From the vault – Dyno Queens

Street Commodores – 11/08/2008

I don’t think there is a piece of equipment in the Automotive trade that creates as much debate or invokes the reactions that a chassis Dynamometer or “Dyno” as it is commonly referred to does and although there are plenty of people ready to label a car as a “Dyno queen” there is no doubt that there is just as many that respect cars based on their rear wheel figure.

It may come as surprise that the first Dyno’s date back to the early 1800s, more recently companies like Dyno dynamics started to manufacture world class products right here in Australia and the Australian car enthusiast quickly saw the benefits of this equipment with its ability to simulate the load of what your car sees on the road or track, it not only became a powerful tuning tool but an important diagnostic tool.

In fact Dyno’s today have a number of uses and are not only for cars but are built for trucks, motorcycles and even boats and are used for power readings, tuning , emissions testing, brake testing , driver education and training and even simulating drag racing(Drag tag).

In-fact HPF or Amberley Autos as it was called then,  was the second company in Australia to purchase a Dyno Dynamics Dyno and at that time it was purchased as just another tool for carrying out diagnostics and basic tuning. In those days EFI was still in its infancy so setting up carbies and distributors was the Dyno’s main duties, however through word of mouth or maybe just our desire to test and measure things people started to bring vehicles to Amberley’s for performance tuning and to measure their cars power and torque output.

Fast forward to today and HPF now has two Dyno’s and both are pretty much flat out tuning late model cars and still measuring the power and tractive effort at the wheels. Since we purchased that first Dyno technology has jumped ahead in leaps and bounds, with the introduction of OEM ECU remapping software and the ODB port to gain valuable vehicle data for diagnostics, not to mention the advancement of the Dyno itself, it’s hard to imagine how we would carry out our work without them.

It also wasn’t long before car enthusiasts started to show Dyno sheets to their mates and they became the focus of bench racers around Australia, they could compare power figures and it was only a matter of time before the Dyno competition was born with the first and still the most prestigious being the Summernats HP Heroes which made its debut in the mid 90s.

Dyno’s today are a highly sophisticated and expensive piece of equipment and while the manufacturers have continued to improve them, we have continued to push them, with power figures at this year’s Summernats close to 2000rwhp.  It was only 8 years ago that I won the HP Heroes with 500hp at the wheels and I remember at that time people were questioning what the limit of the Dyno would be. It was then only two years later I was back at the Summernats and this time I won with 1000rwhp and people were shocked, almost in disbelief and again they started to question how far we could push.

There is no doubt in my mind that the 2000rwhp mark will fall in the next 12 months and again people are asking how much power can a chassis Dyno recorded? Well the truth is the Dyno can be manufactured to record probably as much power as we can produce by simply by adding retarders and ensuring the rest of the Dyno is structurally capable of coping with the loads being applied through the rollers. So is 3000rwhp possible? Yes even more! The biggest challenge we face is getting the power to the roller via the rear tires and that’s most likely going to be the limit of the rolling road style chassis Dyno and where a hub style would be the solution. In saying that we have explored the option of running four tires on the rear to help transfer the power to the roller.

We are already well into next year’s preparation for the Summernats and we are looking forward to seeing the records tumble again. MR PSI and BLO 402 have un-finished business and its going to be interesting to see if the small blocks can hold their own against the big blocks, as we saw last year it’s not just about making the most power you also have to last the distance.

Whether you think Dyno figures are important or not, there is no doubt the Dyno is here to stay and it is a very important part of the automotive industry. There is also no doubt that while Dyno’s exist we will continue to discuss and debate the power figures and use them to measure how much power we can produce at shows like The Summernats. The thing I love about the HP Heroes is that it ends the debate and gives people and workshop’s the opportunity to show case their engine building and tuning skills on an even playing field on the same Dyno in the same conditions, not to mention putting on a show for the crowd and I for one certainly enjoy that challenge. So if people want to label these cars Dyno queen’s, I am cool with that.

See ya at the nats!

Rob Vickery