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4.6 2v dyno tune... power numbers guess

8K views 30 replies 12 participants last post by  BlueStangGT 
#1 ·
Hi all I'm getting my car dyno tuned next month it's a 79 fox with a 4.6 2v. What's the guess on wheel hp?
Mods are:
96 npi engine
2000 pi heads
Comp xe274h cams
Stock exhaust manifolds with catless h pipe
Stock intake and elbow with porting in elbow to match 75mm throttle body
Cheap cold air intake run inside front fender.

Any guesses on wheel power?
I'd like to see anywhere from 280 to 300 whp but then again I don't have any major mods so im not sure.
 
#4 ·
Stock 2V PI cars typically dyno'd 235 rwhp.

With a small bump in compression and a Cam, My guess is 260 - 265 rwhp.

An old car I had,..(And I have had many) 96 GT. PI head swap, Stock PI cams. Heads had some mild pocket porting, BBK 75mm TB, Upper plenum port matched to TB and honed for flow. Stock PI lower intake. BBK 1 5/8 long tubes, BBK 2.5" Off road H-pipe. Flowmasters with turn downs. Custom dyno tune. Results,.. 254 RWHP. Thats it.
 
#5 ·
Hmm that sounds kind of low but then again the peak number doesn't matter a whole lot to me it's just getting the tune better in the megasquirt. 250 whp will be plenty fun in a 2500 lbs car so I don't think I'll be upset about it.

There is only a 10% driveline loss in 99 to 2004 mustang gts?

I've seen cars with similar mods break the 300whp mark but of course with long tube headers.
 
#8 ·
Dont get us wrong. No one is trying to discourage you or put your car down. Half the fun is to keep tweeking and adding things. Then tearing it all down and rebuilding it better or using a different motor entirely. I've been there. I spent the better part of 10 yrs playing around trying to make an NA 2v as fast as I could. But the truth is,.. inevitably a true gear head will always want more.

I remember the first time I started playing with Nitrous. The rule of thumb was 425(ish) hp on the stock rods was considered safe. 425hp is fun,.. but after a while it gets boring. So now we do the 150,.. 2 months later I'm like its still together,.. these fools dont know nothing. Lets do a 175. 2 months later,.. Kaboom with oil all over the track and pissed off drivers. You havent enjoyed the 2V to its fullest until you send a rod through the side of the block.

We are never losers,.. we either win or we learn. Lesson learned,.. Stock rods suck. Being the budget minded hotrodder,.. enter forged bottom end. Manley 9.2:1 pistons, Carillo H-beam rods, Eagle steel crank. Ported PI heads, Crane split duration cams for boost ( I do not remember the specs ) Stock ported upper plenum, stock intake, Paxton S-trim @ 15 PSI, Paxton air to water inner cooler, Lenco over size heat exchanger with boost fans. Nitrous Outlet 2V plate kit. 150 wet shot on a progressive 1.5 sec delay.
Results - 572 rwhp on boost and 731 rwhp on nitrous.
Verdict - Ridiculous fun. Plenty of hurt feelings,.. I mean its just a 2v. How fast could it really be?

Dont get discouraged,.. yes its a beautiful fast car. but I've owned the car since 2009 and it took almost 6 yrs of busted knuckles and working over time to get the money together to finally get the car to this point and I'm still not finished with it. There is so much more I want to do. Just finding the time and then the money to get it done is my biggest problem. The biggest huddle was to finally get the forged bottom end together. Once that was done,.. the rest was gravy. Hopefully these pictures encourage you to get those wrenches working.

Car Vehicle Automotive lighting Hood Light


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Wheel Tire Car Vehicle Land vehicle
 
#7 ·
I raced a gutted PI & aftermarket cam swapped ‘97 once in the 1/8 mile and it was only doing 70 some odd mph. It was fairly slow and there was nothing left of the interior but the dash and the drivers seat.
This cat made 263 with his PI swap.
 
#9 ·
Oh no I won't be discouraged by any means, the car had been parked for roughly 10 years due to family life, I've owned the car for 19 years, started out with a carbed 2.3 turbo car... blew that engine up when I was 16, parked it because I was broke, found an 85 svo with no title for $250 and swapped that into the car with megasquirt and 20 lbs of boost and blew that engine racing a BMW out in mexico, engine still ran but smoked like a freight train. Pulled it apart and found cast pistons that were 30 over and #2 piston cracked, rebuilt it with some nos trw forged flat tops and started running 20 psi out of a holset hx35, home ported head, you know all the free mods.

That was a fun setup, would outrun fox mustangs with 5.0 and simple bolt ons with ease but got bored and pulled everything and sold the parts....the car sat untill Oct 2020 when I decided to drop money into it, has tubular k member now, hydroboost, 4.6 2v and and a tr3650.

I know a na 2v is hard to make good street friendly power with but forged induction is my goal, but not on this motor. I wanna drive it for a couple of years the way it is and build one of the 2v engines I have laying around to make 600 whp.

