In 2003, i made the 19 hour drive to Waterbury CT to go on ECP's inertia dyno. Im being as basic as I can to explain this; Fred taught me how pipe temperature affected where the power peak rpm will be, and how it moves.learned something new-i figured the shield around the pipe was to keep under hood temps reasonable, didn't know it was to try and modulate pipe temp for engine performance.
To prove a point to me, He had a cooler with dry ice and we froze my exhaust pipe. Ran it on the dyno, it made 44hp @ 7200ish rpms. Then took a tiger torch and heated the pipe up, i had to put it on with thick asbestos gloves, the power peak moved to 8600 rpms. Then we ran so many dyno runs in all kinds of temperatures in between cold and incinerating hot. He was trying to figure out how hot my pipe had to be at the start line, and then figure out what the pipe temp had to be, crossing the finish line.
For lack of better numbers; say my pipe had to be 300 degrees at the start line. Flag drops, engine comes off the line, its power peak is at 7900. By the time I cross the finish line in 5~6 seconds the pipe had to be at 750 degrees. The power peak moved to 8100.
I had to come up with a clutch setup that followed the moving power peak from start to finish line. 0ft @ 7900, 250ft @ 8000, 500ft @ 8100 rpms.
I sold a lot of those 440 setups for drag racing. If you've seen a 440 beat a 600, it probably had my kit in it. And anyone who had one was told to "shut the eff up about it".
I wrote a paper on this weekend and give it to Dynotech Jim. Jim corrected me on some of the language and sorted out my thoughts. In the end, the basic sentence of "power peak rpm moves with pipe temperature" was blessed by Jim, Kevin Cameron, and some other engine guys ive corresponded with.
Someone asked me to react to an ibexx podcast where the father said "peak torque and peak hp". Nope, sorry, Dad's flat-out-wrong, it does not work like that. It doesnt matter if you've been doing this or that for 45 years. When your answer is to read your resume, you've lost. You can't explain what's real-and-happening. Peak torque vs. peak hp, still, has been wrong for 45 years Dad, sorry to break that to ya. The power peak rpm moves with temperature. the power peak is lower here at this X temperature and the power peak rpm moves higher here at this Y temperature - thee end !
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