,
and optimizing the timing. It takes about 2-3 hours depending on the car. His
primary dynos are DynoJet. He has three of them, plus one other.
Craig Wright
Ralph Steinberg wrote:
> >Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 19:58:33 -0500
> >To: Mark Palmer
> >From: Ralph Steinberg <ralph@cloverleaf-auto.com>
> >Subject: re horsepower
> >
> >Yes it appears to have opened a very lively can of worms. I asked because
> >we are thinking very hard about putting in a dyno set up that will due I/M
> >testing plus all our tune up work. I was also thinking perhaps I could
> >sell some "dyno" time to people with performance cars or race cars looking
> >for an edge in the real world. Engine dynos are great when you are chasing
> >the mythical "extra" horse but nothing can beat a chassis dyno for setting
> >up the whole package. The state required dyno does a 150 hp at 100mph max.
> >The other one available to me that will still meet state requirements for
> >I/M is rated at 500hp and a max speed of 125mph. Both would have full
> >diagnostics including graphable miss recall with a 5 gas analyzer hooked
> >up to it. Settable load and road inclination. I could equal the load of a
> >hill climb if I wanted. Needless to say there is a fair difference in
> >price between the two. Though with most of the opinions seeming to be
> >around 15% the state minimum dyno would not really cut it for many cars. I
> >could do fantastic tune ups but I could not really chase high end work.
> >Then again I am not sure how much work I could generate telling people we
> >could tune their cars to produce maximum usable horsepower under a wide
> >range of conditions. How many "hobby" racers will spend money to tune
> >their cars to the Nth degree? Most seem to want to spend as much time
> >under their hood at the track as in the seat. Or they are very impressed
> >with the supposed dyno sheet saying they have 185hp from there 1.6 liter
> >engine!
> > Ralph
|