Software Dyno...

[Daniel Ciobota]

Dave,

I noticed you said you tried to use some of those "sound card" based
software dynos, and they didn't work well for you.  I used to own a 5sp
5.0L mustang, and I downloaded Mike Glover's dyno software and used his
schematic to make an rca connector that fed from one of the coil
primaries.  I think I saved the software and schematic, but Mike asked
me a long time ago to make sure folks download the software from him;
it's free anyway.

 Since it was fairly easy for me to get all the pertinent data (and any
kind of in-car dyno software is _very_ sensitive to input parameters,
like weight and actual tire diameter), and had a pretty flat and level
stretch of road to test ;-), I was able to come within 5% of my actual
dyno runs.  In most cases though, as when you try to see improvements in
hp, you only need consistent parameters, not necessarily exactly right.
I could easily see on the graph improvements (or losses) of as little as
5hp... I'd consider any less pretty much in the noise, even on a real
car dyno, there are just too many variables to give you any better
consistency in real life use anyways.

I have Mike's email address if you're still interested.  For recording I
used my camcorder external audio input, and it worked great, no false
spikes or anything like that, just nice relatively noise free pulses.

The only reason I don't use the software now is because I have an
automatic, and the converter slippage messes up the hp calculations big
time.  I haven't contacted Mike in a while, maybe he's come up with some
sort of algorithm to overcome that problem.

Daniel