My Astravan

[BONGO]

PS is metric horsepower. Its something like 0.986 of a proper horse. Pretty much everyone apart from us and the americans use it.

so a horse without a tail?

[Jang]

Going back to this rolling road thing.. It appears we're all being told different things!

I was (what i thought to be) 'reliably informed' that the rollers don't actually tell you the BHP, the computer works that out, the rollers give you the torque figure then it does calculations to work out the torque ( i was told but arsed if i can remember )

Anyway, interesting read.. for both the shouting about and bucky's updates.

Andy p's added some interesting reading, yes you can spend alot on making everything 'seem' to work better, i.e decent coilovers with dampin adjustment, top and lower braces front and rear and stiffer anti roll bars, but sometimes if the cars just not right, its not right.. set up is sooo important.

And this leads me onto the scooby thing.. Most scooby's you can whip the tits off, chav's buy them because they have 'big bhp and a turbo to go vroom tsshh' but have no clue how to drive them.. give one a go you'll see what i mean.

Going to the set up thing, do it once, do it right.. andy sounds like he's on the ball.

Little tip for tyres though andy, if your planning on keeping the car a while, get yourself a 'free upgrade' to an even better set of tyres by buying 2 sets, talk nicely and say you want X tyre, but if you by a second set will he upgrade to Z tyre for the same price as 2 sets of the X tyre. (i don't mean X reading on the side, just doing like a thingy ma jigger.. like tyre brand 1, tyre brand2 type thing)

Anyways, not really much point to my post, just thought i'd add my findings at the rollers.

(make sure you have a fan blasting at your car on the rollers aswell.. otherwise your sucking heat you wouldn't otherwise.. some rollers don't bother with the fan, if they don't, don't use it.)

ta me

[Andy P]

Jang, I totally agree with you on the setup point that you've made - I just took it as red that if someone was going to splash out on coilovers, they would take the time and effort to get them setup properly. After I fitted my coilovers the handling improved somewhat but I took the car to get tracking and cambers setup (to my spec) and the difference really was night and day.

Thanks for the tip on the tyres, I'll use that, if and when I'm rich enough to buy 2 sets of tyres at the same time!!

I'm alright for tyres currently, the next set of tyres I buy will probably be ex-touring car scrubbed slicks - £150 a set! Just need to get some cheapish track wheels in 17*8 (I think cheap might be wishful thinking... )

Andy P

[Waynio]

the place i went they said that there readings are most accurate at the flywheel. dont know why. thats just how they put it, when they have Rolling road days they do it the same.

not 100% but they connected mine and the guy had ear phones on so he could hear mine detanating, or when you connect the one to the "wheel" power, do they still use this technique? as mine was set-up to the absolute max, then they put it where they felt it was safest. Morton came with me to the rollers and it was horrid stood there watching as something youve put alot of £££ into and they just blast the T*ts off it it is funny though.

Bongo the PS thing, horse with no tail, crack on.

the tyre job, iv used Toyo before, and have gone back to Toyo, bucky had toyo's on some wheels he bought off me, then bought another set off me with Yoko's on and he wrapped his van the 1st night with the Yoko's and he was adement that the tyres were a bit of the fault from having something so good.

Waynio......................

[Waynio]

The aim of the test was to see how wheel bhp and coastdown losses change depending on which gear you run the test in. The rolling road in question is a Bosch flywheel system, which means it has a heavy flywheel attached to the rollers and the system works out power according to how quickly the car can accelerate this large mass. It can't take "steady state" power figures which can be a hindrance when setting up fuel and ignition systems but on the other hand there is nothing for the operator to tinker with and distort the readings - you just sit in the car and floor the throttle and wait for the run to reach maximum rpm. At this point you can put the car in neutral while it "coasts back down" and the system measures these coastdown losses. Some dyno systems then add these losses back to the wheel bhp and call the result "flywheel horsepower". Proponents of this method claim that the "flywheel horsepower" figures so produced are more consistent and repeatable than wheel bhp figures. Hopefully this article will show the pitfalls in relying on coastdown losses by means of this real example - anyway on with the plot. Copyright David Baker and Puma Race Engines

3rd gear - 95 bhp at the wheels

4th gear - 92 bhp at the wheels

5th gear - 88 bhp at the wheels

i think not 100% i just searched google to see what other rolling roads do to get BHP. but that makes for interesting reading, the car they use is a ford XR2i the full article can be read here:

http://www.pumaracing.co.uk/coastdwn.htm

i just had a quick scan of the review, but im guessing this is how MOST rolling roads will get BHP readings. god knows though. i just took mine to someone to do and didnt FULLY understand how they did it, and when i asked why, they explained it to me.

