when u tune a car, u take into consideration the peak kw's, because thats a good indication of the way the engine is actually reving, but mainly the midrange power curve, when i tune a car i mainly tune for a good torque curve and try to get as much torque as i can achieve, for that engine.
when drag racing, torque gets u off the line, then horsepower takes over, and then u change gears and it happens all over again, all the way down the 1/4. What everyone has to consider when they tune a car, is true not just to achieve the peak kw's, but set up a good combination matching diff gears, etc. The extractors that u fitted to the car were they 4 into 1 or try whys. becuase everything changes etc. Roughly 3 months ago, i was invited to go to another reputable tuner of adelaide to have a dyno night presentation, of his new 1500kw, 4wd dyno where he had a 40000km vy senator completly stock, badged as a 285kw flywheel. They dyno figures showed after 10 runs and the average dyno figure was 202rwkw, i was dumb founded, so i did some research on the hsv engine. and i found that the badged kw's are not correct to the engine dyno from hsv in melbourne. Anyway back to the dyno and kw talk, some engines are slugs, and some engines are freaks. Not everyones car will pump out the same rwkw's, i have nearly finished tuning mine, to the maximum i can get out of the engine, mind u ive spent alot of time on the dyno, the biggest problem is edits, u can take your car to a dealership and get a edit done without even a dyno, now do u call that a custom tune or a of the shelf laptop tune done in know time. i know a few fellow tuners down here who actually do edits, and all they do is down load a tune which has worked on other cars, but some tunes wont work good on other cars, due to exhaust system designs, air intake, auto or manual, different diff ratios, etc,etc. Also just for a tip, on your dyno printout it should have on the top left box, underneith rego numbers and name, it will have rego plate and then a number after it for eg. abc123.009, that tells u how many runs the tuner has actually done with your car, and was the tune done in a shootout mode or not. because power figures and torque figures do change, on average i roughly do about 30-50 dyno runs per ecu map of the vehicle. This saturday i got a big block efi chev to do a ecu map on, and next sunday ive got a stroked corvette to do a ecu map on. Alot of tuners in australia are not actually tuning cars correctly for example i was tought how to tune from a reputable tuner, who has been tuning for about 15years in the industry, and since going to the states, i have really thrown all the learning out the window, that i learn't of him and know he's actually learning of me know and going to the states to do the mapping course, after working with a close v8 supercar team in melbourne, and the states im nearly 20rwkw up on what everyone else is getting out of there cars on a dyno, and quicker 1/4 mile times, My personal car has 256rwkw not bad considering it only has a exhaust system, ecu and a air intake tube to throttle body, and compare that to flywheel kw's its about 330-340fwkw's.
