996 3.6L Dyno Results - AWD vs RWD

I had a chance to dyno my C4S on back to back weeks, one with the complete AWD system and the other with the diff/shaft/axles removed. Same car with nearly the same conditions filled up with at the same 92 gas station on the same dyno. Really curious to hear from Raby, etc. on the results. My low end seems well low and I would have expected to hit closer to 300. The consistency of the pulls with RWD has me a little relieved on overall engine health. Relevant Parts List: Drivetrain: AASCO Lightweight Flywheel Clutch Masters FX250 Clutch with Sprung Pressure Plate rated for ~400hp Flywheel/Clutch/Plate Balancing OS Giken LSD Engine GT3 Throttle Body IPD 82mm Plenum EVOMS Intake and new MAF Sensor EVOMS 92 Tune RSS Underdrive Pulley Exhaust: SS Headers, X-Pipe, Hi-Flow Cats and Mufflers - 997 Quad Tips LN Dual Row IMS Upgrade (redone 5/25/16) FVD X51 Deep Oil Sump, Baffle and Pan LN Spin-On Oil Filter Adapter and Magnetic Sleeve RMS/997 AOS Upgraded Alternator New Coils/NGK Plugs Water Pump and Low Temp Thermostat Function First Motor Mounts Here's the results: AWD System Best run with AWD RWD (Lowest is highest AWD) RWD Numbers (Lowest is highest AWD) Best AWD vs Best RWD

Holy revs batman. The rpms cant be correct on those sheets. You're running it out to 8400rpm?

so 20whp/10wtrq loss with AWD. makes sense to me.

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We used the same RPM wire for both tests. At idle the revs matched but at 2k it was showing 2400 on the screen so I think it was adding some with the refresh rates. Don't recall bumping up the rev line with the EVO tune as these engines do NOT need to be that high in the band.

Makes me feel even happier with my decision to tear out the FWD stuff...

The flywheel is costing you 5-7HP and 10-12# of torque moire than likely. The scaling on those plots is wrong, or the dyno tach wasn't calibrated to the ignition signal for a 6 cylinder engine... With these things being skewed the output can be effectuated, since Power X RPM= HP. I'd have them re- scale the plots, or re- do the tests so they properly match the RPM the engine actually saw. Odd thing is, the TQ and HP actually cross at 5,252 RPM as they should, so thats really odd... Did the engine actually see 8,500 RPM? I don't think so!

Jake, with the stock valve springs, forgot what the max rpm limit was before this engine can start experiencing valve float. Was it around 7500? You had mentioned it in one of your old posts. Just forgot the actual number. Also as experienced on Vandersmith's dyno, you can't just throw various performance parts at this engine and expect an increase. One needs to methodically and carefully choose the right combination of components that will actually work together, or else you're just giving your car presents.

Is that an x51 car? Can't remember if the c4s got that standard or not

I wonder what would happen to my pushrod '96 Corvette if I spun it up to 7500... No. No I don't.

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The valve springs are not the issue, the hydraulic lifters are done at well below 7600 RPM. At that point the engine starts to benefit performance wise from lofting the valves, but at the cost of wasted lifters and wasted cam lobes. My high volume, high pressure oil pump option helps some, because it makes the lifters retain their posture better at high speeds. We also sometimes make internal changes to lifter bodies to reduce lash. All of these things are part of my R51 engine, but nothing else uses them due to cost and the crazy time that it sucks up. That said, stock engines at 7600 are going to see mechanical issues. No, you are sending hundred dollar bills to China for no reason.. Most all of this stuff comes from there, and hardly any of it is developed. Of those pieces, hardly any of them are developed to work together, which makes them a detriment to fuel trim, efficiency, and performance. People read too much and believe too many advertisements. They don't engage their brain before engaging their wallet, and today so few people understand mechanically, and systematically how the engine works. These people can't make a decision, because they simply do not know, and this makes them increasingly susceptible to advertised bull****. Big ads, and things coming from companies that have not earned their reputation, but rather have bought it, and a false image by advertising. The magazines make it WORSE, since their advertisers are where the profits come from. Thats why articles always reference products from advertisers. I've been there, and done that... Free parts for someone would always result in a feature, and a bigger ad always increased the chances of getting the invitation for said feature. Its the biggest bunch of political bull**** outside of Washington, and it pisses me off to see people fall for it. Ever wonder why you don't see our stuff featured? Its because I refuse to play their games. I also don't care about being featured, that does;t do anything for us. That said, the vast majority of the things people buy DO NOT WORK and in some cases they have ill effects on other aspects of the engine, or DME system. I am by no means a purist,and by no means do I only approve of what the factory provided (hell no!) but, I do expect things to be developed, and understood by sellers, and manufacturers. I laugh when I get (unfortunately) on a phone call with someone that says "Ok, your 4.0 makes 320 HP at the wheels; I have XX headers, xx cats, XX intake, xx plenum and xx flywheel, so I should be at about 400HP with all those gains added together, right?" I laugh and say "Well, first off, after we throw about 1/2 of those parts in the trash, you'll still be at 320 RWHP, else if we use them all you probably will be at around 280. If you want to make real power with my engine, you'll listen to me, because its my way, or no way at all" The phone goes silent. I think they have gone into Cardiac Arrest, and I have to make sure they are still with me.... Yes. It happens, almost every damn week. I have to be like this, and we have had to spend the time to make packages that we know work with engines that have certain internal modifications. The worst stuff is the really shiny, cool looking, blingy crap.. The second worst is the things that are developed only for their exhaust note. A few months ago an exhaust provider for these engines was sharing all sorts of stuff on their Facebook page. I sent them a message saying that I like their concept, and had a development lab where we could work together to further optimize their systems. I told them that I'd do some work for them for free and give them some dyno numbers if they just sent me a system to borrow. Their reply was "Thanks, Jake, but people buy the exhaust for the sound, and don;t care about the performance, so no thanks."......... Fast forward 3-4 weeks and someone posts on a forum that they installed this exhaust and lost 5 miles per gallon immediately. How does that sound????? I messaged the guy and had him send me the system, he put the stocker back on the car, and did a hard reset on the DME, and within 200 miles he was back to his normal miles per gallon... I installed the "sound good" system and immediately lost 23 lb/ft of torque and 3.5 MPG.At that point my message back to the provider, with data in hand was not one of encouragement. I hate under- developed junk!!!!!!! My brother in law makes custom fishing lures. He once told me "Fishing lures don't catch fish, they catch fisherman".

