Dyno day today on my 470! Woot! Much better than expected!

[Corellian Corvette]

I had my engine Dyno'd today - this is one the last major steps on a 2+ year (and very expensive) restoration on my '68 Charger. After this milestone, I have hopes that I'll actually be able to drive the car sometime in 2008! 

First a little about what I was going for. I'm very big into the "stock" look, and given this will be a 'fun' car but something I would like to drive frequently, I wanted to favor reliability, good idle quality and high idle vacuum over getting '10/10ths' out of the engine. I wanted this motor to look nearly stock - stock exhaust manifolds, stock looking carb, stock air cleaner, A/C, etc. It's even painted to correct Dodge Blue (much to my engine builders chagrin)

Engine Specs:
70 400 block
440 Source 470 Stroker Kit
440 Source Aluminum Water Pump Housing
Edelbrock Performer RPM Heads
Mopar Performance M1 Manifold
Edelbrock Thunder AVS 800 CFM Carb
Milodon Oil Pan/Windage Tray
Comp Cams Hydraulic Roller Lifter kit
Custom Roller Cam
MSD Ready-to-Run distributor
Hughes Racing 1.6 Roller Rocker Kit

As you can see – there is nothing particularly fancy about the engine. What was cool about this session is that I was able to Dyno with the exact combination as it will be on the car – including the stock exhaust. Instead of using headers, I had a set of downpipes bent with a bung welded for the O2 sensor. This allowed me to tune to my exact configuration instead of having headers in the dyno which would have given me different results than in the car.

Anyway, after a 30min break-in, and cool-down, we started doing runs. We did 15 pulls over the day, adjusting timing first, then jetting changes.

The initial pull was very, very promising. Given the mild cam, restrictive intake and exhaust my engine builder was expecting somewhere between 350 – 400hp, and just around 500 ft/lb tq. Well, our FIRST pull (set to 36deg total timing) and the out-of-box jetting on the Edelbrock we bested that! Our first run saw max HP at 402.6 @ 4000 rpm, and TQ at 535.7 @ 3700. Not bad! (this was just a 3000 -> 4000 RPM run)

We bumped to 38deg timing and saw an increase, then to 40deg and saw a drop, so we settled on 38deg for the rest of the pulls.

The engine responded very well to jetting changes, and we just progressively richened the mixture (using the great Edelbrock jetting chart) and extended our dyno pulls from 3000 – 5500 RPM. Fast forward to the end, and our final pull we saw MaxHP = 473.5 @ 5400, and MaxTQ = 541.2 @ 3600!

I'm very, very pleased with the results. The best part of all this is that I'm pulling 502 ft/lb at just 3000, and am probably in the 400 ft/lbs in the lower ranges. All in a total sleeper package with a rock-solid 650rpm idle.

Anyway I'm really excited. I couldn't be happier with the numbers given my goals, and with my 3:55-1 rear gears this should really be a fun ride!

Thanks for letting me share!

[tecmopar]

Now thats just the way I like 'em also, stock looking but with really nice #'s and I'll guess you didn't spend a gazillion $'s on it either, not cheap but not empty pockets either, good job man.

[Ghoste]

Nice work, with only a month and a half to go for that 08 target I hope to see the over the road pics soon. 

[Musicman]

Don't you just love it when a plan comes together 

Good Job 

[oldschool]

and without headers,thats awesome!

[skip68]

  Nice job.    What are the cam specs.

[firefighter3931]

Congrats....those are descent power numbers through factory ex manifolds. 

With a set of headers there's at least another 40-50 hp in there. 



Ron

[Corellian Corvette]

Thanks - funny you say that firefighter - my engine builder thinks headers, intake and holley would get me at least 80 hp more.

I really didn't want to mess with headers - I'm running the FirmFeel fast ratio idler setup, along with the Stage 2 steering box, and my understanding is that setup won't clear headers.

Frankly - I'm totally satisfied with this. It's making honest, reliable HP and TQ without a lot of drama, it looks stock and everything fits under the hood, I know the factory manifolds will seal well and won't leak, and there is probably enough power here to make this a pretty scary (fun) ride. I'll probably break something else with all this power anyway! 

Tecmopar you are right - that's what I was going for. This wasn't a "budget" build for sure, but I think I got good quality parts and feel good about the price. I think I paid just under $9K all in for the motor, which based on what I have seen I think is reasonable considering the aluminum heads, roller rocker, and roller cam setup.

[firefighter3931]

Thanks - funny you say that firefighter - my engine builder thinks headers, intake and holley would get me at least 80 hp more.

That's probably pretty close to reality.....i was referring to just swapping the headers and leaving everything else as is. 

Frankly - I'm totally satisfied with this. It's making honest, reliable HP and TQ without a lot of drama,

Absolutely....those are great power numbers and will be a handful on a street car with limited traction. Be prepared for frequent tire changes and lots of smoke when you drop the hammer. 



Ron