Roger Ramjet said:
I've seen that happen when the oil temp wasn't up for the first pulls. What I really suspect is that the dyno HP correction factor was changing - the temp pickup for the dyno was seeing increasingly higher temps but the air to the engine was not.
Actually before the first dyno, for the baseline, we made sure to get the car nice and hot, we did this by warming the car up, and then running the car on the dyno 3 times before doing the final test to get the baseline numbers...
What you are saying is true, along with the gear oil in the rear end will also heat up as well increasing dyno numbers, so there are quite a few factors we were sure to look at.
The 03 Cobra has a VERY restrictive exhaust, we actually cut open a stock muffler, and the exhaust is only 2" through the muffler, which would explain the big gains with a catback
Before we did the first measured dyno run after the install, we also did 3 runs as well to get the oil and fluids nice and hot.....
The gains are one thing, but I though it was interesting to see how many runs it takes for a car to fully adjust.
It really makes me think about all the dyno comparisons I see, where they throw on a couple of different parts and dyno test them all....
I wonder how fair all dyno tests really are when they are not taking the time to do all of these dyno runs.....