John,
Great question and thanks for asking. Yes we believe the numbers from this pump. Here's why:
Dyno was installed in the early 1990's by an old hot rodder at his private shop. Owner ran his personal engines on it occasionally and for its first 20 years it was rented by the day to Samford Racing Heads and Eds Machine only...at least until Jan 2014 when Samford leased it outright. 15-20 engines average per year have been run on it. It isa 901B and has the "871" pump which has a 2000HP rating. I watched the initial calibration by Superflow techs and calibration has been checked regularly since. Shortly after John's engine we tried to run a 598 BBC (1300HP) and the torque spikes (as seen on John's pulls) were much worse prompting the owner to "work on it" in his spare time. After about 15 months and about $10K in parts he gave up trying to get it work. Many back and forths with Superflow techs. A few more months later we convinced him to lease it to us if we could get it working. So far so good...we learned alot about the detailed workings from this teardown/rebuild. This one now has many new parts and a fresh calibration. We hung 173lbs and the console readout showed 544.5. Formula from service manual: ((Weight in lbs * 3) +25.5lbs). Curve is still a bit "bumpy" for my taste but still after 20 years we trust the numbers (the area under the curve.) A few years back my iron dport 469 made 806HP on this pump and the car ran 143mph at 3280lbs in my 2nd gen bird-brick at Norwalk last year. High or low at least this one produces a repeatable number we can count on to measure and improve our engine program.
IMHO A properly maintained/calibrated/repeatable dyno is a necessary tool to have in one's tool arsenal.
Best of luck with your builds...we are watching with great interest.
Have weight, Will hang :-)
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