The car definitely didn't see higher than 7200. There's a new shop in the area, Dundon Motorsports, that I'll try to get into soon. They are Pcar dedicated and have dynopaks that can be calibrated for specific gear pulls. As for the parts (upgrades) everything I picked up was obviously in the interest of working together and making the car faster but based on the numbers some of which might have actually been detrimental. I like to tinker and will be trying a few more things out (stock headers and intake) on the dyno to see what works best. Appreciate the feedback Jake. Helps to have someone who knows their stuff chime in!

My brother in law makes custom fishing lures. He once told me "Fishing lures don't catch fish, they catch fisherman". LOL, If I added up all the advertised HP gains with each modification it would be off the charts.

What gets me is how defensive purchasers of the items get when facts are shared about how they function. If you want to get into a keyboard brawl, just tell a forumite that his exhaust system, or xx bolt on part doesn't work... He'll hate you forever! Thats what stands in the way of sharing the facts behind parts like this, and sharing what we know as a review.. The fallout from that one would be earth shattering... Someone would definitely cry!

lol, nevermind the internet - ever call these guys out in person at car shows? you can see their blood pressure rising. "K&N says I got 20hp from this..." ugh.

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Unfortunately these are the two things that majority of RL peeps seem to be looking at. I mean how many threads has there been about intakes/orange cap mod/muffler mod? Also I like how all the new guys in the game are the first to critique welding jobs on exhaust components. They assume if the welds are good, then the product must be good too. Too many people concentrate on the product packaging these days and not the actual substance of what the product was intended for. Give me a raw metal, unfinished, but tested/developed product any day over some shiny, c/f, polished, anodized crap that only serves to look good.

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One of the most profitable fishing lure ad campaigns... Do you remember "Magic Bate" and Jerry Clower? Hahahah Magic Bait Commercial with Jerry Clower - YouTube

Yep.. Even though that intake probably positions the MAF sensor in a position where the engine runs rich at idle speed... Or the air filter sucks in water, and fouls the MAF in the rain. Have they ever welded? Do they know what a sunburn from a Tig welder feels like? Do they even know the 5 essentials or arc welding? Hell no! That said, the welders that make things look the best are by far the Chinese women... They lay down awesome beads, too bad the material is junk! Absolutely. In 2011 I worked with a marketing team before I ended up just giving all my developments to LN... They only cared about what the damn box looked like! They pissed me off, and I fired them after wasting 10K on bull**** advice. Who gives a damn about the box? You are one of about the bottom 3%... Give me a hand fabricated, frankenstein looking piece that works, and I'm happy... Thats why we've never made the bolt on stuff; because, no one would buy what actually worked, unless it looked like it worked better than it really did! Right now I need to develop an X pipe system for my R51 engines with different characteristics than anything else out there due to the internal combination of the engine. It'll look like pure insanity, and it'll have welds that actually have penetration into a material thats not junk... Luckily no one will ever see it!

