Today about 10 of us made the trek to Topeka, to Jesse Prather Racing to use his dyno.
We had 3 Minis, 2 Caterhams, a Bugeye, 2 MGB's - one supercharged, a Spitfire, and an Elva....every car showed substantial improvement when they were done, except the Bugeye - it had a 1275 in it and apparently it was doing everything it could. ;D
This is an in ground Dyno, and Jess and his dad Kent Prather ran the show.
Every car benefitted from timing changes, some substantially. Several of the cars got new needles or in the case of Weber, new jets. Two of the Minis started off at about 52 HP at the wheels, but when done both were 68-69hp at the wheels, that's a fairly huge improvement - about 30% more HP.
The one Caterham has a 1600 Kent motor and a dual throat downdraft Weber, he gained about 12 hp. John Styers Caterham - John was the organizer of the event - went from 94 hp to 112.
Here's John's Caterham on one of its runs....
I didn't get to see where the spitfire ended up, but it's 1300 was making about 52 hp at the start, and the first thing they found was that the timing was over 55* advanced, it's a wonder it ran!
John's Mini benefitted from some new needles - it was running incredibly rich and once done I drove it back to KC. The car was transformed, way more low rpm torque and it was hard to hold the car down to 80mph on the run home...it just ran effortlessly. Here's one of his runs....
Susan McKensie's car also had the timing out of whack, and you could clearly see the improvement in the curve - it went from a very choppy curve to one that was almost completely smooth - the engine did the same. I thought it ran pretty well when I drove it but an extra 18 hp and considerably smoother engine had to be noticeable.
The final highlight of the day for me was getting to drive Russ Foust's Acura V6 Clubman. Jesse had dyno tuned it a few weeks ago when Russ got it running, and Russ said it went from 150 hp to 230 by the time they were done with it! And OMG was this thing fast! I had another club member with me in the car and he was watching the tach and speedo as I was busy just trying to keep it on the road - to be fair we were on a back country road that was really uneven. I was shifting at 42-4300 rpm, and the Vtec doesn't even kick in till 4500 rpm, and it was all I could do to keep it in control, I can imagine how it runs on a smooth road or track where you can really wind it out! It was surprisingly docile and quiet - I expected a lot of noise with the engine right behind my head but it was actually quieter than my car. So incredibly fast!
The first pic is the dyno run on the Bugeye. the bottom trace shows the optimum and you can see how close the actual performance was to that line. After three runs they decided there really wasn't any improvement to be had and called it good.
The next chart is John's Mini, the yellow trace was the first run and you can see how badly it was coughing and spitting..... by the final trace after timing adjustments and new needles and carb tuning it was smooth and considerably more powerful.
There's also a pic of me in the beast! :-\
Is that too far of a drive for the 10 yr picnic? I bet my 1380 could benefit greatly from this. For that matter, do they only tune in the car?
Looked like a great time. Is that clubman the same one that was for sale on mini mania? Paint looks the same, but think it was just a front engine vtec clubman.
It might have been, but it had a Vauxhall engine, not a Honda.
It was OMG fast with the V6 back there!
They don't just do anybody's car, the British car club worked this deal - they in essence bought the shop for the day for a price, then sold time slots to the members to make it work.
Kent Prather - Jesse's dad - has the engine shop, he has the out-of-the-car engine dyno.
What total advance and air/fuel numbers were the sweet spot on the minis?
Each one s a little different, but right around 34* total advance at 3K rpm seems to be real close.
Dave, it sounds like you had a really great day - wish my car was there...
But, you're saying that 34° at 3000rpm seemed to be the sweet spot? I'd always heard that around 24 - 26° at 3K was closer to what we'd need.
I'd have thought that would be far too much static advance, and way too much by the time the engine gets to 5000rpm.
Here's the Aldon Yellow (classic/common) advance curve. As you can see, 34° - (2 x 6.8 ) = 20.4° 'static timing, and by the time the engine reaches 5000 rpm (where the distributor finally stops mechanically advancing), the engine will be running on 44+° total advance - unless I've got my thinking wrong.
If the engine was seeing 26° at 3000 rpm (using the Aldon Yellow example), 26° - 13.6° = 12.4° static, resulting in 36.4° total advance at 5000 rpm.
Can you tell us more?
The Mini manual says....
998's - 7*@ 1000, Dist advance 14*(X2) 28 +7=35* total advance at 4K
1098's 9* @1000 rpm, 20-24* @6K rpm = 33* total
1275 GT 13* @ 1000, 18-22 @4K =35* total
I see a pattern here..... ;D
All of these engines want about 34-35* total advance, the cam wil partially dictate what RPM they want it all in.
