Inertia dyno, waste of time?
 

I was going to setup a dyno tune session with a recommended local tuner around here, but I learned he uses an inertia dyno instead of a load dyno. Would I be wasting my time, and my money? He charges ~$500 for the dyno/tune time. The next option would probably be the guys at Summit Point in WV, about 3.5 hours away.

Thoughts?

what ECU?

Sorry, should have mentioned. MSLabs MS3 Basic.

To add; the tuner in question has been recommended by several different people, one of which races Miatas. He is supposed to be well versed in TunerStudio and tunes race cars, Mustangs, Corvettes, etc.

This is very relevant to my interests. Considering there are only 2 dyno's within a 5 hour drive of me. Living in the middle of nowhere's sucks sometimes.

Inertia is usually just for seeing what power it puts down, or if you don't want to do high speed pulls on public roads. Obv its nowhere near as effective as a proper load dyno, but not useless altogether ( I guess ).

I don't really understand the question: if he's the pro that he is, who cares what dyno he uses as long as he gets your car tuned properly. Bring him the car and let him tune it. If he doesn't tune all the cells like he's supposed to, then he's not such a pro. If you're not the one doing the tuning, why does anything but the end result matter?

pretty much what Vlad said. 10:1 says he just uses autotune anyway :P

Well that's the question isn't it? Is it even possible to do a complete tune on an inertia dyno, or is it a waste of time? I don't care about end result "A" if it's no where near as effective as end result "B." He might be a pro but my question was is it worth spending money on this pro or find another "pro" with a load dyno.

Question answered I suppose.

/thread

An inertia dyno can tune WOT just fine. If you car is a pure race car where your throttle is an on off switch this might be sufficient. If you drive your car on the street and use part throttle light load cells then you will need a load bearing dyno to accurately tune for MBT spark.

An inertial dyno easily can tune WOT, which means if it's a turbo EBC car it can tune anything from mechanical boost up to maximum, so long as you have the EBC settings done properly. With some care you can even tune the row below mechanical boost by doing runs at partial throttle.

You won't get MBT in vacuum rows -- do you really care? If you're not at WOT and you want more power, you just go WOT.

Load-holding dynos are more flexible and more powerful, but they're more expensive and harder to find. Inertial dynos work OK.

Personally I'd rent the dyno and DIY the tuning, rather than paying for a t00ner's time, but...

--Ian

That actually makes a lot of sense, thank you!

I'm waiting to hear back from the guys at Summit Point with their quote, then I'll make my decision based on price/value.

How long of a session for $500? I'd expect like an insanely perfect tune. Do you know what his tuning session actually entails?

I can get your boosted fuel cell pretty much perfect in about 15 minutes on a dyno.

Which shop out at Summit Point? I used to hang out there in the garages a good bit before I moved south.

Basically this, for the $500 they better be tuning for MBT everywhere and getting everything but warmup settings just about perfect.

lol boosted fuel cell is like 5% of a proper tune

Braineack: Good question, when I spoke to him he said it included everything from dyno time to complete tune. I think the same shop usually charges $150 for a one hour rental of the dyno, so take that for what its worth. The shop in question is here FlimFlam Speed & Custom Tuning - No harm in posting that I don't suppose. He does mostly Fords, but has done Miata's and is well versed in TunerStudio from what I understand.

shuiend: The shop at Summit Point is RP Performance Racing, they come highly recommended, still waiting to hear back. And I agree, $500 seems high for an inertia tune, I may be a little more inclined to spend that if I knew it would be a complete tune across the board.

which is about all you can really do on an inertia dyno...

yup. every time someone asks me about a dyno tune I ask them if they want the rest of the tune too

I know who RP is, I wouldn't have any issues with them tuning my car. I had my first built engine machine work done at the machine shop that is right behind RP. Well they used to be right behind RP, not sure if they have swapped garages around any.

As long as $500 includes idle, startup, cruise, etc. And not just WOT that's probably a reasonable price.

For reference. Church automotive in Los Angeles is about $500 for a load bearing dyno pack tune. It takes about 2 hours. He's a reputable tuner although everyone complains about how high his dyno reads.

This is supposed to be a complete tune but a bit of the part load stuff seemed half-assed. I had an issue with the TPS dot threshold for accel enrichment being off caused false accel enrichment events at freeway cruise. He fixed it no charge but it was a pain to return to the shop the get it looked at.

I guess your boost ramp will be lower than on the road (not enough friction that will rise load on the engine).
You can fake some load by left breaking the car a little bit, but it wise to check on the streets just after. You'll also need to underrev the engine to go in some area of the table.
And for these reasons, I wouldn't tune an EBC on that kind of dyno too.