Well I finally took my '01 GTS to the dyno today to see what she has. Some of you may remember my "non-tireburning" post asking whether my failure to burn rubber from a roll was normal (the responses were mixed), so I was looking forward to getting some feedback on the power level. By way of background, my car has 7,700 miles, tubes, filters, and Snake Oyl rear muffler delete.
We had the engine running on the dyno for several minutes trying to get everything hooked up right, and I was somewhat concerned about heat soak. In any event, the first pull was very disappointing--378 rwhp and 414 rwtq. Worse than a creampuff, but the air/fuel ratio was off the charts rich at less than 10:1.
For the second run, we wondered whether the lack of air was the major problem and decided to direct a leaf blower toward the NACA duct from ~4 feet away. After waiting 5-10 minutes for cool down, we ran it again and out popped 414 rwhp and 448 rwtq! A bystander told me a puff of black smoke came out when I floored it. Air/fuel was around 11:1, and the run went by noticeably quicker.
After waiting another 5-10 minutes, we did a third run with no leaf blower and got 415 rwhp and 459 rwtq! Air/fuel was about the same ~11 or 11.5:1. This was a big relief, because while a permanent electric leaf blower mod might have been relatively inexpensive (even with twin blowers
), it wouldn't have added a lot to the Viper's mystique.
My layman's conclusion: It's the computer, stupid! I don't think it was ready for the first run because all my putt-putting around town with very few short blasts at WOT had not prepared it for an extended dyno run. It did learn quickly and well, however! In short, these beasts need to be blown out regularly to keep the computer from bogging everything down.
All in all, I left a happy camper and feel I have a good baseline to mod from. Any thoughts and comments are welcome, of course.
Ronnie