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Or smelled smoke and eventually realized that some article of clothing was on fire? The Chinese headers I had on my Boxster for half a Saturday looked fine on the outside, but the collectors inside were tragic. Pulled 'em back off and sold 'em to the next sucker down the line; I hope he learned his lesson too.

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Or their own hair, or flesh... The worst is hot slag chipping off and going into your shoe.. A close second is a spark bouncing around in your helmet and landing inside your ear... That sizzle is unforgettable. People have no clue... Zero. Doing things with your hands other than typing is so 1900s... Hell, I build everything and buy very little... Tractors, cars, buildings... All of it!

New Alignment and Corner Balance with help from many here:

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Love that quote! I came from a motorcycle background and this stuff is all too familiar. Great claims from manufacturers, rave reviews of huge power gains from customers, only to see a "real" dyno run that shows where the seat of the pants "huge power" comes from....a HUGE flat spot in the midrange (or somewhere else), that, to the seat of the pants, makes it feel like a huge hit.

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The other story comes from Dyno operators that have no background in development... They don't understand OFAAT evaluation (One Factor At A Time) or understand the impacts from coolant, oil and ambient temperatures on the engine output. They test things haphazardly and because if that their basis, and controls are all screwed up. All they are doing is looking for a "peak HP" figure to go up so the guy that doesn't even know how to read the Dyno graph properly feels accomplished with his purchases. "Tuners" generally **** me off.. Ask one of them the 4 strokes of a 4 stroke engine in order and see what they do. Guaranteed that 75% of them don't know it by heart... And even more cant explain it.

This thread got really fun really fast. I've enjoyed the "keep it real" rants. Jake, I've known some engineers that didn't have a drop of marketing blood in their body but I think you just reset the bar. Lol. Now tell us about this R51 you speaketh of. Vsmith, thanks for sharing your progress as always. Curious though why you didn't go with more negative front camber.

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I hate marketing... Something that's good doesn't need marketing. There's a difference between product awareness, and marketing... I believe in giving technical specs and a description about how it really works. No bling, no bull****. I haven't sent out a newsletter for anything more than our technical classes in more than a year.. I stopped updating the website 5 years ago.. We don't employ a single salesperson... All of this is *** backward from how everyone else does things. R51 is an engine made purposely smaller, to provide higher outputs than ever before. It's what happens when someone thinks outside the box, and refuses to play the "bigger is better" game. This is my own development, and I've made sure than it can't ever be copied by the others that ride our coat tails looking for a free ride on the development train. Nothing inside this one is off the shelf, not even the damn head gaskets, which cost 350 bucks each to have custom made.

That sounds awesome. Since we've already established that we won't be able to read the press release in Panorama maybe you can post some results on here when you complete your initial development.

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Press releases are for advertisers only AFAIK. The development is completed, I just need to complete the exhaust for it to take it to the next level. These engines spin to over 8,000 RPM without an issue. I've had these on the road for over two years now, recently an owner of a fresh one posted about it in the Boxster/ cayman forum.. Since his is installed into a Cayman S.

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Heh. When I was learning to weld and happily following directions. While brazing I lifted my goggles and pretty quickly smelled something funny. Then something didn't feel quite right. Took me a good 30 seconds to realize the tip of that nice hot rod was stuck right in the center of my head. Ruined a perfectly good Mohawk and was the last time I ever wore gloves brazing... My lesson for loose clothing was slag from out of position arc welding. Went down my shirt and I can tell you hot slag on the nipple is not fun. Unfortunately it made me jump and suck in my gut which gave it a new and even more unpleasant place to land. Luckily it was just a glancing blow and the underwear helped, but still not fun... I really need to get back into welding. Something very peaceful and calming about being isolated from the world in your helmet while concentrating on that perfect bead. Almost as good as SCUBA when all that matters is breathing in and out

Once I was welding on an old VW when I was about 13... A piece of slag fell onto the fuel hose and caught the car on fire... I was so into what I was doing that I did;t even know it until I felt heat on my right leg and threw the helmet up.... I just pushed it out of the shop and let it burn..

The biggest(and earliest) mistake I made was trying to be badazz and when the darkening mechanism on my electronic helmet failed, I tried welding the rest as I needed to get it done that day without eye protection(didn't haven any manual helmet/goggles around at the time). That night I had severe corneal flash burns on both eyes for the whole night. I seriously wasn't sure if I'd ever regain 100% of my eyesight. It was a long night but luckily it returned to normal over the course of the following day. I got REAL lucky for being so dumb. BTW, I'm pretty sure R51 is going to be a destroked high rpm motor if my memory serves me correctly. Was it some odd number like 3.5L?

Even though the dyno figures may be off, it's the same dyno so it's a good comparison for before/after. 16whp/10wtq is beyond what I expected from the conversion, very impressive.

