Performance Trends Blog

We have been getting quite a few calls lately where someone is interested in our Engine Analyzer program. But sometimes they don’t realize we have 3 different versions of Engine Analyzer.

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Recently a well known racing head porter asked for some graphics (pictures) for an article on head port design.  His article dealt with there is more to a head’s performance potential than just CFM flow numbers.

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Ramey Motorsports

Blaine Ramey of Ramey Motorsports is a Ford Engineer and long time friend of Performance Trends.  Lately he’s been working with us on his 2010 Ford Cobra Jet Mustang.  In just their 4th outing, they won their NHRA Super Stock SSBA class (which is a Bracket Racing class) at Mid Michigan, July 11 with Charley Downing driving.  This is the FIRST win for the “Drag Race specific” Cobra Jet in this division. Read the rest of this entry »

When building or modifying an engine for all-out racing, street/strip performance, trailer towing, or most any application, there are many variables to consider. One critical variable is the Compression Ratio or CR. Compression ratio is the amount of “squeeze” the piston puts on the air fuel ratio before it lights  the fire.  And, more importantly, it is the amount of expansion or “push” these hot, high pressure, combusted gases put on the piston.  The more amount of expansion, the more amount of heat and pressure energy can be extracted from each combustion event. Read the rest of this entry »

Our engine performance simulation program (Engine Analyzer Pro) produces what we call RPM Data like torque, HP, fuel flow, BSFC, etc at each RPM of the run.  It also produces Cycle Data which are things like cylinder temperature, cylinder pressure, piston thrust on the wall, intake valve lift, intake valve flow, etc at every 4 degrees of crankshaft rotation. (Behind the scenes the data is being calculated at something more like every .1 degrees, but we only report it at every 4 degrees.) Read the rest of this entry »

Most drag racers running automatics talk about their torque converter’s “stall RPM”. They say things like “I’ve got a 5500 RPM stall converter” or “My converter stalls at 6700 RPM”. Then they are somewhat surprised that when they go to a significantly higher elevation the stall RPM drops. Read the rest of this entry »

Top speed racing is very much like drag racing, but just on a very long track.  In drag racing, it is power to weight ratio which typically determines your performance.  However, when the track is very long, and your vehicle spends much more time at high speed, it is power to drag ratio which is more important.  By drag, I mean primarily aerodynamic drag or wind resistance.  In addition to aerodynamic drag, there is rolling resistance from tires, driveline losses, but the higher the speed, the larger the aerodynamic component of overall drag. Read the rest of this entry »

Have you ever gone to a track that you haven’t been to in a while and you can’t remember the setup that worked so well last time?  Or, what was that change you made 2 weeks ago that fixed a “push” on corner entry?  Or, exactly when did you go to the stiffer shocks on the front?  If you’re like most racers, you just expect you will remember it.  Or, if your one step better, you right it down somewhere.  But now that piece of paper is lost, or you can’t really make out what your notes mean. Read the rest of this entry »

When you are dyno testing engines, you want to be sure that each time you test the same engine your dyno comes back with the same power curve. Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone has had the experience of buying an electronics product which is now obsolete or the company has gone out of business.  Read the rest of this entry »