When I was in highschool I was stupid and gutted all the ac and heater stuff, has no carpet due to leaky sunroof and door seals, has no headliner again from leaky sunroof so the car is light. How light? I'll find out after my dyno tune as I'll run it on a scale.

This car was my daily driver in highschool when I needed a car if it wasn't raining I rode my motorcycle. But the value I put on this car can't be replaced, my son rode in the car with a 2.3 when he was a baby in a car seat, he is now 13, my 9 year old daughter has never riden in it untill now just moving it around the driveway (if you consider that a ride), all in all as long as I can beat on it for a while and not melt a piston in the process I will be happy, the body will get paint and body work before it gets a built up engine.


This thread was just made to get an idea of what it could possibly put down but seems that anywhere from 250 to 270 whp is a decent number.

Thanks all of yall for your input. It's all appreciated and if it don't blow up on the dyno I will deffenetly post the graph of the numbers.

The valve train is good to 7500 rpm, doubt the cams will still be making power at this rpm but even if it quits making power at 6k it'll be good to know it'll handle 7500 in case I miss a shift or don't pay attention when grabbing gears.

Megasquirt won't do a spark cut with edis due to edis not needing a computer to run so it'll technically still create spark but only 10 degrees so no 2 step or launch control for me untill I go to coil on plug setup.
 
#10 ·
Oh no I won't be discouraged by any means, the car had been parked for roughly 10 years due to family life, I've owned the car for 19 years, started out with a carbed 2.3 turbo car... blew that engine up when I was 16, parked it because I was broke, found an 85 svo with no title for $250 and swapped that into the car with megasquirt and 20 lbs of boost and blew that engine racing a BMW out in mexico, engine still ran but smoked like a freight train. Pulled it apart and found cast pistons that were 30 over and #2 piston cracked, rebuilt it with some nos trw forged flat tops and started running 20 psi out of a holset hx35, home ported head, you know all the free mods.

That was a fun setup, would outrun fox mustangs with 5.0 and simple bolt ons with ease but got bored and pulled everything and sold the parts....the car sat untill Oct 2020 when I decided to drop money into it, has tubular k member now, hydroboost, 4.6 2v and and a tr3650.

I know a na 2v is hard to make good street friendly power with but forged induction is my goal, but not on this motor. I wanna drive it for a couple of years the way it is and build one of the 2v engines I have laying around to make 600 whp.

When I was in highschool I was stupid and gutted all the ac and heater stuff, has no carpet due to leaky sunroof and door seals, has no headliner again from leaky sunroof so the car is light. How light? I'll find out after my dyno tune as I'll run it on a scale.

This car was my daily driver in highschool when I needed a car if it wasn't raining I rode my motorcycle. But the value I put on this car can't be replaced, my son rode in the car with a 2.3 when he was a baby in a car seat, he is now 13, my 9 year old daughter has never riden in it untill now just moving it around the driveway (if you consider that a ride), all in all as long as I can beat on it for a while and not melt a piston in the process I will be happy, the body will get paint and body work before it gets a built up engine.


This thread was just made to get an idea of what it could possibly put down but seems that anywhere from 250 to 270 whp is a decent number.

Thanks all of yall for your input. It's all appreciated and if it don't blow up on the dyno I will deffenetly post the graph of the numbers.

The valve train is good to 7500 rpm, doubt the cams will still be making power at this rpm but even if it quits making power at 6k it'll be good to know it'll handle 7500 in case I miss a shift or don't pay attention when grabbing gears.

Megasquirt won't do a spark cut with edis due to edis not needing a computer to run so it'll technically still create spark but only 10 degrees so no 2 step or launch control for me untill I go to coil on plug setup.
The main problems I had trying to eek out more hp from a 2v was the heads. Even after porting and cams (Expensive) it seemed that power always dropped off after 5900 - 6500 RPM. Even my car now,.. peak power is at 5800 and I shift at 6200 (Modified TKO 500). I have owned a 96 Cobra and it always took me by surprise when I would bang the rev limiter because it continued to pull right up to it. Trying to shift by the seat of your pants always created the illusion that the motor wanted more. The 2v is much like that. It screams and sounds good,.. but I was fooling myself thinking there was more to be had.

There are guys out there pushing some crazy numbers with NA 2V motors. My engine building skills and knowledge was never enough to compete at their level. The most I ever made NA was 321 rwhp and that was with a Vic intake and a Holley 650cfm 4150 carb setup. Power didnt come in until after 3500 rpm,.. but pulled strong after that. Always had to keep the rpms above 3000 when driving on the street because it would buck and shudder trying to cruise at 2000 - 2500 rpm. Was not a happy street car.
 
#14 ·
Well got the car tuned on the dyno today.... very sad numbers, didn't even break 200 hp.... but the driveability is very very nice and does pull very well. Peak numbers were 192hp and 238ft lbs. Made 230 tq from 2000 to 4000 rpm so that's a plus to me.

I'm thinking a bunch of my low power is the cheap intake manifold, it a dorman style intake which is cheap and I used it to get the car running, I have a typhoon intake I'm considering porting and installing as I'm hoping that will help.

