3.2 Meeting at JZ Machtech Saturday 5th April

[Simon Davidson]

Hi all,

I have had a really busy time this week so i havent had a chance to sort out a detailed write up yet.

Firstly thanks to everyone that came along last Saturday. The turnout was very good with over 30 cars in attendance.
JZ Machtech' s food and hospitality was great and it was a good chance to meet some more owners and have a look round a variety of cars.
Talking to some of the owners its clear there are more ideas for getting together and we have already lined up a date for a horse racing evening in July, details will be posted soon - thanks to Karen Blight for coming up with the idea and organising a date.

10 Roling road tests were performed and I will be contacting the owners of each car shortly to get details of mileage, engine rebuilds etc etc so I can post up the results with some background, even though I wont give names/number plates unless asked to. I found it interesting that so many cars were close to 230BHP at the flywheel without any mods or rebuilds.

I must say that now I have completed the frst event I can now see that more preparation would have meant less of the headless chicken routine on the day so I hope to sort that for the next event and spend more time socialising, apologies to anyone I may have offended as I flitted from pillar to post.

Thanks to JZ Machtech for hosting the event and all those 3.2 enthusiast that attended, even those that had to put up with going home in their 993 Turbo 4' s after spending 4 hours looking at real Porsches...hehehe.

the three 15 second videos I took of exhausts came out quite well I will find out if i can post them here or have to host them on my own site and post a link here, either way should be sorted in a day or two.

I cant work out how to post several pictures at once on this site so I will try to sort this and post my pics in the next few days. If anyone has pictures or comments please feel free to post on this forum or send direct to me if you prefer and I will ad them to the others I have.
For those of you that left early you missed the engine shown below - can you tell what it is yet???

Best Regards, Simon

 

[Guest]

3.2 with a Paxton supercharger [] But then I was there so I should know.

Simon, are you going to post the dyno numbers?

Interestingly, most 3.2s were around the 215hp mark. Even a 3.2 with a top end rebuild and a Haywood & Scott full equal length exhaust " only" made 230hp. Anyone surprised? It sounded like a Spitfire on the dyno - so maybe money well spent anyway? I have read a 1984 road test where a new car was dynoed at 232hp. Were have the horsies gone? Any thoughts?

I would have loved to have mine dynoed but as those who were there will know, it was too low - even after swapping bigger rear wheels on to the car, still too low. I will have to pull my adjustable rear sway bar and have a return bout.

I was surprised that only 10 people had dyno pulls. Why? I overheard one person say that they thought their gearbox wasn' t up to it. The stress from a dyno is just like full throttle in third gear on the road. Does said owner not ever use full throttle on the road???

I heard a few owners mumbling about track days. I did my best to " sell" them on the idea, but most seemed convinced they would crash. Ultimately, the driver is in control - nobody to blame but yourself. Do the same owners fear they will crash every time they drive on the road? I just don' t understand.

Maybe we need to get some of the more " timid" 3.2 owners out on a track day. There is not a more user friendly track than Bedford so why don' t we try to make it to that one.

ciao,
Richard
(lots of coffee this morning - so well fired up[])

 

[Guest]

PS

Simon, how about some follow up on that hypo exhaust you are building. Have a look at the thread.

Muchos gracios

 

[Richard Pottle]

That was me who said that my gearbox wasn' t up to it. I spoke to a few people at Autofarm and they said that because my car has the 993 engine in it and the 915 ' box without the oil cooler it may not be a good idea to rolling road it yet. Plus I' m massively skint at the moment and still paying for the engine conversion.[]

 

[Guest]

Richard,

I had my car dyno' d, I was one of the only 215 (214.5 actually). The car has done 105,000 miles, no rebuild and I frequently take it to 6000rpm (once it is warm). The car is 15years old so a 7% drop in power isnt too bad, + is only dropped about 5% in torque (although at higher RPM). I think that is pretty good considering the age and mileage.

I always shy' d away from getting it dyno' d as I thought I would rather not know! Will plan for a rebuild next year perhaps - but in no hurry.

Didnt get the chance to meet you, but saw them trying different tyres on what must have been your car. I will be going to Bedford, so hopefully we can catch up then.

regards

Hugh

 

[ClubSport 911]

Anybody - Could you please help me here ?

1) How were gearbox losses in the car' s measured (i.e not caluculated) but measured

2) Who saw the certificate of calibration accuracy from the Dyno ? -when was it last checked...

3) W.O.T. is easy...who did part throttle loadings ?


Essential you know all this kind of stuff if you are to really understand what it is you are actually seeing / believing...

just thoughts

STEVE

 

[Guest]

Steve,

I am not an expert on these things but this is what I was told.
1) the Gearbox readings were taken by drag when the car wasnt under load. So they take the engine up to about 6000rpm (or what ever) and then let completely off the throttle at this point, the car effectively is free wheeling. They then measure the resistance that this free wheeling gives. From that they calculate the power loss.
2) The calibration certificate was on the wall above the machine, I didnt pay much attention to it, and dont know what the date was or really what it said. They also correct the output for atmospheric pressure during each reading.
3) what is WOT? I dont think they did part throttle readings (not 100% sure), it appeared that they shifted through the gears at low rpm, got in 4th and took it up to the red line - I dont know if this was foot on the floor or not.

As for what I got out of well, I wanted to know a rough guide as to the condition of the engine. I assume that even if the machine is out a bit, relative to the other 3.2s done on the day for a standard car mine is pretty much OK, not brilliant, but not low. If it had come in around 200rwbhp I would have been worried, if it had come in at 230rwbhp I would have been suprised. I intend to have a leak down test at some point to add to the knowledge base.

