Dynamometer Results & Comparisons - What the f!@#$#%^&^*&^$%#$@!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

alright now i know somethings the matter...

So im at the car show today for the 4th. no biggy, my car looks good. didnt win anything but looks good for carshow standards.
anyway, we had a dyno machine there. i put my firebird on it hoping my car could do a little better then last years 301rwhp and 314rwtq. respectable but still a bit low fr what ive had done to it.
so i put my car on it today with no mods really done to my car since last year.

i have the worlds loudest nutless 4th gen f-body... 190 rwhp? are you freakn kidding me? not once but thrice it came up with 190 as max hp.
now i know my tune needs a bit of a tweek but 190 somethings either wrong with my car or somthings wrong with the dyno. now i know my car studders a bit a low speed part throttle, but at WOT past 3000rpm its a champ.
i have no idea whats going on but im pissed. ive got pics and videos of my

a video of my epic dyno faill will be posted soon. waitn for it to load on youtube.
you can kinda here in the video of it struggling to go. i dont know why

Were other cars putting down low numbers?

are you sure you are firing on all 8 cylinders? The LS1 will still run great at idle and normal driving but will have a stutter like you described.

That's VTEC territory..LMFAO

Are you an auto or manual(

Those portable dyno's read low,I had a few friends put their car on one at the GM engine plant show in St Catharines and the #'s were way off.

It was so bad I didn't even bother doing mine as its just a waste of time and money.

Take it to the dragstrip,thats the best dyno out there:)

I went 13.07 at 107.5 with a 2.03 60ft in DA of 2500 on Monday it corrects to a 12.69 at 110.86.

there were other f-bodys with simalut builds there today. a few of um are on this forum. they all had like 295ish numbers on stockish motors. nothing out of the ordinary.
im running a stock a4 with 3200 stall with stock 2.73 gears. got an ls6 intake manifold, lid, 80mm trottlebody, 85mm gm MAF, LT headers, and frost tune computer. i should be hitting 330s with that. the guy that was here today last year did 334 on the same dyno we used today. i know the numbers will be off a tad. i could live with 301hp but 190 theres somthing not right.
other cars theirs were pretty close to what they should have had. a 350Z roday had the highest with 656rwhp and 747rwtq. freakn crazy numbers. the mustangs were in the 400 ranges, as were the challengers and chargers with one in the 500s.
my car is not happy about somthing. i gotta get a data log going here. i mean i go from 301 to 190 with nothing changed but oil and better fuel since last year.

I know when I got my car dynoed we put it in drive. Then had to get it up to around 60 to make sure it was in third gear before we did the pull. My first run was like 240 because we weren't setup right. My last pull was 339

What was your afr? Or did it show it?

no afrs to show. it was just a wheel dyno. no sensor hook ups. im already looking into getting a wideband gauge from innovative witht the tuning software. its limited but i can look at and mess with alittle bit of stuff to at at least get it semi right

i think i found part of my problem. so far ive found 3 loose spark plugs on bank 1. so i took em out and then checked them. running a bit rich, probly more to due with not burning the fuel completely from being shrouded in the head. i cleaned them off and put em back in.
then i made sure all my pcv hoses were tight and decided that it would be a good time to install my catch can. put it were the EGR use to be.

Also checked my MAF, decided to descreen my GM 85mm and clean the front part of the sensor tubes. they were a little dirty but nothing crazy. so i put that back in.

then while making sure everything was ok, i started up the motor and come to find out bank 2 had a plug that was visibly wiggling. so after my headers cool back off im gonna pull em and check em. if they are just dirty, ill clean em up and tighen them down. i dont know how they backed out so far but ill fix em.

also the plugs are TR5ix gapped at .045 thats ok for my modestly semi-stock setup right?

i think i might have fixed my issue. im not gonna give myself the green light yet BUT after i pulled all my plugs and clean them off, since almost all but 2 were loose. some to the point of removable by hand. once i put them back in tight and clean, cars running alot more smoothly and i even have part throttle power again. its not boggin and struggling anymore. idle finds itself faster and isnt surging after i tap the throttle to see what it does. goes right back to 900ish rpm.
I even pulled my driver side #1 o2 sensor just to see what was going on. it looked ok other then a little rust. i brushed it off just in case and reinstalled.
heres a few pics of before cleaning
http://i535.photobucket.com/albums/ee357/JT_Grooms/P1040234.jpg
most of all my plugs looked like this one. some of the looser ones had more carbon depoists on it, the signs of overfueling due to not firing.
http://i535.photobucket.com/albums/ee357/JT_Grooms/P1040237.jpg
heres the o2 sensor. as you can see, pretty normal. still better to see then to not know and guess.

