Its time I thought I’d post some up to the minute and fresh info about a few Marauder things I’ve got happening on the chassis dyno.
Recently I’ve made post’s or comments about how when I “rear wheel dyno” some automatic trans equipped cars, including the MM’s…. about how I lock the torque converter for the dyno runs only, and proceed to make pulls.
It’s possible that some people may think that this might be cheating or wrong in some way in terms of the numbers that come out of it. Actually though it gives a more true and accurate RWHP number because it eliminates the torque converters fluid coupling making for a more efficient + true and realistic dyno curve with less loss in the power train.
The Marauder and many other Fords that have electronic locking torque converters lock in 3rd any way when stock, so when you dyno a MM they are actually locked in 3rd for most of the pull any way. What we do on the dyno is not let it down shift out of 3rd and lock the converter the whole time its in 3rd gear for the pull on the dyno. This allows us to show a very long, broad and full pull starting literally from as low as 1300rpm’s or lower in 3rd gear.
A lot of other tuners don’t do what I do with the lock-up or lack there of on the “street”, so quite a few peoples tunes out there already are locked in 3rd when dynoing… they just have to find the sweet spot where it wont down shift out of 3rd from a roll on the dyno. We simply adjust the down shift so it doesn’t happen when on the dyno.
By the way… 3rd gear is used because it’s a 1 to 1 gear ratio and is the same as 4th gear in most 5 and 6 speed manual trans cars. 1 to1 is the preferred gear for chassis dynoing usually.
The dyno graphs I’ve posted are …. 100% stock Marauder pulls with only two things changed in the stock program.
1st I got rid of the speed limiter, other wise it would only go to about 5300rpm and then hit the approximate 120mph speed limiter.
2nd I made it not down shift out of 3rd gear once it got over 25mph and locked the converter at 24 mph.
So this made for a very broad, lugging and bogging down type of a pull starting at about 1300 rpm which is how I would do it any way if this was a stick shift type car.
For now the other pulls that have been added are my performance tune for MM’s that are totally un-modded or very mild stuff like a gear and maybe pulleys etc... I thought I’d post this too to show sort of an update about what our chip appears to be worth on stock N/A Marauders with nothing else done to them.
Remember though… its not all about what happens at the rear wheels with my MM performance tune (even though I’m posting this stuff) its about how they feel and respond when actually driving the car. There are many things I do that just cant be measured on the dyno, as I always say… “they have to be felt in the seat of your pants”.
In a few days I’m going to be posting results with a Trilogy blower starting as low as 1300rpm on the dyno and then once again showing what the K&N filter kit adds and in addition changing the blower pulley from a 3.4” down to a 3.2” as well.
And also in about 15-20 days I’m going to be dynoing a local guys MM with a Vortech installed on it along with no other performance work at all. Vortech only.
And of course I’m going to dyno it with the trans stuff as described above to show what’s going on with the HP and Torque right off idle. From my understanding the Local Vortech MM is at 8 or 9 psi of boost. The stock Trilogy’s are set at 9.5 out of the box.
This is the comparison that I think quite a few people might want to see, and others not want to see.
Unless certain people don’t want to see this… its coming in about 15-20 days.
But before the end of this week I’ll have the Trilogy vs stock MM numbers up with the 1300 rpm starting point this whole post is about.
Thanks