For me with 100% standard car, that is enough, and I think it was a good price.

If anyone can shed more light on how the process works, or is supposed to work please chip in. I certainly am not an expert and have not really understood all that was happening.

 

[ClubSport 911]

Thanks - the gearbox measuring method is correct - I only asked because some (really quite well known) companies out there " gesstimate" the gearbox losses. How JZ' s do it seems to be one of the best ways.

Great you saw the calibration certificate, and also, seems like Wide open Throttle (if the same technique was applied to all cars) is good enough for max power runs.

Great feedback....appreciate the post

STEVE

PS - do you run on Optimax ? - were there any people there who run the cars on optimax ? - did they notice any difference ??

 

[Guest]

Steve,

I can only assume that they did the same thing on the cars, they seemed to have a little production line of bringing the cars in and out of the dyno, so I would hope so.

Wide Open Throttle - WOT - of course, I tried all sorts of combinations! I do *always* run optimax, but have no idea what everyone else ran. I thought I noticed a difference when I first started using it (seat of the pants feel), but it could have be plecebo effect of course.

Perhaps when simon gets his finger out, we can look at all the results []

forgot to say, will try to scan my plots and post next week

 

[Guest]

That was me who said that my gearbox wasn' t up to it. I spoke to a few people at Autofarm and they said that because my car has the 993 engine in it and the 915 ' box without the oil cooler it may not be a good idea to rolling road it yet. Plus I' m massively skint at the moment and still paying for the engine conversion.

Hi Richard,

I guess you have some special circumstances - so I humble apologies from me!

Still, I am enormously surprised that Autofarm would say that your gearbox is not up to 30 odd seconds full throttle in 3rd. Ten laps on your favourite race track maybe. I guess if you have a fresh 993 engine you shouldn' t need to dyno unless you want bragging rights!

If you have a moment, I would be interested in how you get on with your insurance company post engine swap.

On the gearbox point, you should search the Pelican BBS as there has been some recent discussion regarding 915 gearboxs and 3.6 engines. If I recall correctly, the favoured solution is to install an oil spray bar rather than a cooler - or more correctly before installing a cooler, as a cooler may not be required. The cases are, I believe, already designed to accept a spray bar so it is not such a big job. I will try to find the references if I have some time later today.

HTH
Richard

 

[Richard Pottle]

Hi Richard

With respects to my insurance I have had some very varying quotes. I spoke to one insurer that claimed to be a 911 insurance specialist (they advertised in 911 and Porsche World) and they quoted me £7,500!!!!!! []

Most insurers were quoting around £2,000 until I eventually managed to get covered for £1,300. This was when the engine first went in about a year ago and I was limited to 2,000 miles per year. I suppose bearing in mind that I live in Canary Wharf (which for insurance purposes comes under the dodgy East London area - no offence intended to anyone), do not have a garage and am only 28 this was a reasonable quote.

However, last November I went to the Classic Car show at the NEC and bumped into a lady from Diamond Insurance (based in Tring). I gave her all of the details of my car including a list of all parts used and an engineers report and she quoted me an amazing £536!!!!!

The details of this quote are as follows

Limited mileage (2,000 miles pa) - although this can be doubled for an extra £100.
No commuting ( I use the tube to get to work anyway)
Car must not be parked on the road.
It must be a second car.

These conditions obviously seemed very reasonable and not surprisingly I cancelled my previous insurance and took out this policy.

I think that because I was at the car show and got on really well with the lady she must have thought that I was a decent risk. I guess if you' re

a) genuinely interested in cars (proven by going to the show)
b) spent that much on a car
c) decent character etc

then they will cover you at a decent price.

So now I insure all my cars with them (I also have a modified Polo G40 - 140 BHP and only 875 kgs!! - insured with them for only £318 on a 5000 miles per annum)

 

[Richard Pottle]

To add to some of the dyno statistics that have been posted so far, my brother had his non modified 1986 3.2 on the rolling road at AmD in Oxfordshire. The test produced 227 bhp. He then had the chip upgraded and a big bore throttle body was fitted. Result was an extra 15 bhp, giving 242 bhp in total. The torque curve was also much flatter and the throttle body improved the response also. Has anyone else gone down the same route re. these mods?'

 

[Guest]

Simon,

Many thanks for organising the event.
I see you polished your cabrio especially for the day...

 

[Richard Pottle]

Is anyone going to the Autojumble at Husbourne, Crawley (J13 on the M1) this Saturday (26th) - another chance to give the motors a good thrashing.[8D]

 

[Jamie Summers]

Finally got round to remembering to bring my dyno stats into work to post .....

Anyway, ' 89 3.2 Coupe, c.90k miles, no rebuild as yet, 12k service 3 months ago, totally standard apart from K&N airfilter :

Max power speed 5873rpm (115.5 mph in gear used)
Power @ flywheel (corrected) 216.7 Bhp
Power @ flywheel (measured) 217.2 Bhp
Power @ wheels 192.7 Bhp
Power loss (trans, tyres etc) 24.5 Bhp

Max torque speed 4780 Rpm (94 mph in gear used)
Max engine torque (corrected) 206.5 lb ft

Max road speed reached in test 126.5 mph
max engine speed reached in test 6433 rpm

The pwer loss figure looks quite high to me, anyone else get similar figures ?

Jamie

 

[Melv]

That power loss is quite normal! It' s a percentage of the power at the flywheel, so this figure goes up with a more powerful engine -think yourself lucky!!

Melv