A partner and I are the beginning stages of planning out a car "thing." It's still very much in the development stages but we think that we might want to have a rolling dyno at some point and I have questions.
1. where does one purchase something like that and what are the costs?
2. when looking at our space for this endeavor, how much space will a dyno take up, and what considerations do we need to make in the shop area for it?
3. any experiences?
Sorry for being cryptic, we still need to nail down some details before I'm really ready to talk about this but I need some help.
thanks!
we had an opportunity to buy an older Dynojet aboveground dyno with a 4 post lift years ago. We passed, but then friends of ours picked it up and let us use it at a discounted rate, so it all worked out. It was $20k, cash. Took up half a 600sqft unit in our building. PLus required ventilation fans and whatnot. it was HEAVY. took a few forklifts and a low loader to move it.
I think we sold our Dynojet aboveground for $18k somewhere around a decade ago. I will confirm the HEAVY and the size. It also had a four-post lift as part of the rig which is good, but also takes up more space. The good thing about an aboveground is that you don't need to dig a special hole in your floor.
Ventilation is really important. We have a special room for our current one with both sound insulation and massive ventilation, but on the old one we had a couple of pipes attached to a fan that pumped exhaust outside.
Whatever dyno you buy, it will read low when testing customer cars but read high when testing your own parts. At least, that's what you will be told.
Keith Tanner said:
Whatever dyno you buy, it will read low when testing customer cars but read high when testing your own parts. At least, that's what you will be told.
that's hilarious and I'm sure absolutely true. especially here in south florida.
stylngle2003 said:
we had an opportunity to buy an older Dynojet aboveground dyno with a 4 post lift years ago. We passed, but then friends of ours picked it up and let us use it at a discounted rate, so it all worked out. It was $20k, cash. Took up half a 600sqft unit in our building. PLus required ventilation fans and whatnot. it was HEAVY. took a few forklifts and a low loader to move it.
that's what I'm looking at now. thanks for the advice.
What are you going to use the dyno for? That will effect the type of dyno and the peripheral equipment you'll need which will in turn effect the price, required real estate and facility needs.
APEowner said:
What are you going to use the dyno for? That will effect the type of dyno and the peripheral equipment you'll need which will in turn effect the price, required real estate and facility needs.
It’s going to be used to adjust tuning basically. And probably a bit of hoonery and bragging.
grover said:
APEowner said:
What are you going to use the dyno for? That will effect the type of dyno and the peripheral equipment you'll need which will in turn effect the price, required real estate and facility needs.
It’s going to be used to adjust tuning basically. And probably a bit of hoonery and bragging.
Depending on the tuning that you want to do, then you may want to get a dyno that's capable of running steady state points. Transient dynos that most use are kind of good for WOT, but not much else. And if you really want to tune a car well, you need to be able to do more than just WOT runs.
For an example of this, check out loosecannon's MG build (over the last couple of months), where hours were spent tuning WOT, and he's still struggling with being able to drive it.
Yeah definitely what alfadriver said. If you can, pony up the extra money for an eddy current dyno instead of the more common inertial dyno. Your tuning options will become far more numerous and valuable. An eddy current dyno will let you tune under the curve so you can get much better drivability. For instance, if you need to find the optimal timing at 2700 rpm and 15% throttle, you can do that easily. Good luck trying to fix that with an inertia dyno.
good advice guys, thank you
Back in the day I bought a couple. the 1st was a Land & Sea I found on ebay. It was a water brake but came with a tank, pump, 4 post lift, fans, etc. I then sold it and got a mustang dyno. Much smaller footprint but came with a drive on rack assembly. The mustang also had an AC motor on it that could drive the rollers, which was good for measuring drive line losses & bedding in brake pads.
Be sure to reach out to the manufacturer and ask them what needs to be done when buying a used dyno. Land and sea has a policy where the software license is not transferrable and before they even would talk to me I hade to buy a new license and a yearly maint agreement. Mustang was a little more accommodating but still needed a maint agreement for tech support.
Is also recommend a dyno with load bearing capabilities. Some of the dynojets do have it but most of them were inertia only. Good for dyno days but not good for tuning.
