New dyno video from Nick's Garage, this time with a Pontiac 400
 

A new video was posted yesterday by Nick's Garage, this time with a basic 400ci being broken in and tested. Thought you all might be interested in viewing.

YouTube LINK.

I just watched the entire video. I am sure many who watch this will be just aghast at the way Nick does things. But I will just say at least the guy is real. He is not editing out all the chaos that is very typical of every dyno session. If you run a dyno using all kinds of different engines, different configurations, many things your not familiar with, this would be very typical. Guy brings in a used engine with a new cam. Asks you to install the cam and different heads, supplies a carb that says it's running at 20:1 AFR. It's a tough deal for the shop and dyno operator. I will say that at our shop, we have a "dyno carburetor". It's a BLP 750 Holley mechanical secondary carb. It runs good on every engine we put it on. From a V-6 Buick to a 500 Cu In Chevy. I am not saying it's perfect, but you can make pulls and get a decent AFR. Good enough to isolate or eliminate carb problems from other stuff. The fact that he had 1 that was ultra rich and another that was ultra lean, didn't give him much to work with. I enjoy the videos, very realistic of a typical generic dyno session. The load bypass valve he was messing with is very difficult to adjust and sensitive. The engines that make allot of low RPM torque like a Pontiac, need lots of bypass water around the dyno turbine. This is because they need lots and lots of water at the beginning of the pull when the servo opens to brake and hold all the torque at low RPM's. The water has to bypass when idling or the engine would stall. It's not as easy as it looks to run a high torque/low RPM engine.

Yeah, I also found it somewhat surprising that for as big as Nick's shop is, he doesn't have a few "house" carburetors hanging around that can be used in situations like this. I certainly don't claim to be an expert when it comes to dynoing engines, but I've never felt that Nick's process was particularly different from how most others in the business likely do things. Gotta get the engine timed, make a few small pulls, sort out what needs sorting out, optimize the package you were given even if it's not ideal, and move on as best you can.

Being a Mopar guy, he probably had several Holley's and AFB's laying around. He admitted in the video he wasn't a Q-jet guy. With our BLP "house carb", we have a square bore/spread bore adapter, so we can put that carb on almost anything in 10 minutes. Again, it's not perfect, but if the engine runs better with an improperly jetted, adapter plated Holley than whatever piece of crap the customer brought in, we know where the problem is right away. It has been a huge time saver for us. I am just amazed with the horrible excuses for a carburetor (s), people bring in and expect to work properly on their new engine on the dyno. We had a 383 stroker SBC that made 55 more HP with our shop carb than the used Edelbrock based AFB he bought used. Not the place to cut corners!

I truly can’t believe he even tried a pull while having no secondary metering rods in the carb, and then he knowingly went in the full opposite direction with metering rods from a carb that was known to have a 20 to 1 ratio!
To me that’s flat out being abusive to a customers motor.

Can I get back the time I spent watching that video?

Have watch Nick's drama with Pontiacs before. I think they stress him out.
1. There is NO need to run 20- 50 weight oil, AFTER break in.. No need, Period. Is he scared, or just way too STP OLD SCHOOL?
2. That engine did Not need a Hi pressure pump.
After break in and warm up, he was still at 98 psi at just under 3k RPM. Waste of horse power and possible foaming if excellent oil isn't run.
3. After Warm up, engine coolant was at 160 ish. Should be at 180-185 anyway.
4 If he switched to 10-30 oil, the engine may loose 10 psi, but still would be way more than needed.
Why does he think its a large journal motor.?
I am Sure he has a "house" AFB. every mopar nut has half a dozen that are fine for pulls.
Lot of extra drama by the producer. In Real life, time is money, so 3 people at a dyno with issues knock this out in 30 min after break in.
Of Note, Nick doesn't Start tracking TQ or HP till 3k typically.... sad......

I don't understand why he titled the video "Problems Solved"? Did I miss something?

I think the problems were "solved" with a different carb & distributor after the video was filmed. He mentions it at the end of the video. Not the best video thumbnail given that us viewers don't get to see anything get fixed.

