Skunk River Restorations SCCA Dyno Day for Midiv Time Trialers!

[Bill Pemberton]

Having been around various Dyno Shops throughout the years in checking performance mods at the Dealership I worked at I can happily state that the Skunk River shop was one of the most impressive for various reasons. First of all it does not hurt that Steve Myers business is dedicated to restoring all kinds of various fun machines , though he really specializes in older British sports machines, with client's cars from Singapore and England in the shop at present. So he is a certified Petrolhead ( proper British term for a Gearhead ) but he is also a rabid racer who I have met at various track events when he ran his Panoz GT, GT 350, NP 01, and more. He is fast and flexible, because he goes from the high horsepower stuff to running a Bugeye Sprite prepped by Bob Tullius in Vintage events. So just seeing the vast array of super cool British ( primarily ) machines is worth the stop there alone , the cool part is he is a serious racer who understands the needs of track rats. He and his crew went through a large number of Dyno tests for the SCCA members there, it was done in record time and Steve's ability to get all makes of track toys on the Dyno , calibrated and run so effortlessly ( at least that was how it appeared to us ) gave everyone a great sense we had someone highly skilled doing the testing. Though I had run into Steve and his Dad ( who often runs a Boss 302S ) at different events I had not been sharp enough to find out that he is a NASA Certified Tech shop, as I would have come over to his place a long time ago. He is listed for Iowa, Wisconsin , Illinois and Minnesota, but he is Nationally certified so if you are in Eastern Nebraska or Northern Missouri it would behoove you to take the drive to Ames, Iowa to use his shop and expertise. The do a lot more than just Restorations, but in all my years of wandering the Country, viewing private collections, or retail automotive museums, I have never seen such a unique collection of cool , older British legendary racers and track toys. If you need a Dyno done for any of your cars and you are within a 2-3 hours of Ames, Iowa you really need to check this guy out, at 43 he is an old soul that Ancient Farts like me are blown away by his insane grasp of 50,60, and 70s British automotive history, and for the crowd his age he is astute concerning all the new and fun mods everyone is doing. Heck , there were three tricked out older trucks in there when I was there , so it appears there is not much they can not do at the Skunk River shop.

I was pleased with my Dyno numbers as they came out right where I expected for a stock Mach 1 5.0, and even better yet they put me right in the Class I wanted to be in for SCCA and for NASA. Graph is listed below, along with a quick Dyno run ( heh, still on DSL here in the middle of a cornfield so the good video will be buffering till Tuesday). I may send to Ludachris to see if he can post , as it is unbelievably how slow things are and the new Fiber Optic lines can not get in too soon ( laying them as we speak ).

For those interested ,either for NASA Dyno certification or tuning and testing on their car , the Skunk River Restorations address , website , and phone number are listed below,
Skunk River Restorations
709 Airport Rd.
Ames, Iowa 50010

 

[Bill Pemberton]

Just a brief run on the Dyno!

 

[GB899]

soooo... what's your number?

 

[Bill Pemberton]

408.5 Max HP , so right at what I was hoping for Classifications in NASA. My wife and I tried twice to get the the graph loaded but we were lucky we got the short video. The idiotic DSL here is on and off and sometimes it won't load anything. Of course we were supposed to have the Fiber Optic in by March and it is still not up and running, and in the meantime the ancient system is super sporadic. I sent the graph to Ludachris with the idea he might be able to post, since things crashed last time we attempted it. It is quite interesting as there are times TMO will not even open and other times it just goes down for no reason --- of course it is not the only site we lose or can't access at times. TireRack would not open all morning one day last week and once it did it moved so slowly I finally just gave up.

15% driveline loss puts the Mach 1's 480 HP at the flywheel at 408, so pretty darn accurate for government work.