I been thinking about buying a Dyno and provide Dyno services for local folks. Race and street cars. Any thoughts here on brand of Dyno, new vs used, success or not? Thanks Bones
Dyno's are like hot rods: How Fast do you want to Spend??? First, figure out what you want to do with it and how you intend to use it, then pick a type of dyno that will suit your needs. Water pump dynos are good for power sweeps and short duration pulls, but the performance changes with water temp/viscosity, but they have the advantage of very low inertia. Water pumps also require a large amount of space for the storage tank, and plumbing. Eddy Current dyno's are good if you intend to do longer duration runs, steady state and transient tuning, etc, but often have a fairly high inertia penalty. AC drive dynos are by far the most versatile, good for everything from power sweeps to tuning to durability running, and are extremely low inertia. You can even cold spin a motor to measure internal friction and harmonics with a AC dyno, but they are expensive. At my past job, it was not unheard of to spend between $2.5 and $3 MILLION on a new AC drive dyno cell. (Add emissions equipment, and that price tag got closer to $5 million). Don't cheap out on the controller, and pay attention to customer support. I have nothing good to say about Superflow, their customer support has always disappointed me, even working for a OEM power sports company with a number of their dyno's installed, I can't imagine how they would treat a small shop. I have always been a big fan of Schenck-Pegasus eddy currents, but they are now owned by Horiba where the customer support is good, but not cheap, even though you could probably get into a nice used one fairly cheaply. Good Luck.
Frozen , I was reading your answer with interest, until I got to the last sentence in the first paragraph... then I spit coffee all over my iPad! 2.5 to 5 million! Going to have to knock two zeros off that before I’m happy! Didn’t realize there were that many different Dynos. I guess in a way I operated a “ dyno” while testing my fire engines. One aspect of my test was to see max GPM combined with max PSI. That was limited by the amount of power available from the engine of the apparatus. Hell I was running a dyno! What I’m looking for is a low dollar set up to help low dollar racers, the big boys already have their engines built and dynoed for them. I would like to do a little tuning while making a pull. I have very little experience/ knowledge in this area, so any help would be appreciated. Bones
I’m not sure in your area, but up here when they scrapped the two speed emission testing a lot of dynos got scrapped and there where two that where recommend by the government. A low hp one and a heavy duty high hp one ( not sure if this is correct but how it was explained to me when I went to Emission testing/repair school. My engine builder ended up with the one we had at the Toyota dealer I worked at for free. He just had to remove it. Might be worth looking to see what can be had used. Kind of like industrial and 3 phase equipment. Big bucks new, but pennies on the dollar used.
If you budget is $25K to $50K, you should be able to get into a nice eddy current for that. Remember the dyno (power absorber) is a small portion of the total cost. The controller, test cell, test stand / cart, air handling, cooling system, and power requirements all add up. I have seen good, refurbished used eddy's go for $5,000 to $15,000 from various industrial equipment resellers. Another $10K could be spent on the Controller and Computer if you know what to look for, and the rest of your budget could go towards setting up the test cell.
Is a computer controller absolutely necessary? Didn’t the have dynos before computers. I’m not looking for state of the art set up. Just going to try to help some racers and have some fun, possibly make a buck. The dyno needed be perfectly accurate, for my purposes, just show if an adjustment helps or hurts. I mean it would have to be close, but a few horse power one way another won’t make any difference. I can live with an analog dial or a bare bones computer, just don’t need and thing fancy. We have a shop and can fabricate any support items we need. Also, what do shops charge to dyno an engine? What about rear wheel dynos? Bones
With a lot of todays stuff you would need to be able to; access computer engine controls and re-program them, need to deal with a lot of young "tuner" oriented people, and do a lot of them. I looked at that same thing about 10 years ago and the area here alone would not support it let alone having to learn an "oriental language" to read how to start it. To top it all off we beat these people at war!
I thought about hooking up one of my water pumps and reading the gauges and converting to waterhorse power. But though that might be too “country”. Bones
Dynos are not simple devices when you start talking about high HP capacity. I would guess you would need somewhere around 1,000 HP capacity to cover most of your market. Think about this one factor in using a dyno. You are capturing all the HP an engine can produce and turning it into pure HEAT. When you consider that there are 2545 btu's/hr in 1 HP, some quick math will tell you that you need to dissipate a little over 2.5 million btu's/hr. That is some serious cooling required, even for a 5 minute pull. Just sayin'.....
