Truck parts Dynamometer.

[tom cloud]

>> Someone on the hotrod list a long time ago suggested putting a hall effect 
>> type sensor at the both ends of the driveshaft and measuring how much it 
>> twists.
>
>How about mounting the engine with some sort of spring loaded engine
>mounts and measure the deflection under load. Perhaps even a strain
>guage on the standard engine mounts would work?

Strain gage outputs are very low -- would need signal conditioning.
To put that on a revolving shaft and then transfer it through
rotary contact (read brushes -- or even possibly some sort of
telemetry) seems overly complicated.

Why not just put a strain gage on a motor mount.  Might not be
precise, as there would be interference errors from other connecting
points (like xmsn mount), but it would certainly give a good
relative, and probably accurate to within a few percent, once
calibrated, reading to use for tuning.

Better, why not use an accelerometer?  A single-axis acc. is
just a ball on a pot.  Won't give engine parameters, but will
give overall vehicle acceleration parameters (of course, no one
here wants to know that).

tom