Dyno Day at Jess Prather Racing

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.

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!







This is a Clubman with a V6 Acura mounted in the back, 230 hp at the rear wheels!

 

Wow, 45 views and no one found it interesting enough to comment......why do I post here????

 

Are none of the vids or pics showing? maybe that's why I didn't get any replies.....they all show for me.

 

Yes, the ones I posted this afternoon were straight from my laptop.......I forgot about the Dragon.