Questions for new HP/Weight rules

#1

As the 2014 season looms closer, I am still a little unclear on how the new HP/Weight rules will be implemented and would love some clarification.

Recently we had a Dyno day at Balanced Performance here in Atlanta where about 14 cars were put across the Dyno. The results of everyone’s cars “seemed” to be lower than what was expected but the results were what they were. Here is where I have a little gray area on the rules.

Let’s say that the March Road Atlanta race will have an approved Dyno at the track. When exactly do we get to Dyno on the machine and weigh on the scales? Is it before any qualifying and racing or would it only be after a qualifying or race session? Would they be available on the Friday evening before the event? I would like to know my numbers on that particular Dyno before any timed session so weight could be added or removed.
I would hate to go into a timed session using the HP/Weight numbers from somewhere like Balanced Performance only to have totally different numbers show up on the track Dyno/scales.

My preference would be to do a base Dyno and weight before any timed events which would allow the cars to be adjusted accordingly. Once that is done, I would feel much more comfortable with an after race Dyno that could determine the results of a race.

Thoughts?

#2

What was the range of hp numbers?

#3

I don’t know the full range of numbers as I didn’t stay all day, but a decent number of us had previous sessions at Balanced to compare to, and across the board, the repeat results were, I believe, about 6-9 HP lower than last time. Many of us were there in Feb 2013, and a few were tested this past fall. It seemed to be proportional, i.e. stronger motors had larger drops. A friend who was also there, with a GTS2/E30 (chip, header, cam) who normally cranks 170 was off about 11.

Personally I went from 157 HP to 150, and TQ dropped about 8 as well. My motor is a home rebuild no overbore, built in 2011.

#4

I don’t have all the answers, but I’ll try to paint a picture of how this is likely to work out in the SE. There’s certainly going to be some teething pains as we experiment with how to best implement the hp rules such that hassle and cost are minimized, yet usefulness and fairness maximized.

What follows is just my vision of this, so it’s 1/2 of a SE answer, Robert having the other half.

There will be a mobile Dynojet Dyno at multiple events. Some of these will be announced prior, some probably not. By announcing it prior the hope is that the dyno will get more business. The more cars that go to the dyno the easier it will be to get dynos to events.

Jim Pantas will tell the race directors how many dyno runs he’s willing to pay for. Lets say SpecE30 gets 2 runs. Then Robert Patton and I come up with a scheme that results in 2 of our cars being impounded after a qual or a race, weighed, then sent to the dyno. NASA pays for the dyno runs for cars sent to the dyno from impound. I’d expect the # of SpecE30’s to vary from 2-6 for a weekend.

General availability of the dyno will vary. The dyno guy will be looking to dyno cars all weekend long because he’s trying to make a buck, but stuff happens. One mobile dyno guy is a racer so he’ll be both on the track and also strapping down your car.

Routinely dynoing a car would be too expensive and time consuming for most of us. My recommendation would be to dyno a car at an event once and not do it again unless something is changed. I’d assume that 3 dyno runs will cost $100. If the dyno guy gets a lot of business, maybe the cost will go down a bit.

Getting different #'s from a dyno and scales. This is likely to happen and we’re going to have to figure out how to deal with it in a way that is fair. We’re used to dealing with situations where we don’t trust a set of scales for one reason or another, but we’re not used to dealing with dyno #'s that are “not what we expected.” Maybe we find that having more than one mobile dyno operator working the region is a bad idea. Maybe we find that our region has to “ease into” the hp/wt rule gradually somehow. Maybe we find that we can use my car or Robert’s car as a “control” to ID if the dyno is reading oddly high. Maybe we discard the dyno #'s that weekend like we do weights occasionally when they are clearly wrong.

The hp/wt rule has the potential to be a very good thing for the series. Our challenge is to figure out how to implement it such that we keep the charms and avoid the possible warts. We won’t know the warts until we start doing it, so no sense worrying about it now unless you’ve an uber-motor. Those that are concerned about the dyno rule in the SE punking them should keep in mind that they’re among friends. Everyone wants to find a fair way to implement the rule.

I’ve no idea how the other regions will work out their own details. We’ll probably be looking to steal good ideas from each other.

