Dyno on board- a story of innovation

Why can't a car tell you exactly how much power and torque it's making in real time? Those of us who've been around cars and test equipment forever shrug and respond, "because that sort of thing requires giant stationary roller drums and megabuck machinery." But 16-year-old Taylor Blackwood of Germantown, Tennessee, was unsatisfied with that line of adult reasoning. He wanted to quantify the power bump he was getting from each modification made to his Mustang GT without schlepping down to a speed shop and renting pricey dynamometer time and risking potential variability from one dyno or operator to another.

He reckoned there had to be a way to measure torque somewhere between the engine and the wheels. The universal joint just aft of the transmission seemed as good a spot as any. He convinced his dad it might be possible, and together they commissioned a machine shop to grind down the U-joint pins that mount to the driveshaft yoke, so they could wrap them with paper-thin (8/1000 inch) Powertech pressure sensors. Their leads connect to a battery-powered signal conditioning unit and wireless transmitter located in a two-piece, weight-balanced plastic collar that bolts onto the driveshaft about halfway between the yoke and the center bearing. Several iterations of this design over a period of two years have yielded sensors that can withstand the torque of his now supercharged V-8 without being crushed, and a collar that doesn't fly apart under the extreme centrifugal forces experienced on the driveshaft. He's even been granted a provisional patent for the concept.

Initial tests reportedly show close agreement between Blackwood's U-joint gizmo and a proper Dynojet dynamometer. Naturally, the system can report realistic output figures only when the rear tires are "hooked up" and the vehicle is pulling-it can't infer the torque lost to a squealing, smoking tire. But a pull from low rpm to redline in second gear could yield an actual, measured peak torque figure without even breaking the speed limit. Calculating power and torque using quarter-mile acceleration data introduces errors related to launch technique, exact vehicle weight, and aerodynamics.

Significant hurdles remain. Sorting out the electronics required to collect OBD II information on vehicle speed and engine rpm in order to infer the gear ratio (and hence the torque multiplication inside the transmission) is proving tricky at engine speeds over 4000 rpm, but a design firm is currently helping with that. The user interface is under development, but the goal is a power and/or torque gauge similar to the one on the Bugatti Veyron that regular tuner-aficionados could afford.

As envisioned, his product would be specifically engineered for different vehicle lines, not sold as a kit for do-it-yourselfers to adapt to any car. Initial kits would target the Mustang, then other rear-drive vehicles popular with tuners (front- or all-wheel-drive applications would need two, three, or four sets of sensors). I can't help but think this is an idea the performance engineers at Ford, GM, or Chrysler should license and develop. By engineering it into their Mustangs, Camaros, or Challengers, they could employ inductive charging to eliminate the replaceable batteries and integrate the whole works into the driveshaft for improved robustness. They might even be able to incorporate weather info to correct the results per SAE standards. If I were buying a car to tune I'd love to have a gauge that could quantify my performance improvements and perhaps even plot a graph I could download to a USB drive.

If car-scribbling paid venture-capitalist wages, I'd be drafting some legalese for the now college-bound Blackwood to sign. If you want in, contact him at powertachhp@gmail.com.