LOL and I seem to remember people complaining about those of us that complained about the last dyno session he did and yet here we go again :pound:

I'm seeing a pattern

I got the impression there's gonna be a second video where he fixes the problems. I am curious to see what it makes. He said he hoped for 330hp. With 48 heads and a RAIV cam it should do better than that. Sounds like the heads are probably not ported.

At the end of the video they talked about several fixes that were made - he changed plugs, put on one of his dyno room carbs (a Holley), and swapped on an HEI distributor. With those changes the engine made 352hp and 401.6 ft-lbs torque.

Ah! Thanks for that. He signed off so I stopped the video and moved on, didn't see the "addendum".

I still would have thought maybe a little more power than that.

Too many problems, Nick fault, the engine owner fault, the engine builders fault, the producers fault, nobodies fault, sun, moon and starts not lined up right, who cares. Just a bit too much "drama" for me and another half hour of my life gone that I'll never get back. I've been on the dyno with just about every Pontiac engine we ever built here and absolutely and for sure you NEVER go there with unknown or untested components, like carbs and distributors, for example. Even if/when I took customers MSD's or HEI's, or their carburetors I ALWAYS took my own "test mules" along in case we had issues. You can waste all your time dinking around with unknown parts and before you know it you've ate up an entire dyno day and don't know any more when your finished than when you started.

The heads wouldn't need porting of any kind to make excellent numbers.

Decades ago I tested a very "basic" 400 with untouched #16's on it. It EASILY made over 1hp/CID with the Crower 60916 and 60243 cams in it. The 16's are close enough to 48's that the engine Nick was testing should have been somewhere close it 380-400hp without much effort.......IMHO

Also the fact that he made the first pull with 36 degrees of timing proved that he knows little about Pontiacs , but besides that I would be hesitant to start off with 36 degrees in any type of motor even if I was running 112 octane fuel.

Here’s the first and last page from a year 2000 issue of muscle car review.
In the end the all stock RAIII ( far smaller cam then the RA4 in Nicks video) matched its factory rating of 366 to Nicks 350.
Nick, keep all those Mopars running substandard for us.
Thanks in advance!

Oh yes, as posted , I want my half hour of my life back and my data usage time!

Cliff
You're absolutly right...I to don't have time for Nick's Garage.
Dumb as a box of rocks

One thing to remember is YouTube creators need to keep pumping out content on a regular basis, so in this instance he may not have had time to get everything all set and ready to go perfectly before releasing the video.

For some reason, I can relate to "old school Nick" Here is why. At my school, we dyno all kinds of different engines, from early 1920's 4-cyl Fords, to fuel injected Kasse Boss 9 engines to everything in between. From a $500.00 backyard rebuild to a 20K really scienced out engine. The set-up is different on every one of them, and every one has problems from very minor to an oil pan full of water from breaking through a thin wall porting a head.
I don't want to make too many excuses for Nick, but his little videos look all too familiar to me. We run a Pontiac on our dyno maybe one out of 200 engines. Nick may be about the same. He is a Mopar guy and I assume his reference to "large journal" is in comparison to Mopar with their 2.750" mains. Just a guess. His move to a M54F oil pump was not a good choice to us "Pontiac people", but a common go to for a non-Pontiac guy. I have a very hard time believing it would hurt a thing on that engine. Might cost them 2-3 HP if they drop to 10w-30 oil like they should. Drama is why most people watch videos anyway. I wish he would learn more about Pontiac engines and produce better results. But he doesn't upset me.

That’s true Rtp, but some rocks we need, like the ones we process Mercury out of!
That being said I think the world ( and folks cars ) would roll a long better without Nick.

LOL you guys are harsher than I ever was in the last video he did with a Pontiac
:pound:

I didn't watch the video but it sounds like he's either had a worse time with this one or his practices were worse.

At least it sounds like he provided a timing reference this time as a base, and wasn't just moving the distributor around and making pulls, or was he.... :rolleyes:

Either way the comments are comical :D