#5

[quote=“ctbimmer” post=75858]I don’t know the full range of numbers as I didn’t stay all day, but a decent number of us had previous sessions at Balanced to compare to, and across the board, the repeat results were, I believe, about 6-9 HP lower than last time. Many of us were there in Feb 2013, and a few were tested this past fall. It seemed to be proportional, i.e. stronger motors had larger drops. A friend who was also there, with a GTS2/E30 (chip, header, cam) who normally cranks 170 was off about 11.

Personally I went from 157 HP to 150, and TQ dropped about 8 as well. My motor is a home rebuild no overbore, built in 2011.[/quote]

These were all SAE corrected smoothing set to 5 numbers? That does seem like a lot for the same Dynojet to be off from year to year.

#6

Yes, the numbers were SAE corrected to smoothing 5 according to Jason.

#7

From what I recall, we had numbers ranging from low 140’s to the highest of 154 or 155 for the Spec cars.

Personally, my numbers were down 9hp but I did make some small changes to get the numbers down. 20w 50 oil and removal of electric fans for stock clutch fan.

This leads to the question of were the initial numbers reading too high or the new numbers reading too low. That is a big gap to overcome.

#8

I’m more concerned about a car dyno’ing just over it’s power/weight numbers - say the dyno is reading a touch high one day, and being DQ’d unfairly. What is most worrisome to a weekend warrior like me is being DQ’d because of draconian application of the rules. That’s a sure-fire way to make a lot of unhappy campers in the paddock. I can only hope that common sense will prevail through the teething pains!
-Vic

#9

My personal experience at Nationals in 2013 was not a great one.
My car was dynoed at least 6 separate times 2 of those were at my expense for tuning and making sure I was not over the HP cap for 944 of 138 rwhp.
My car varied from 134 - 142 with minor changes. What did seem to make the biggest difference was testing the car as a storm cell was just starting to move through.
It always had the highest reading in this situation. If it was clear and sunny it would read low.
I was constantly chasing the dyno.
After the championship race my car tested .5 hp over the legal max. I filed a protest based on the written procedure not being followed exactly as written. The tire pressure and oil temprature was not checked.
My car was placed in impound and was tested again the next morning. Both tests were in unsettled weather.
My car then tested .2 hp under the legal max.
This is just an example of dyno variation from test to test. It was less than 1 hp for this situation but also determined weather or not I was DQ at Nationals.
944 does not have a sliding scale for weight, we have to weigh a minimum or 2,600 lbs all the time.
The complexity of variable weight and HP will create a lot of DQs since 1 hp is 20 lbs.
So there will be lots of teething and we will all need to be prepared to dyno our cars more often than we want especially if you run at the front.
There is no perfect system, and any system costs money for the racer and NASA.
But if it could get to a single HP and single weight system it would be better. IMO.

Either way still looking forward to racing in E30 :slight_smile:

#10

Shouldn’t a rule like this have nationally consistent application?

Also why should we be already in the race season for the SE and other parts of the country and nobody yet knows how this rule will be applied?

#11

I’ve been down this road a dozen times in my FFR. Here’s how it goes.

You can get your own dyno, at your own expense, whenever you want. But it doesn’t really mean anything.

If you win a race, or get called to a dyno, you go. You dyno. And you better meet weight for whatever that dyno number says. It doesn’t matter what your own personal dyno says. If the barometer goes up during a race, or the air gets colder, etc., your dyno numbers can change. My FFR would routinely change 5hp depending on air, temperature of engine, temperature of oil, etc.

No tears, thats just the way things work. If you run your car very close to the edge on weight, don’t be shocked if you get a DQ.

#12

great reply.

there’s no need to be upset…

#13

Who’s upset?

I think folks are just trying to clarify. From Ranger’s post and talking to our regional director it doesn’t sound like the regional directors even know what they are going to do.

#14

What exactly do you mean by “on the edge”? Many of us averaged about an 8 hp difference on the very same Dyno that we ran on either last year or in my case within a couple months. That equates to a potential of over a 100 pounds of extra weight. Are you saying that running on the edge would still require some people to have an additional averaged sized teenager in the car? I would hate to tell Aaron that he can’t race because he has to passenger with me. :slight_smile:

Again, not crying here, just wanting to get clarification on a new rule for Spec E30 and how it will be implemented at the track. Ranger did help clear it up. This will be a little bit of a learning curve for many of us.

