How To Achieve Power Gains Without Taking Apart Your Engine - Engine Power S8, E2

hey guys thanks for watching our shows we are so close to hitting 1 million subscribers and we'd love for you to help us out please hit that subscribe button and get us there and follow us on instagram to keep up with the latest giveaways and contests like the corvette you can enter to win right now stay tuned for more tech that you can use you can get impressive power gains from your engine without even cracking it open we'll show you how to run the engine needs four basic things spark fuel air and oil the timing quality and amount of those things make a big difference on how well the engine runs and how much power it makes today we're going to make some adjustments and changes to ignition timing carburetors air cleaners and engine oil some of these changes will make a strong improvement and perhaps surprisingly some of these changes won't make much of a difference at all our test bed for this experiment is a general motors 305 cubic inch v8 that we are cobbling together choosing the best parts from a couple of donor engines we had in the shop let's get started we have our pieced together 305 back on our superflow power mark to show you a few things now it's not about how much this particular engine will make for power quite frankly won't make much it is about what affects power in an engine and the first thing we're going to discuss is ignition timing now we're not going to go crazy and try and blow this engine up but we want to show you what timing does to an engine so we're going to show you what too much timing does and what too little timing does and how it affects the power curve of your engine and it all has to start somewhere so we are going to show you how to put a distributor in an engine the right way the first time start by removing the number one spark plug and put your finger over the hole turn the engine over until you feel the air rushing out of the cylinder enough to push your finger off of the hole and that ensures your cylinder is coming up to top dead center on a compression stroke not on split overlap what split overlap is is when the exhaust valve is almost closed and the intake valve is slightly open and when you put a distributor in there it's called 180 out meaning it's on the wrong cycle if you try to fire the air fuel mix that's when you get the big fireball out the carburetor now that we know where our engine is at and that it's on tdc number one we'll go ahead and mark our distributor base where our number one would be on the cap and then we take our rotor turn it slightly before that and the distributor is ready to drop in as the distributor goes in its gear will engage with the camshaft gear rotating the rotor it might not engage with the oil pump drive shaft simply turn the engine over while pressing down on the distributor base and it will fall right into place after that the distributor cap can go on then you can run your spark plug wires to their corresponding cylinders for safety's sake and since we don't need it in the dyno cell we'll remove the engine fan with the distributor properly installed the engine fires right up with no fireball then we'll set timing at 31 degrees total 31 degrees of timing total theoretically yep the only problem with something like that is old balancers like that sometimes the rubber slips from the inner and outer hub yeah and it messes up where the timing mark actually is so our best knowledge is a 31 but it could be off a few degrees it could be off wherever let's try to make a pull from see what it does 2500 to 5. uh 249 pound-feet of torque and 177.5 horsepower made peak power at 4500 made peak torque at uh well we're going to say that's 2 900. we always time for torque and jet for horsepower if the carburetor is in a good range or the whatever's in a good range the fueling is in a good range we raise timing until torque levels off yeah we'll stick four degrees of initial in it yeah and that'll raise our total four degrees see what that does yep so it'll bid at 35 total [Music] a little bit of uh betterness yeah is that a word 257 feet of torque 182 horsepower yeah definitely an increase oil pressure is still going up and power's still going up okay we add three more degrees for a total of 38. how daring you feeling you want to go put another two degrees in it yeah i think it'll take it 267 186 that will 100 indicate to me that the balancer is wrong yeah because at 40 degrees it should not should not still be making power per se right we made dyno run after dyna run increasing the timing each time eventually ending up with a supposed timing of 52 degrees total ridiculous [Music] i think we're there finally torque didn't go up and it dropped power yeah we are finally there limit right there okay you can see why right there where if you're timing something and something's just not making sense but it's still going up there's something else that's wrong there's always an explanation for everything but the engine doesn't lie you know it likes what it looks like the dyno doesn't lie and the engine doesn't lie right what's what it's telling you might be lying yeah as far as where the timing is the numbers are wrong but but what happened was right we can show that as an increase up next a carburetor is a quick change that can make a big improvement we've just shown you how ignition timing affects the power output of an engine so we're going to move on to something that's just as easy to change the air fuel mixture now obviously on our piece together 305 we have a carburetor but these same principles apply to fuel injection in terms of cfm currently we're running our qft4 barrel that's rated at 450 cfm but we have four more carburetors that are incrementally bigger first up is our two barrel now before you freak out this one is rated at 500 cfm and is very common in many types of racing then we'll move on to our 750 our 950 and finally our 1050 dominator to show an extreme we're going to compare them and show you how they affect both peak and average power numbers first up we'll swap over to the two-barrel carb we can do this