I haven't seen any mini engines that want 20* static, most say around 8* static is a good starting point, and to use a timing light to find total advance and adjust accordingly.
Going by that, my dizzy would provide between 38 and 44 degrees advance at reline depending which curve I choose with 1000 rpms starting at 8. Does that seem a bit high?
Yes, I think that's too much advance, Kent runs 24 +10 on his race engines....and they turn 8K.
Quote from: MiniDave on May 05, 2018, 08:02:08 PM
The Mini manual says....
998's - 7*@ 1000, Dist advance 14*(X2) 28 +7=35* total advance at 4K
1098's 9* @1000 rpm, 20-24* @6K rpm = 33* total
1275 GT 13* @ 1000, 18-22 @4K =35* total
I see a pattern here..... ;D
All of these engines want about 34-35* total advance, the cam wil partially dictate what RPM they want it all in.
I haven't seen any mini engines that want 20* static, most say around 8* static is a good starting point, and to use a timing light to find total advance and adjust accordingly.
Right - precisely why I was curious about the '3000 rpm' bit in your earlier post.
As you can clearly see by the aforementioned graph, the Aldon Yellow continues to advance til 5000 rpm, which would exceed the 34(+/-) max total target.
To be clear, I'm not sharpshooting -
But, does it continue to advance or does it limit? If you overadvance at high RPMs you can cause severe detonation - which can cause real damage to your engine.
Total advance needed also really depends on the engine specs, cam timing, lift, compression ratio, carburation etc....
When I spoke to Aldon on the phone, they confirmed the advance data on the chart - the chart is accurate, which shows that the Aldon Yellow continues to mechanically advance until 2500 distributor rpms (5000 engine rpms) where it reaches it's 12° (24°) maximum limit.
Then on your aldon you'd set your static and add to their curve I do believe. The curves on my csi that I'm installing assumes a static timing of 10, so these curves read actual values.
From when I installed this distributor, I normally just bring the engine to 5000 rpm and turn the dizzy to 34°, though I think it's actually at about 32° right now.
Quote from: MiniDave on May 04, 2018, 06:41:43 PM
Every car benefitted from timing changes, some substantially. Several of the cars got new needles or in the case of Weber, new jets. Two of the Minis started off at about 52 HP at the wheels, but when done both were 68-69hp at the wheels, that's a fairly huge improvement - about 30% more HP.
What an improvement. I sure wish I could get my Mini on a dyno with somebody knowledgeable about improving its performance.
I'm sure there's a race shop in your area that does dyno - tuning, the problem is would they know anything about SU's, and would they have a selection of needles to dial it in? Maybe the Brit's Bits guy knows of one?
Maybe the folks you took Emma to for the alignment know of a shop in your hood?
If not, make a trip to KC (well, Topeka actually), if they can get similar results to what John and Susan's car got it would be well worth the trip!
I'm hoping to get another dyno day set up for the fall - you don't want to do it when it's 95* and a million percent humidity like it is here in the summer, but you'd be welcome to join us - 8 hour trip from your hood. Maybe Dan would have his hot rod together by then and you both could come up? I know I can get a few folks from KC with classics to go, and Don definitely wants to get the Pup on the rollers. We need about 10 folks to make it cost effective.....I'm sure there are a couple of local Lawrence (Stan?) and Topeka folks who didn't get to go to this session that will come, I'm pretty sure we can get 10 people/cars together.
Quote from: MiniDave on June 06, 2018, 02:26:58 PM
I'm sure there's a race shop in your area that does dyno - tuning, the problem is would they know anything about SU's, and would they have a selection of needles to dial it in? Maybe the Brit's Bits guy knows of one?
Maybe the folks you took Emma to for the alignment know of a shop in your hood?
They are nice folks, but more focused on Subarus and Supras. I don't think they would understand tuning a car without a laptop hooked up to it. And I think they'd look at an SU they way I'd look at a steam engine.
Quote from: MiniDave on June 06, 2018, 02:26:58 PM
If not, make a trip to KC (well, Topeka actually), if they can get similar results to what John and Susan's car got it would be well worth the trip!
I think it really would.
Quote from: MiniDave on June 06, 2018, 02:26:58 PM
I'm hoping to get another dyno day set up for the fall - you don't want to do it when it's 95* and a million percent humidity like it is here in the summer, but you'd be welcome to join us - 8 hour trip from your hood. Maybe Dan would have his hot rod together by then and you both could come up? I know I can get a few folks from KC with classics to go, and Don definitely wants to get the Pup on the rollers. We need about 10 folks to make it cost effective.....I'm sure there are a couple of local Lawrence (Stan?) and Topeka folks who didn't get to go to this session that will come, I'm pretty sure we can get 10 people/cars together.
