3000HP Test Rig, LS Build and COBB Course Material | Today At HPA [UPDATE 225]

LS1 Build, VIP Membership, 3000HP Dyno Test Mule and more.

This is the weekly update that comes right before our paid 'Gold Members' only webinar lessons and this week ‘225 | Circuit Racing Data Analysis’ was covered. Details on membership below.

23:26 VIP Deal: The 2019 VIP deal has been launched and we’re close to selling out of the available spots. HPA VIP membership gives you lifetime access to not just the current course material, but also all future courses released by us, and also for this diving onboard this year lifetime access to our sister company, RaceCraft. For those that have purchased VIP in the past, we will also again thank you for your support by also giving you RaceCraft VIP access. We couldn’t do it without you guys and have been able to build HPA up to the point we can now attract some more talent to produce courses for you faster and more frequently without ever compromising on quality.

DYNO TEST MULE: While at The World Time Attack Challenge we had the chance to pop in and see the team at Mainline Dynos with the plan to tune their 2500-3000HP capable dyno test rig and add the content to some of our course material. Unfortunately, there were some issues with the torque converter which saw us still running the engine at 30% throttle and 15-18PSI just for fun with the Dart V8 setup still hitting 1393HP.

The setup is essentially a tube frame promod drag chassis with no wheels that’s designed to inflict 3000 hp worth of pain to Mainline’s ProHub dynos. The heart of the cart is a Dart 632 ci V8, topped with a pair of Brodix heads and a Hogan sheet metal inlet manifold. Supplying the boost is a pair of Garrett GTX5533 turbos and Turbosmart external wastegates. The engine and the auto trans are both mounted on gimbals inside the chassis which means they can rotate around the crankshaft centreline. Thanks to a load cell attached to each gimbal, the mainline team can measure the torque being produced at each point in the driveline - At the engine, the transmission, and then finally at the hubs. With all of this data Mainline are finally going to have a solid answer to ‘how much power is lost between the flywheel and the wheels?’
The dyno cart is designed to use a range of different ECUs that can be swapped quickly thanks to an autosport connector, however, a MoTeC C1212 and E888 take pride of place as a central data logger system.

06:00 INSTAGRAM POST: Andre gives a rundown on the latest Instagram to attract a lot of questions and comments. This week it was the Global Aircraft Services Mitsubishi EVO and the novel solution surge limit issues. They have incorporated a small drive-by-wire throttle body on the intercooler charge plumbing that’s controlled by the Emtron ECU.

10:24 HPA86: The diff has been replaced due to some previous setup errors and a Radium Engineering external fuel surge tank has been fitted. The previous setup only allowed us to run as low as 13-14 litres before having fuel surge issues, whereas the car can now go down to around 3 litres before having this issue.

The Izze Racing tyre temp and pressure sensors have now been fitted and set up along with a Syvecs IMU.

18:39 COBB and SEMA: The team is off the SEMA but on the way a visit to COBB to film a practical Worked Example using the COBB platform. This has been a long time coming and we're excited!

19:12 LS Build: An LS1 Worked Example will also be added to the Practical Engine Building course soon. The engine will be fitted with a K1 Technologies crank and rods along with Wiseco pistons and will run an 11.5:1 compression ratio, naturally aspirated. The block was secondhand and a little bit worse for wear than we originally were led to believe, however, for this build and the fact the engine is not for a customer we still used the block and are confident that while we wouldn’t send it out the door for a customer, it will not cause any issues for us in-house.

WEBINAR INFO: If you want to get the best results out on the race track then data analysis is essential. Data analysis can be used to assess the state of tune of the engine, as well as engine health and driver performance. In this webinar, we’ll look at some simple ways to monitor your engine at a glance and improve your lap times using MoTeC’s i2 Pro analysis software.

Want to watch the members-only webinar on Data Analysis along with over 220 other lessons on engine building, tuning, and wiring topics? Sign up here for only $19 USD a month, start and stop at any time (unlike your gym membership!).

Direct link to members only webinar 225 (note this is ‘paid’ content).