Today’s top level drag racing operations are not based in gas stations or the garage of the car owner’s uncle. Instead they are in impressive, sanitary, and intricate race shops. Case in point is the Gray Motorsports team that fields cars in the tough NHRA pro stock division. Like in many drag racing classes, the engine is what these teams live and die by. Pro stock maybe more so than others because of how tight the competition is and how hundredths or thousandths of a second determine winners and losers. That means teams sped inordinate time in the engine dyno trying to bleed ever more power out of their engines. In this video made by Valvoline Oil, we see the Gray shop and their inertia dyno working to analyze the performance of an engine. Note the black box around the intake. Pretty cool. You’ll hear the 500ci engine get ripped to over 10,000 RPM twice during the span of this video that is centered around the inertia style dyno which is used to test the engine.
Our understanding is that an inertia dyno is a good style to use for this type of application because it is primarily designed to test engines at full throttle. Since drag racing engines operate in that environment and that environment only, this is a better operation than a water brake style unit. Instead of working against that water brake that we mentioned in other dynos, this one uses a flywheel that the engine accelerates and measuring that acceleration is how power is determined. You’ll note that there’s a transmission on the back of the engine here as well. That is helping to slow the speed of the flywheels down, apparently.
Between the look inside a top level pro stock shop, learning about the dyno, and listening to the pro stock engine scream out loud, Valvoline did a heck of a job on this video!
, exotic and expensive world of Pro Stock, nice look inside
I have always wondered why inertia dynos never really caught on. I have watch one of these dynos that Les Davenport built in Calgary, run for over 30 years. 1% repeatability is no joke, it happens all the time even with blown alcohol stuff.
Les Davenport? I hope to see him haul ass in the 550 car next year!
I’m jealous. I’ve been chasing DAQ gremlins on my home built dyno all day. I got the oil up to temp but never made a single pull. That one also has a pair of Stuska water brakes and what appears to be an AC brake as well. Unfortunately revolutiondyno.com is down.
Kevin
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