Hmm. Sounds very tempting. I think Mark would like to go too (if his car is back together). What is the approximate cost of a session?
I'd be in. They have an engine dyno so don't necessarily need it back in the car. Would love to see what they could make that 1380 do. :-\
We paid about $120 each for the dyno sessions....
Mark, the engine dyno is at another shop about 45 min from Prather Racing's dyno shop, and an entirely different company. Setting up an engine dyno day would be a whole 'nuther subject.
I don't have a dyno, just a little engine stand set up to run in a cam and such, but it's good for getting some baseline setup done.
Well bummer, unless.... Lol no really though.... just bolt it in the subframe and bolt that to the shell. Close enough to a car right?....
Having a wideband installed to get your needles picked out and air/fuel ahead of time will make a dyno day go quick and easy. Then it's a matter of testing timing to see what the sweet spot is. On my rx7 for example the only real need for the dyno is to see what power you're making. All the tuning is done ahead of time.
I agree in general, but it's difficult to get good accurate readings when you're driving down the road....on the dyno you can hold a certain rpm/speed and load and watch what it does....harder to do that when dodging potholes and idiot drivers.
Not so bad out where Dan's shop is, out in the country.....
Yeah you have to do WOT tunes on a long straight road in the middle of nowhere. Daily cruising tweaks can be done anywhere. The benefit of the mini is you'll do 80 or 90 tops. In the rx7 a 4th gear pull to get a good reading puts me at 140mph.
That's the cool thing about the dyno, you can do long pulls and just hold a certain rpm/load if you need to, although he mostly just got it rolling at about 2K in 4th, then set it on the floor and ran to 5k or so. On John's Mini he went up to 6K.....
Dave, please let me know as the fall approaches- I'd like to be part of it.
Definitely, nothing is set up at this time but I'll get Styers involved too.....
I've been talking to Jesse Prather about a dyno date, he's fairly flexible right now but I would like to get a date set up sooner rather than later....my thinking is late Sept or early Oct would give us the best chance of cooler weather but no rain to worry about.
Jesse says it has to be a weekday as he's either racing or with family on weekends - to that end I'm thinking a Friday would be best?
Weigh in and let me know what will work for those of you wanting to come up.
Friday would work for me. Since it's 8+ hours from here, I'd probably tow my Mini there rather than driving it. And I'd do that on the Thursday before.
Sept 21, 28 or Oct 5?
One of the September dates will conflict with the TxABCD in Round Rock, Texas. I am not sure which yet. Their website has not been updated with the 2018 schedule.
TxABCD Website (http://www.specialtypartshop.com/txabcd/)
It would be a longer run for me (being about another 6 hours south of Bruce), but I may consider bringing the Moke for giggles.
Oct 5 would be better for me.
Oct 5 works for me, I'll tentatively set it for then.
Michael, I would love to see you come up with your Moke, but I know it's a long drive. But hey, what else do you have to do? ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
Wonder if Dan and Mark will have their cars running by then?
Cost is projected to be $110 each based on 10 people, they way the Brit club did it was that included lunch, sodas, cookies etc from Subway so no one had to leave or stop the proceedings.....The dyno day costs $1000.
If Mark can build a whole car by October, I'll hire him full time. My car will maybe, and it's a big maybe, done by October.
Bring the RX-7 then?
I could do that!
Mark doesn't need his car finished, just running! ;D
I'm sure mine will be running. Just not sure how road ready and buttoned up it will be.
Lol. Yea maybe a rolling chassis with a way to run the motor.
Quote from: MiniDave on June 06, 2018, 02:26:58 PM
I'm sure there's a race shop in your area that does dyno - tuning, the problem is would they know anything about SU's, and would they have a selection of needles to dial it in? Maybe the Brit's Bits guy knows of one?
Maybe the folks you took Emma to for the alignment know of a shop in your hood?
If not, make a trip to KC (well, Topeka actually), if they can get similar results to what John and Susan's car got it would be well worth the trip!
I'm hoping to get another dyno day set up for the fall - you don't want to do it when it's 95* and a million percent humidity like it is here in the summer, but you'd be welcome to join us - 8 hour trip from your hood. Maybe Dan would have his hot rod together by then and you both could come up? I know I can get a few folks from KC with classics to go, and Don definitely wants to get the Pup on the rollers. We need about 10 folks to make it cost effective.....I'm sure there are a couple of local Lawrence (Stan?) and Topeka folks who didn't get to go to this session that will come, I'm pretty sure we can get 10 people/cars together.