&

also for you bongo

PS

This unit (German: Pferdestärke = horse strength) is no longer a lawful unit, but is still commonly used in Europe, South America and Japan, especially by the automotive and motorcycle industry. It was adopted throughout continental Europe with designations equivalent to the English "horse power", but mathematically different from the British unit. It is defined by the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB)[1] in Braunschweig as exactly:

1 PS = 75 kp·m/s = 0.73549875 kW = 0.9863201652997627 hp (SAE)

The PS was adopted by the Deutsches Institut für Normung (DIN) and then by the automotive industry throughout most of Europe, and is always measured at the wheels, as opposed to most factory horsepower figures, which are rated at the crank (which is measured right off the motor, not accounting to any drivetrain loss, which is especially considerable in an All wheel Drive configuration).

In the 19th century, the French did not use this German unit, but had their own, the poncelet. In 1992, the PS was rendered obsolete by EEC directives, when it was replaced by the kilowatt as the official power measuring unit, but it continued to be used for commercial and advertising purposes, as customers were not familiar with the use of kilowatts for combustion engines.

hehe. they also do the following:

Metric horsepower

Mechanical horsepower an electric horse?

Electrical horsepower

Boiler horsepower

Google is absolutly amazing. a bit more down below

The biggest single rolling loss is the tyre. Remember that you have not one, but two contact patches on a rolling road. The tyre has to be compressed in two places and the faster it spins the more often it is compressed. The tyre construction, the diameter and the tyre pressure all have a direct influence on the rolling losses. As an experiment we measured the power at the wheels of a Golf GTi. Then we put another 10 psi into the tyres and checked the power at the wheels again. The power went up by 4 bhp!

i think thats why they dont take BHP from the wheels. as it is affected by tyre pressure. weird eh

Waynio...........................

Edited January 8, 2007 by Waynio

[Bucky]

surly the only 'true' reading is with gear box off and tester connected to flywheel/crank shaft.

meh all these figures are just for bragging.

im not too fussed bout getting more bhp or going faster im happy with mine as it is.

well i will be when its built up again.

[Ingram]

just to let you know who was slagging me off, i have videos to prove it.

[Bucky]

just to let you know who was slagging me off, i have videos to prove it.

cant be arsed reading back but lets have a look at the vids?

[Bucky]

shes dead agin

same motorway m65 same junction but other side of road.

cruising along at 90 put it up into 5th and burp burp boom loadsa smoke and a trail of oil behind me.

pulled over mega hole in sump and half a con road and crankshaft hanging out oooops.

looks like it'll be turbo'd sooner than i thought lol

ahh well its all fun and games.

[OD404]

That's a real shame Buck, was a really clean install.

Just get a turbo in there and all will be well again

[Andy P]

Any idea of the cause of this bucky? It was basically just a standard XE lump wasn't it? Big end bolts give up the ghost (although 4th @ 90 won't be very high revs...)? Strange....

Andy P

[Bucky]

erm well

i had just been racing a merc and going to redline in every gear.

an for the past 3 weeks in had no second so had to give it full whack in 1st then drop to third.

i did but new shells rings and cylinderhead on it 2 months ago. more than lily over tightened the rod bolts as they are only 30nm but i didnt have atorque wrench that low.

ah well never mind iv got my name down rebuilt c20let in essex at £1050, picking up next saturday.

then ill have just inder 3g left to spray it and put it on coilovers, 308mm front brakes, new 18's and a sexy FMIC,.

[Andy P]

erm well

i had just been racing a merc and going to redline in every gear.

an for the past 3 weeks in had no second so had to give it full whack in 1st then drop to third.

i did but new shells rings and cylinderhead on it 2 months ago. more than lily over tightened the rod bolts as they are only 30nm but i didnt have atorque wrench that low.

ah well never mind iv got my name down rebuilt c20let in essex at £1050, picking up next saturday.

then ill have just inder 3g left to spray it and put it on coilovers, 308mm front brakes, new 18's and a sexy FMIC,.

Ahaha, sounds good to me Keep us updated on the build!

Broken engines are an arsehole but a damn good excuse to make something a bit special. Here's my engine.

Andy P

[Bucky]

spend 1g on a turbo engine and 1g fitting and putting brake coilovers etc then another 1g spraying???

or....

buy this ebay link astra vanSOLD!! f**k...........

Edited April 5, 2007 by Bucky

[TomR]

Thats a pretty tasty van, looks good on the turbo rims! Not quite C9 RUM standard though!

[dave85]

The finished auction ebay thingy threw this up as related