Dyno is Home

Went this morning down to Gilroy to pick up the Dyno. Long friggin day and most of it driving. But I did spend a good portion of the day going over the workings of the Dyno. Lots to absorb and lots to learn. Lots of information to read on how the components work and how to calibrate. Mostly its already done but just in case I need to re-calibrate I have the information and the person I purchased it from is making them self available in case I need help. I like the internet and digital cameras because if I have trouble I can take a pic or video and send it so neither of us have to make that long round trip drive. The internet truly closes the distance gap. Also if any of you have any other things that may help make this Dyno more effective Im all ears.

History: I have a little bit. It was originally built I'd say back in the early 60's in the Formula V days when V racing was done mostly on stock engines that were tuned as best as possible and where you tuned by changing the cam durations and intake runners to get the most out of a stock engine. Problem is that in order to really do a bang up job you would need access to a Dyno. Well, this Dyno was built to satisfy the need. It is a Dyno to tune VW engines but converted long ago to Dyno Electric Motors. All the components for running VW engines are still connected so if I wanted I could dyno my VW engine my son built. We might just do that too. The torque load is two starter/generators that provide torque for the setup and a way to read so you can calculate HP. It has an RPM meter too and an adjustable pot on the console to provide throttle input and be able to sustain RPM under load. Anyway it is old but still quite functional.

I took one of my motors with me today to connect it up to give it a go and to show me how things worked. Looks pretty simple. We only used 36 volts and used old 12 volt car batteries. So with the bit we did do the motor I brought got to like 30 ft lb torque at 1000 rpm and 100 amps. It was very brief because it reached the RPM quickly.

So more will come as I set things up and do some testing. I am hoping to do a quick video real soon. I will do a test at 72 volts because it is the minimum my Synkromotive controller will do. So I can set up the controller to limit amperage to specific current and same with voltage for both the motor being tested and batteries.

Any motor I test will need to be able to be setup to the VW transaxle. So I am limited at the moment but if this goes good and folks want motors tested I can see about finding other VW adaptors for other motors. It is set up for a clutch setup. No clutchless setups.

I will need to setup battery voltages so I can watch voltage sag when running under loads too.

More later. Here are the first pictures while still on the trailer and better than other pics posted earlier.