Average HP Gains

[rottenronnie]

Regarding Elevation and Air Density:

I've seen a full second in elapsed times and 10+ miles per hour difference in vehicles racing here during a 7700 footer and again at sea-level, for 1/4 mile racing.

Factoid #1: One-tenth of a second is a car length at 100 miles per hour (Smart cars not included) .

Forced induction vehicles still "suffer" at the higher altitudes, just not as much. Turbos and superchargers still have to "gather" air. If it is denser and already "pressurized" like it is at sea-level, it is easier to gather/pack the cylinders at any given turbo or impeller speed at sea-level.

That's why 1/4 mile records are broken at sea-level tracks.

Supercharger/Turbo kits we've installed here (3800' mean elevation) are nearly 3 psi lower than the same vehicle operating at sea-level.

Factoid #2: There is approx. 3.88 TONS** of air inside the average school gymnasium.

**Based on NASA air-weight calcs of 2.8446 lbs. per cubic meter**

No wonder the parents look so tired by the end of their kids basketball games!



Cheers

 

[rottenronnie]

FWIW, If I take my average E.T. and Trap Speed and enter them into Horsepower calculators, I get and average of 470 H.P. (Based off weight and E.T.) and Right around 500 H.P. (Based off weight and trap speed).

Even with the lowest number, based off my simple bolt on "package". I would consider that fairly decent!! I would attribute it more to the very nice tune Torrie helped me build for the truck. We did it virtually with my ambient and operational conditions, along with A/F plots every 500 RPM (Utilizing the AEM Wideband). Torrie would then "massage" the tune to obtain a very linear A/F curve from 2K to 5.5K RPM. We shot for 12.6:1

Honestly, all the massive thrust under peak is why the good 'ol Superbeast was able to out sprint my buddies 392 Scat Pack Charger to 130+. Too Fun!!

YES, aggressive cam profiles in particular can generate some high(er) peak horsepower numbers that don't automatically (nor often) equate to better track performance as we are dealing with acceleration of weight.

Back to the fact that a Dyno is primarily a tuning tool.