I wasn't after huge power numbers mainly driveability and I deffenetly have that now.
 
#16 ·
Well got the car tuned on the dyno today.... very sad numbers, didn't even break 200 hp.... but the driveability is very very nice and does pull very well. Peak numbers were 192hp and 238ft lbs. Made 230 tq from 2000 to 4000 rpm so that's a plus to me.
My bone stock '98 GT made near identical numbers to that. 196hp/230tq I believe. I don't think an intake will help at all. Longtubes should get you an easy 20-30hp I'd imagine, maybe more.

My '02 GT made 260hp with just longtubes, coyote injectors, BBK intake, and tune.
 
#18 ·
Dyno was a dynapack hub dyno, and no i didn't get a graph I wasn't too worried about it especially since I didn't break any records..

My bone stock '98 GT made near identical numbers to that. 196hp/230tq I believe. I don't think an intake will help at all. Longtubes should get you an easy 20-30hp I'd imagine, maybe more.

My '02 GT made 260hp with just longtubes, coyote injectors, BBK intake, and tune.
Ya I can see my numbers being good if it was a stock npi engine but it's not, I do still have stock exhaust manifolds just for simplicity sake, it does have cams and stock pi heads which I figured would help but didn't really seem to.
Something seems very off with this. My setup is very different (TrickFlow heads, comp 270ah and other things) but I made 329hp/316tq and I run a cat'ed h-pipe.
Either the tune is way off, cam is not degreed, or something on the car is broken.
It's a stock npi engine with pi heads comp 274ah cams (cams were degreed in the passenger head degreed in perfect and the driver side cam needed 4 degrees of advance to get 109.5 centerline I believe and I think the cam card called for 110.

Not sure what could be broken honestly the motor runs great with no unusual noises, shift fork for 2nd in the tr3650 is bent and has hard time catching 2nd, rear end is from a 96 gt with 3.27 gears and worn out clutches but other than that everything is good, the engine was rebuilt at one time not by me, I had the heads cleaned, decked and valve job done before I put them on the engine.


I know longtubes would help for sure but I don't think it'll make up the 50 to 60 hp loss that I feel like I'm leaving on the table, 20 i can see, that's why I'm leaning towards intake manifold. It's a cheap dorman piece, with the stock plenum that I opened up to allow the 75mm tb to have a smoother transition.

My iat were on the high side at 125 on the dyno, my temp sensor is located where the egr would normally be. I have a professional product complete intake manifold setup with thier 75mm to, their plenum and the all aluminum intake, I'm gonna see if anything has been done to the intake as it's still bolted on the engine in the wrecked 02 gt I bought just for the transmission.
 
#19 ·
I would like to see what your power curve looks like. But that intake definitely isn't matching up to that camshaft, and the stock heads and manifolds aren't helping

stock valve springs? What rpm are you running to?

who tuned it? How many pulls did you make?

any idea what a stock PI headed car runs on that dyno?
 
#20 ·
Valve springs are from btr and so are the titanium retainers, only running to 6k rpm, power started dropping at 5300.

Was tuned by a guy named jeorge at h-car tuning, he is fairly well known in the area on big power hondas
He made a total of probably 10 full pull runs it was a tuning session and I was there from 8:30 to 1:00 pm.
I went with hime because not many people tune megasquirts around me.

I wasn't after big numbers but I was expecting more than what it showed.

He told me he dyno tuned an 05 f150 with all the bolt ons (not sure which bolt ons though) and it only put down 190hp, I'm sure that was through an auto and im not sure if that was a 2v or a 3v.
 
#23 ·
Those cams should make 40-50 more than the stock cam

any chance you have the non-PI versions installed?

 
#24 ·
Those are the non pi cams which is what I have they are only .500 lift, I was going to run a complete npi engine and heads which is why I have these cams, then came across a pi long block with a spun rod bearing for $100 and ended up using the heads.
 
#27 · (Edited)
You’re using NPI cams? If so, that might be the culprit vs the manifold. I’m thinking you’d need a “better” cams to take advantage of the “better” heads.
Edit I reread the first post and saw that you have a set of Comps. Belay my last.
For the peanut gallery: Do “hub dynos” read differently than the drum style? Like how a Mustang dyno is said to read lower than a Dynojet?
Edit again It looks like the 2v guys that are making 250-280 whp are using .550+ lift cams (TFS Stage 1, etc). So, it might be a combo of the cam & intake.
 
#29 ·
Well I did some checking and my timing is stuck at 10 degrees, so that will explain some of why my power is so low, the tuner is going to put me back on the dyno on Saturday, it was a wiring mistake on my part so hopefully that will get me 20 to 30 more horsepower but I'll find out saturday.
 
#31 ·
Here's some more NPI to PI headswap info for you. In Spring of 2001, my bone stock '98 5-spd. car made 192.5 HP / 263.5 TQ on a Dynojet. 2 months later with a PI headswap and FMS shorty headers on the same stock tune and dyno with worse air, the numbers were 246.0 / 285.9. While the numbers themselves may not be terribly useful to you, perhaps the percentages of the changes will be.
 
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