A local guy put in a 4 wheel dyno last year . Very seldom see anything on it. Most people ,me included, enjoy the test and tune part of getting the good stuff out of your engine.
We have one local shop with a chassis dyno We have at least one with an engine dyno and we have a couple with catalog dynos (these headers add 10%, this cam 15% and this muffler 20%) and a bar or two with bench dynos ("500 hp/11 second car", though I have never tested it or raced it per se) At cruise ins (and sometimes even on the HAMB) the latter two are the go to references.
My buddy's with the engine shop have had the engine since they opened in the nineties, a few years ago they decided to put in a chassis dyno and it's been a slow pull to get it to pay for itself. The biggest problem was getting someone that can tune the computers. You have to go a hundred miles to find the next one so you would think there would be a lineup at there door to get in but its maybe one a week.
Yep I aware of heat, had a lot of trouble telling my guys to not deadhead the fire pumps. We only had 3-400 horsepower but they would turn the water to steam in a hurry. Bones
The money is in tuning, not in measuring horsepower, and torque. Tuning, these days, means computers.
Sesco racing engines had a homemade water brake type dyno using a corvair engine to start 4 cylinder race engines. I never asked him the how and why it worked, just observed him using it to check cam design/cylinder head changes/fuel system/etc.. He used it for a ref to see gain/loss, crude but effective, he was very successful using this homemade tool. In later years I purchased racing engines that were dyno'd, a big deal/selling feature I believe. Have friends going the LS computer engine route and they go to a shop with a chassis dyno owned by young computer genius type guys to get them running correctly and they make their money hi-performance tuning late model cars. So maybe what you want is a run/break in engine stand that you can connect to a homemade water brake system just for fun/reference numbers, anything real in the world of dynos today is big money, way too much for a backyard builder/hobbyist IMO. Good Luck ln your quest
The computer is also required for data logging. To make it worth while for your customer, you need to provide as much data as possible, not just Torque (you need RPM to calculate Hp). Providing and recording data such as EGT's, AFR, Water Temp, Oil Temp, Oil Pressure, Fuel Pressure, manifold pressure, spark timing, crank position, air flow, fuel flow, and CAN bus data (on more modern units) to your customer is very valuable to them. The data also helps diagnose problems faster and hopefully tells you to shut down an engine before something really bad happens and you have a customer blaming you for turning their brand new motor into a pile of shiny oil covered bits.
This looks like it may be something I may not want to do now, after reading some of the posts. My plan was just a simple dyno, mainly aimed at local low dollar race engines and the occasional old car engine. This was going to be by appointment, part time , fun deal. Some of the older local racers used to have some dynos to tune/prove their and their friends race engines. But they’re gone now. I saw a dyno , in Waco ,Texas, looked pretty simple, not too large. Didn’t think that it would be terribly expensive in the used market. But like every thing, it seems in life, it gets complicated! Never intended to dyno computer vehicles. Most dyno figures that most folks post to show what their engine did is a three column chart, showing horsepower and torque for certain rpms. I thought these figures, which seem to be the most important ,could be had with an old simple, cheap, analog system. Maybe I’m living in the past.......wait a minute, isn’t that what all of us are doing on this forum? Lol Bones
And unfortunately that is where you would ever make any of your money back from the initial investment. When I looked at the same thing about 10 years ago it didn't take very long for me to see that isn't what I wanted an would end up hating every minute spent in my garage just trying to pay for it. I am very happy working on my old cars and enjoy trying to get better at what ever I attempt on them. I can do fair panel replacement, nothing like Flop on here does but try to get better after seeing his build threads. I am a fair painter and mechanic so next I'm attempting he interior work on the Wife's '62 Falcon and my "51 Shoe Box. Then other things to conquer.
War, the HAMB has spoken! That’s why I threw this idea out here onto this forum. I knew there were guys out there that had done it, or at least checked it out. That’s the power of the HAMB. I won’t totally give up, if I trip over an old dyno for pennies, I may give it a try. But for now it goes to the back burner! Bones
I was at a cruise in at the beach a couple years ago and there was a guy that brought out a mobile chassis dyno. He had guys lined up to take a whirl and show off their wares. I didn't ask about the expense per run but maybe something like that could be used to make a buck or two? It definitely drew the crowds.
Used to be a portable dyno at the Scottsdale Goodguys and there was a two hour wait! Have run my A powered hot rods on a chassis dyno during the Speedster Reunion in Lincoln. I would think that a properly marketed chassis dyno would have a lot more appeal than an engine dyno
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