I just seen this ! AGGH that would of been so fun. I am going if this is an option in the fall !
Absolutely Stan, save the date - October 5....we need 10 cars altogether.
What happens if it's under 10?
I pay the difference....
Oh I'm sure the group who is able to go can divvy up the difference if it's under 10.
I appreciate that, but we'll have some local guys too, so no worries.....
Spoke to Jesse today, and we are tentatively booked in for Oct 5th. He's looking forward to seeing all our little Brit cars and seeing what he can do with them!
So all you guys who are just treading water on your builds, get busy! ;D
Posting for two reasons:
1) Bring this back to the top.
2) Ask for additional details in order to book a room somewhere.
Dave,
Any additional details you can provide for those of us that would like to come from way out of town? Places nearby to stay, etc.?
Absolutely, the shop is on the southeast side of Topeka, Ks and there are plenty of hotels in the area - I live about an hour away - in Overland Park, a suburb on the west side of KC. The address of the shop is:
Jesse Prather Motorsports
4950 SE Adams
Topeka, KS 66609
785-249-0284
There are a lot of very reasonably priced hotels near the shop and the track right down the road.
Details are we'll show up at the shop about 8 am and he'll load the first car on the dyno. Each run takes between 20 min to a half hour and as we get closer to the date I'll set up a schedule. Everyone is welcome to hang out at the shop while the other cars are being run on the dyno - I find it fun to see what kinds of results the different cars bring. Right now my plan is to have all the classics run first, there will be some new MINIs in the afternoon.
We'll break for lunch around noon and start back up about 1-ish.
I was hoping there might be an event at the nearby Heartland Park Road course that weekend but it appears not, however it's only a few miles down the road if anyone wants to go see the track - I've done probably 500 laps there over the years! 77.gif
Mplayle, google says it's less than 12 hours from San Antonio to Topeka, so not too bad.
I'm really looking forward to this. Now all I've got to do is get my car back together before that weekend.
Michael, I imagine you are towing the Moke up there rather than driving it? I will be towing rather than driving. Perhaps we could caravan up together? I'm planning on leaving here Thursday morning and hitting Topeka by late afternoon. Friday is on the dyno. And then heading back home on Saturday.
We need to get Dan's ass in gear and get his hot rod Mini here too!
I'm hoping to get Deighton to bring this Bugeye up too, it may only be making 35hp at the wheels but it would be nice to see if they can get any more out of it.
Dan has been bogged down with everyone else. Isn't helping work keeps needing me on my days off. Haven't even bought my extra splash of paint to redo my quarter panel.
Quote from: 94touring on August 24, 2018, 04:05:16 PM
Dan has been bogged down with everyone else. Isn't helping work keeps needing me on my days off. Haven't even bought my extra splash of paint to redo my quarter panel.
ring your RX-7 and make everyone cry.
Should I hand out ear plugs or let it be a surprise?
Sorry Dan, but you just let the cat out of the bag.
Years ago, I attended a dyno day at Computer Car in Denver (sponsored by MOTR). I learned then to have ear plugs handy.
Bruce,
Yes, I would be flat towing the Moke (unless I manage to find an appropriate small trailer). It would be a two day drive each way for me, but that is what I am planning. PM me for my email address and we can discuss the caravan idea further.
PM sent
Yea I heard him in the rx7 coming while I was in the shop with the doors closed.
1979 Daytona 24 hours, the first weekend in Feb - the first year they ran the RX7 - the noise was so loud it physically hurt. Other car drivers complained too, the next race (Sebring in March) they had to have mufflers....
I remember RX3 race cars running in SCCA races in the 1970s. Scary loud!
I have 2 mufflers and 2 resonators, it's still loud. I think my all time favorite street altercation was some kid who thought he'd try me. When I punched it and the wastegate opened it scared him so bad he physically swerved off the road.
So, ear plugs AND ear muffs required?
:-\
Quote from: MPlayle on August 25, 2018, 06:57:43 AM
So, ear plugs AND ear muffs required?
:-\
And something for the bloody nose 9.gif
Count me in , I will take the day. Sounds fun . Can't wait
Cool, I have several local people going too.....
New thread started.....
http://www.restorationmini.com/forum/index.php?topic=1777.new#new (http://www.restorationmini.com/forum/index.php?topic=1777.new#new)