because the manifold has an open plenum 450 cfm four-barrel barrel to a 500 two barrel see what happens all right here we go [Music] 245 pound feet of torque 172 horse that's actually pretty good that carburetor you know that was on it that was on a different engine before that made less power so uh not bad okay well we'll take that okay now the next one next one go to the next one all right which is our 750. [Music] not bad i think it broke 200. yeah dang that look at this stuff right there 208 horse pressures and 280.8 pound feet of torque that is that that's easy bolt on power that whipped everything and we just went from a 450 to a 500 and now a 750 yeah not only did it make more peak power it made more power everywhere yeah all right that's awesome that's awesome well let's keep going let's go to the next okay next one 950. let's go 200 more cfm tour see what it does but it's a 950. so they're both in the same frame look there's no trickery 750 950. [Music] i think i saw 210. this is hilarious close yeah not bad 209.5 horse 278 pound-feet of torque yeah well the manifold vacuum is incrementally lower right so it went from like 1.4 to 1.2 to not now we're at where it's almost not even registering no so that's so no restriction yeah on the on the mixer valve on the top finally the big gun the 1050 dominator all right haven't even started it yet now do you think it will even start yeah i mean it'll start do you think it'll idle yeah i think it will i mean i don't see why it wouldn't okay well i'm just i'm gonna give it a little bump i'm not even i'm not even a touchy old throttle we'll see what happens oh silky smooth and this is a 1050 dominator on its idle circuit idling on 305 inches an engine makes 200 horsepower yeah people think you got to get it past the transfer slot and get it into its main circuit to get it to idle this one right here see that's smooth is that doggy no that's nice yeah i don't know if it'll make a pull but we're gonna try [Music] protest it a little [Music] that's almost the same i think it basically is the same and look how smooth so it just did not care it doesn't care that's awesome it does not care everything being the same this one because of its sizing would start to en encroach on drivability problems if you really whacked the throttle yeah putting around it wouldn't matter if you roll into it nice but if you if you stab her hard from a dead stop yeah it might be a little uh my it might protest a little bit yeah up next air cleaners protect your engine from contaminants but sometimes at the cost of lower horsepower we are continuing on showing you what affects power in your engine without even taking it apart on our 305 test mule now we've got our 950 back on and we've tuned on a little bit because it showed the most power both average and peak now the engine is making 210 horsepower 280 pounds of torque so it's time to move on to the next thing which is an air cleaner every engine needs an air cleaner it keeps contaminants out of the engine and contaminants can wear out your cylinders a lot faster so we are going to put some air cleaners on to see how they affect power the problem with an air cleaner is they are sometimes very restrictive but also can help make power so we chose four different types to see how they will affect it we will go from a bone stock one go to one that you would have on something like a hot rod to a 10 inch one that has minimum clearance all the way up to a racy cleanable filter one trying a couple of different tops this should be pretty interesting to see what happens so let's get to it first up a classic oem style this is the actual air cleaner assembly off a 1974 javelin with a 360 in it [Music] that is not as bad as i thought it was going to be yeah that was actually kind of surprising that is unbelievable i thought it would kill it way more that little tiny hole in it it still broke 200 that's crazy that's not bad we'll lay that over the other one but uh i mean it's down it's not down much five pound feet and that's you know six horses i'm actually really surprised because i really thought i was gonna kill that are you surprised huh it's very common to put like a hot roddy type one like front scoops this is what one of those this is off or like a for like a t-bucket or something like that go ahead and slap that one on and we'll see what that one does yeah see if it's any better or worse it's fun to guess how different air cleaners will affect power depending on your taste this one looks the coolest but it also looks like it could be a little restrictive on engines like this you know especially at this power level i don't know if any of them are going to have a greater effect yeah we are going to have to repeat this test on something that makes like 500 orders yeah something that flows a lot more air there's a noticeable loss that's uh i think we're going to do that in the future [Music] it's down a little bit 270 pound feet 205.8 horse they're both pretty close i mean they're taking some but not taking a lot but like you said on an engine a smaller engine like this that's not building a lot of horsepower the the difference is going to be a little bit less noticeable but right still there is a loss there is a loss put that 10 inch low profile on there yeah we'll see what that one does a lot of times people stick this in their car because nothing else will fit yeah just because of hood clearance all right [Music] they're all making it through the pole rather nicely 205 for horse power almost 270. not doing anything crazy anywhere though yeah we rode our five horse down from wide open and we're 10 pound feet down yeah but probably you know at least we're determining that if you're not making over like 400 horsepower you can kind of run whatever you want and not have a drastic loss yeah so i would i would agree with that all right let's go put the last one on and uh forego the the solid top all together yeah just put the put the nice top the flow through yeah we are showing from perhaps the most restrictive to the least restrictive and numbers have been showing that so yeah [Music] well if it's above 205 i think