Pretty much, but it still makes more power than a Stage II track Performer 4.0 at every RPM point all the way down to 2,000 RPM. None of the factory dimensions were used for this engine, not even rod length.

Last bit of welding we did. 1/4" Steel welded into a ceiling mount for a TV Scoreboard system at the brewery. Hardest part was measuring dead center of the staircase on a less than flat ceiling to bolt into the ceiling braces. Strings and laser beams.

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Wow 3,422 total weight after removing the fwd along with lightweight seats and your other mods? My 4s corner balanced at 3248 with fwd and rear seats delete 1/4 tank of fuel. Wonder why you are 174 lbs heavier? fully caged? full tank?

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When you say "power", are we talking HP? How's the tq curve compared to the stage2 track performer? I realize they are both meant for different duties so different characteristics for different uses, just trying to gauge the difference is all.

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More power everywhere... At some points the plots will lay over each other between the Stage II and R51, but thats it. There's one owner who had a Stage II 3.8 and now has the R51 in the same car. He'd be the best one to explain it.

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Sorry if I wasn't clear but I was asking if the R51 has less torque essentially through out the rev band than the 4.0 stage 2 track performer. Can you explain what kind of customer/uses would be best for R51 vs your existing stage II 3.8 or 4.0 track performer? Or do you plan on not offering the latter options any longer?

The R51 will remain at the top of the food chain. The other engines will remain the more usual choices.I would only make the R51 a more normal offering IF someone started getting close to our output for the more common engines, but thats far from happening. No, The R51 makes the same, or more EVERYWHERE. Forget about size differences and power, the smarter, more efficient combination will always win. Remember, I have changed piston speeds, have capitalized on swirl within the ports, and have no factory components restraints with the R51. It was a blank sheet of paper to start from. I've even built one from a 2.5 Boxster block... Adding a liter was easy. The sound of the R51 is insane, nothing like any other Porsche engine I have ever developed. The R43 is the 4.3L version of the R51, it uses the same insane bore size with my largest stroke possible and is for the guys that no matter what, simply cannot get it through their skull that bigger isn;t better... You know what the real problem is? The R51 doesn't "sound big enough" to impress their friends, and thats who they are worried about.

Thanks for the explanation. Seems like the R51 is engineered really well. Using a 2.5L Boxster block is even impressive. So I'm assuming the block is strong enough or does it have to be reinforced in some way with the amount of insane bore size you are using considering that it's also high revving?

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Nope.. Physically it's the same as every other M96 block, except the cylinder deck is made to a smaller bore. My highest output engine ever built was built on a 2.7 Boxster block... When it's all reconstructed, it doesn't matter what it was.... It's all machined away anyhow. The cylinders of the R51 are completely different than any other M96 arrangement, along with their reinforcements and gussets. This even differs from my other engines, even those with bore sizes of 101.6mm. The method of installation and mechanical locking is Patent Pending.

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This was with a full tank of gas and I'm putting on sympathy weight along with the Mrs. First born due in a few weeks! (hopefully I'll also lose a few lbs in the process) I'm 185 so that might be the difference as these scales include my weight in the driver seat

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Jake, you've seen power losses from the lighter flywheels?

Here's some track video from Friday's PCANW day at the Ridge: Car was aligned, lowered and corner balanced at TruLine Bellevue to the GT2 Specs with new NT01s. The car responded brilliantly but was a handful. Took an entire day to get the line dialed as the car favored much more oversteer versus the predictable throttle and push thru apex that existed with the previous alignment. Slow in fast out matters much more now as throttle application mid-turn requires much more finesse than before. Turn in was much improved. Entry, Mid, Exit speeds are all relatively the same but the car is much more lively. I dig it and will need a few more days to adjust. Lap times we're similar 1:55s-1:56 on new NT01s that weren't broken in. They should drop a few ticks as I acclimate and they break in. Anyway, here's the final session's video chasing a few instructors and my buddy in his 930 Turbo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6ry1Epq9JQ Interesting Note: For the day, the car was only a half second off the fastest GT4 times...

It looks like the car has too much understeer from the video. The only oversteer I saw was going from under to over mid corner. You might find it more predictable and really nice to drive if you can dial in the front end a little better. You may find yourself getting to the gas earlier (due to not battling understeer) and balancing the car more with the throttle mid corner and throughout exit.

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I think the front (C4S) sway bar is still too heavy even on its softest setting. My front lip also decided to **** the bed mid-day and which lead to a VERY light front-end the rest of the day:

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Every single time. Thank your knock sensors for that.. It's not their fault, though... They are just doing their job. I am not a LWFW fan. Losing the second mass is a horrible thing.

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I'm sure you could get a stock c2 bar for darn near free. Seems like a good place to start. Car looks mean!

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Good to know!