Re:Dynode my car Saterday (archive)

I had a small repair to do on my car Saturday and while I was at the shop (Matrix Engineering, in Tigard Oregon) I
saw they had a Dynamometer, so I let my self get talked into a few "pulls" on the dyno, the information I got from it was some what surprising and enlightening. First I must tell you my "92" 850i has a 6 speed and has 84,000 miles
on the clock, the car has to the best of my knowledge been run with synthetic oil all it's life, (I'm the 2nd owner) it does not use any oil between 5000 mile oil changes and it has a Dinan chip in it with a K & N air filter system, I've put in a Remus cat back exhaust and Bosh platinum multi electrode spark plugs into it. So now on to the test.

I was supposed to get 3 "pulls" for $125.00 but it ended up being more like 5 or 6, I told them that the car dirt
stock was rated at about 300 H.P. so after setting a base line on the Dyno we made our "pulls". We found that the
Max. fly wheel power was 293.2 H.P. @ 5250 R.P.M.'s and Max. Torque was 312.8 Ft/lb @ 4250 R.P.M.'s and with arasitic loss that came out to 268.7 H.P. and 290.5 Ft/lb at the rear wheels. Imagine my surprise! I thought for sure I had over 300 H.P. and I know my motor isn't even close to tired! So upon further discussion about this, the operator said that with atmospheric correction I was probably making around 321 H.P. (That's more like it!) but it was noted that I was probably losing a lot through my stock catalytic converter and could make some note worthy gains from a high flow converter and some tuned header pipes, ( Does anybody know where I can get those readily?) but even if the power was as the print out showed, it would be a good base line for any future improvements done to the car, and that the gains would show quite accurately on the dynamometer.

So my friends be aware of my experience before you brag up your power to much! It doesn't make me like my car
any less, I still love it! But it's not the seething power monster I had imagined it was. I wish you could see the
graphs, but as I don't have a URL to post them to I can't show you what they looked like, but I can tell you the
torque builds very quickly and flat with the H.P. not far behind it all the way. It's quite a nice picture and now I
know why I've always liked how my motor pulled all the time when I needed to hit the gas hard!

I've been talking to some Gentlemen at a place in Canada called Motronix, I plan on taking my car to them some
time late in the Summer or early Fall for a motor "hop up" to end all hop up's! The one I'm looking into will entail a
6.0 liter conversion and twin supercharging, it will be a complete custom fabrication and should get me about 700
H.P.! they will also rebadge the car to be an 860csi. For now this is just locker room talk and I will keep you all up to date as to when and if I should do this. Hope this wasn't to rambling.

Jim ;-)

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