The Blue Marble guys just shipped me a couple of cases of oil for me to
test. I’ve followed BM oil streams around the internet, and you DTR
subscribers know our batting average for dyno testing fancy oils/ oil
additives/ treatments etc…..00zero.
This time Sam DynoMan (he has a track dyno testing service) who is a
local Blue Marble distibutor brought a low mileage bone stock Polaris
600 twin, with polaris oil for baseline dyno testing. His plan was to
baseline on our SuperFlow engine dyno, treat his engine however they do
it by soaking cylinders and parts etc, run it for a while, track dyno
it and if results were positive, bring it back for an “after” test.
After we baselined the engine at about 115 HP (very typical) I
checked compression and squish, wrote my initials on the CDI, and Sam
took the sled home for treatment/ further evaluation and dyno testing
on his DynoJet track dyno. A week later Sam called me, ready for
another “pull” on my dyno. Bring it on.
This time, with Blue Marble oil as the only change (***) the engine
made 117 HP on the average of two hot engine tests. Compared to the
baseline test, fuel flow lb/hr was identical (= no jetting chages),
airflow CFM was identical (= no airbox mods or porting). And since the
HP peak occurred a hundred revs HIGHER than baseline probably no
ignition timing was advanced. Very interesting.
(***)
What could be done to fool us? We’re measuring fuel flow and airflow
and we can expect increased torque and shifting of midrange HP and HP peak RPM to lower
RPM with added timing and compression. In this case the midrange torque was identical and HP peak was a
hundred revs higher! Since friction drag increases as the square of
engine RPM, could lowered friction be helping us? About the only
thing someone wanting to cheat our system would be to add HP increasing
additives to the gas (ie: propylene oxide). But usually that stuff is
noxious smelling, especially since propylene oxide is used commercially
to sterilize fruit flies in fruit storage buildings (just what I want
to sniff during testing). I don’t think DynoMan Sam was cheating, but I
have to test this for myself.
My plan is to take John T. Cowie’s Polaris 600 twin that Sean Ray used
in DTR (shimmed up cylinder, cut head, etc etc) and do that
same Blue Marble oil treatment procedure ourselves. Very Soon.