Yeah that will do it. But you said the car was running fine before. You didnt notice it was down over 100hp?

no i noticed it was running wierd. but it happened when i did a bunch of stuff to my car like an 80mm throttlbody, LS6 intake manifold, frost tune.... just never thought my spark plugs were the problem. i thought my car was trying to relearn after the tune but it just kept gettin worse and worse. but now its running alot better

After further analysis i can deduce that my firebird is a 2 year old toddler that throw tantrums even when it gets what it wants lol
CArs driving so much better now and the heavy ticking that even my none mechnically inclinded wife noticed had completly gone away form the valve and exhaust.

Moral of the story guys, and for you military guys you alreayd now this,
a little preventive maintanance never hurts. check the basic stuff tehn start digging further. SOmthing as simple as loose sparkplugs can have a huge effect on performance. in my case about a 120hp lose. my car dynoed 190hp with loose/recessed dirty fouled plugs. 301 was the bench mark and i failed MISABLY. hell my 97 Neon had more balls before i fixed my issues lol

definitly check the basics guys. can emphasis this enough. I didnt throw any money at my car. THought about it though lol was already pricing out new O2s, sparkplugs, wideband sensor (still getting that though), and even started looking at hptuners again. that alot of money i would have wasted. although hptuner and wideband wouldnt have been that bad, thats still alot of initial starrt up cost for loose spark plugs.
just check it out and clened it and BOOM, drives like a champ again.

I know when I got my car dynoed we put it in drive. Then had to get it up to around 60 to make sure it was in third gear before we did the pull. My first run was like 240 because we weren't setup right. My last pull was 339

one thing i didnt like though was that the dyno guy in my car was manuly shifting my automatic car.... you can feel the shifts so why would you make it hold the gears?

SOunds like he dynoed the car in the wrong gear. Auto needs to be in 3rd.


Seriously .. change your plugs.. :eek2:
Get new O2 sensors... just do it..

who did the weld job on the seat of the plug?:), I've never seen plugs look that bad, why you gotta bring the military into this? lol

lol i know, i still gonna change out my plugs when i get back to the states. the car is gonna sit on a boat for a minute so might as well just wait lol
seriously the plugs are only 3 years old when i installed m y LTheaders. the stock ones had 100,000k on them and they didnt even look that bad lol
the O2s im gonna change as well when i get back to the states. might as well wait.
cars running alot better now though and the SES light hasnt come on at all since i fixxed the spark plugs. before the ses light would come on all the time and i thougt it was due to the tune still being worked out. but its my fault lol
which bring me back to the military comment lol do your PMCS lol

ug, i think i found another reason why my car was running like pure dog crap. i think my flommaster muffler was partialy clogged on its own internal parts lol
my flowmaster muffler finally blew apart.... im serious... i have a hole the size of a softball in the middle of my muffler on the bottom that started with a crack all along the bottom in the middle of it. that and a pice of metal i had to remove with plyers from my driver sid tips casue it was rattling around like a homles guy with a cup beggin for change.
it was horrible.
on a happier note.. my car has never sounded better lol it like having a cutout dump right under your muffler... oh wait, it is lol
oh well, rear turbo you have a home waiting for you lol

From what I have read the flowmaster chokes our cars pretty bad. The hole probably helped you. It wouldnt choke 100 plus HP but firing on less than 8 cyl will. Get a cutout or a stock muffler and youll be stronger.
Also look into a retune by frost after the mods and definately a set of plugs.
Also make sure its dyno'd in 3rd as mentioned above.

Best of luck with it.

lol yeah my "cutout" flowmaster sounds pretty mean actually but JESUS is it loud. OH and all of you all that say loud mouth systmes are loud on US american interstate highways doing 65-80ish SCREW YOU!!! try listening to it at 110-130 sustained for 3 hours!!! my ears are STILL RINGING FROM a week ago lol the track yes, driving long distance, F THAT!!! my god!!! lol

yep, when i get my car back from shipping to the states ill have the pcm fine tuned by frost and put some new plugs in it. gonna look into getting it camed and turboed when i get it back. but first gotta get a base line at a real track before i change anything else.

tell you what though, my car feels SOOOO much better without the flowmaster in the way lol and the sparkplugs all finring right lol probablly got my 330ish hp back like i should have before