#15

What exactly do you mean by “on the edge”? Many of us averaged about an 8 hp difference on the very same Dyno that we ran on either last year or in my case within a couple months. That equates to a potential of over a 100 pounds of extra weight. Are you saying that running on the edge would still require some people to have an additional averaged sized teenager in the car? I would hate to tell Aaron that he can’t race because he has to passenger with me. :slight_smile:

Again, not crying here, just wanting to get clarification on a new rule for Spec E30 and how it will be implemented at the track. Ranger did help clear it up. This will be a little bit of a learning curve for many of us.[/quote]
Speaking solely for the SE…just think of the dyno standard like we do the weight standard. There have been events where we could not trust the scales so we didn’t. Over time we will know how much power everyone’s car has, just like everyone knows how much their car weighs. That means we should be able to ID if at a particular event a dyno is giving high #'s. Also, Robert’s car(s) or my car could easily be a “control.”

I can imagine a scenario where one car suddenly has 4hp more then it should. We could just put some other cars on the dyno and see if they were 4hp high too. We could also do a couple extra runs on the problem car to make sure we have a repeatable #.

We won’t know how well or not well this is going to work until we get in there and do it. If we find that there are issues, we’ll come up with a fair way to work it out. If I have 155hp, I’m going to ballast my car for 157hp.

For those that want more details, I don’t have them. We need to ease into this. Lets ID the problems before we start debating the solutions. Do we have rigid rules re. when to discard flaky results from the scales?

#16

Who’s upset?

I think folks are just trying to clarify. From Ranger’s post and talking to our regional director it doesn’t sound like the regional directors even know what they are going to do.[/quote]

I will refrain from using internet memes in the future.

The rule as written is pretty clear. Implementation seems transparent as well. I would hope the regional directors would give everyone a 1 race pass up front to sort things out. Past that, know your car.

#17

In the absence of official guidelines from Carter Hunt, I would think the previous experiences from Scott McKay and the last post from Foglight would be a good way to look at the rule.

The above was the reason for the dyno day. The cars tested were in the same box.If we find a racer that runs away and leaves others on the back straightaway at Road Atlant you’ll know something is up. Literally up. We all know what 155hp looks like on Balanced Performance dyno. I don’t expect that Chuck Taylor or Michael Harness will leave me in their wake.

RP

#18

Last September at RA, Kelly Childress and I did a planned, but informal, 2nd gear drag race from T7 down the backstraight. First to Black Flag wins, etc.

Both engines were homebuilt by us, and the equality of the cars was pretty clear. Neither gained more than a half-car over the other as I recall, but there was some back-and-forth maneuvering based, I assume, on slightly different torque curves. An interesting experience that I wouldn’t mind repeating with some of the fast cats, if I knew they weren’t sandbagging me!

In actual on-track speed and results, we were pretty close to each other all weekend, as we normally were over the years. Apparently our driving mediocrity is about as consistent as our motors.

#19

[quote=“ctbimmer” post=75914]Last September at RA, Kelly Childress and I did a planned, but informal, 2nd gear drag race from T7 down the backstraight. First to Black Flag wins, etc.

Both engines were homebuilt by us, and the equality of the cars was pretty clear. Neither gained more than a half-car over the other as I recall, but there was some back-and-forth maneuvering based, I assume, on slightly different torque curves. An interesting experience that I wouldn’t mind repeating with some of the fast cats, if I knew they weren’t sandbagging me!

In actual on-track speed and results, we were pretty close to each other all weekend, as we normally were over the years. Apparently our driving mediocrity is about as consistent as our motors. [/quote]

Nothing to be sorry about when it’s good clean fun close racing. Already miss you guys back in the SE

#20

Yup, that’s what it means. You have to change your spec mentality on weight. No more shooting for <10lbs over at the end of a race. Now you need a cushion. In GTS3 I’d routinely run 75lbs heavy just in case I got a bad dyno number.