we're in good shape here yep 209 278 we are within two pound feet and basically one horsepower of completely open yeah so that's exactly what's exactly what it's supposed to do that's what should have happened yeah that's not always what happens but that's what should have happened thinner oil should always make more power right maybe maybe not our final test subject is oil all of the dyno runs so far have used conventional 10w30 engine oil we're draining the oil swapping the filter and filling the engine with a higher viscosity 20w50 conventional oil we want to see if it makes a difference in power good or bad have you ever done an extreme oil test before not like this i mean i know the theory behind it but i've never actually got to do it because i've never had a dyno to play with so this is kind of exciting i want to know i think i know what's going to happen but i want to see well okay so to be fair we're going to have the engine at the same temperature and the oil at the same temperature oil is at 180 degrees yes it definitely has more oil pressure yeah for sure it has about 10 psi more okay well we are basically right where we are right at the baseline at the baseline uh power 208.7 pretty close we were at 210 um 280 for torque sure sure didn't hurt anything does it no interesting okay we are going from one extreme to that to the other we're gonna have zero ten now we're going from a conventional 2050 to a 0 10 synthetic full synthetic race oil this is very common thing to do when you're at the track trying to pick up et in this little increments and again you're going to see an oil pressure difference but maybe just maybe we're going to see a pumping loss difference not only something on this kind of power level but we'll see if the thinner oil at the same temperature and the same engine temperature makes more power and the only way to really do that accurately the dyno it's pretty slick isn't it i see what you did there this is oil that's funny that's funny you got me i gotcha all right oil pressure is decidedly lower but [Music] still made 280 pound feet and 208 horsepower yeah that's interesting because you would think it would make a little bit more less drag well you would think but i wonder if it's because this engine doesn't make enough power to make a difference i i would almost venture to guess that's what it is yeah it might be something where we have to uh repeat it later on with a bigger engine there is one more thing that we can try that usually always does something no matter what the engine is these headers have the provision for the e-vac in them and the valve covers have those uh a-n fittings in them yeah let's hook the evacs up just to see what from non-evac to evac on the crankcase does yeah that always helps always pretty much 99 percent i'd say this this one's been pretty uh at this point it's a little numb to change so uh go hook those up we'll see what those do i guess it might have helped a little oh oh look at that we picked up a couple pound feet of torque and we are back up still at 210 horsepower all right improvement that is 23 dyno pulls of just changing things and not cracking the engine apart we always leave a lot on the table it seems like when we're when we're working on them because we don't get to tune them as much because we don't get to try as many things as we'd like to try yeah this was one of those opportunities where we were able to try a bunch of different things on an engine that we know exists it knows it runs it came out of something that ran decent we're not going to set the world on fire oh yeah but uh the four things that engine needs right air fuel spark and lubrication we've covered all all four of those and i think we've shown that you can do some very very simple things hard to do without a dyno i will admit but some simple things that drastically affected engine's power because from where we were to where we are we've picked up significantly so what did we learn today plenty timing adjustments make a noticeable difference at an alleged 31 degrees of total timing the engine made 177.5 horsepower and 249 pound-feet of torque after many adjustments stopping at 52 degrees total timing we made 190 horsepower and 269 pound-feet of torque proving that our old worn-out balancer is giving us inaccurate readings the timing numbers are useful for comparing one adjustment to another but they are not accurate there's no way that 52 degrees of total timing would run this well the choice of carburetor made the biggest difference by far the 500 cfm 2 barrel was only good for a peak of 172 horsepower and 245 pound-feet of torque the 950 cfm carb blasted out peak values of 209.5 horsepower and 278 pound-feet of torque a substantial improvement of 36.9 horsepower and 33.2 pound-feet of torque air cleaner selection makes a difference the high flow unit was the least restrictive running almost as well as running nothing at all the other options produced lower horsepower and torque numbers but only suffered single-digit losses not a bad trade-off for delivering clean air to your engine on a low power engine like our beat up 305 the choice of oil made little difference if you've got a high powered bullet on the race track or drag strip thinner oil could be the best choice otherwise you can run whatever weight works best for your engine and operating environment also if your engine allows running an evac setup can add a few extra horsepower and torque we started the day making 177.5 peak horsepower and 249 peak pound-feet of torque we ended the day making 210 peak horsepower and 283.5 peak pound-feet of torque that's an 18.3 percent gain in horsepower and a 13.8 percent gain in torque without even tearing into the engine to learn more about today's episode visit powernationtv.com

Channel: POWERNATION

Views: 320,361

Rating: 4.9351234 out of 5

Keywords: Car, PowerNation, howto, how-to, diy, automotive, cars, trucks, automobile, do it yourself, automobiles, auto, powerblock, engine build, engine basics, horsepower, engine power

Id: op4jPHTpjQ4

Length: 21min 50sec (1310 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 24 2021