Andre: Hey, guys.
It's Andre from the High Performance Academy,
and we're here with Joe Signorelli
from RotorMaster and Gas Motorsport,
and we just wanted to take some time
to talk to Joe about tuning and how he goes about it.
Now, Joe, you're a pretty well-known guy.
You've obviously got the record for your Celica,
for sport compact in Australia,
and you've also taken the move
with this brand new Mustang
that we'll have a look at shortly.
I just wanted to talk about the equipment you've got here
at RotorMaster and Gas Motorsport for tuning.
I notice you've got a Dyno Dynamics 4WD dyno,
and then at Gas Motorsport,
you've got the SuperFlow engine dyno.
What's your pick of why you use one dyno over the other?
Joe: Well, the Dyno Dynamic we use the chassis dyno,
so it's more of a practical dyno.
You can put all the street cars on there, 4WDs,
so all the WRXs and the GT-Rs can be dynoed as 4WD,
but we use it a lot in tuning and in installing ECUs.
We install the Haltech ECUs
and little mods we do,
we constantly use the Dyno Dynamic,
which is, you know, this stall handles up to,
we've made 1400 horsepower on this dyno,
so it still can handle a bit of power,
and like I said, it's a practical dyno,
and you just reverse the car on there and dyno,
and away you go.
Andre: So that's pretty quick to get a car seated up,
and it's ready to tune.
When you say you've got 1400 horsepower through this dyno,
it sounds to me like wheel spin isn't as much of a problem
as we might expect.
How do you cope with wheel spin on a rolling road?
Joe: Well, that's the problem with it.
You can only get so much
because you've got still rollers,
and we try and tie it down,
and tried different ways of trying to get
the tire to stick to the roller,
but there's a method now,
the way we strap them down,
that does, you know, get to a point where
we make up to that, a thousand.
We've gone to 1400,
but you're still kind of smoking the tires,
so you don't really,
up to 1,000 plus, you don't really know what you've got.
Andre: So, with all of the high-powered cars
that you're tuning,
how much of the tuning are you relying solely on the dyno for
and how much are you doing at the race track?
Joe: Well, honestly, for me 90%'s on the dyno.
You have to get it pretty much perfect on the dyno,
and you kind of just touch up the dyno.
Usually, you know, what we do is
we kind of run them a bit fatter top end,
and then we clear them up at the track.
Andre: Okay, so with the SuperFlow engine dyno
that you've got next door,
tell us a little bit about that.
How much power can that cope with?
Joe: Okay, well the SuperFlow dyno,
that's a 2,000 horsepower plus dyno.
We've actually dynoed my Celica engine in there.
That's how we started off,
you know, and a few boat engines we've done.
You know, a few boat engines,
which you can't really dyno a boat engine on the water,
so we get them about 90%,
and yeah, fire them in a vehicle, and they're fine.
Andre: Seat out time on an engine dyno?
How long does it take you between
getting the engine into your workshop
and being able to really actually do some runs?
Joe: That's a problem.
I wish it was as easy as this thing.
It takes, it honestly takes a whole day to set them up,
and it's honestly, sometimes, it's like a 3-day process.
It's a day, a day tuning, and a day to take it off,
so it's a 3-day process.
Andre: So, Joe, you've got both the Dyno Dynamics 4WD dyno
and you've got your SuperFlow engine dyno.
Tell us a little bit about the accuracy differences
between the two.
Joe: I think they're pretty well accurate.
Between the chassis and the roller dyno,
like I said, anything that probably are
even around that 800 down
is pretty accurate on the chassis dyno,
because, you know, you can get the proper traction,
but from 800 to 1,000, 1,000 onwards,
the chassis dyno would be a bit hesitant
in giving you the true power,
so running the SuperFlow from 1,000 onwards,
you get precise power.
Andre: Okay. The last thing I wanted to ask you,
you're well known, obviously now for your Celica,
but you've got a reputation with rotaries.
They're a fragile engine,
and you seem to be able to hold them together
better than most and make them go down the track fast.
Have you got a special training philosophy
that you apply when you're tuning these rotary engines?
Joe: Yeah, it goes with all the race cars.
When you're tuning them,
you're just going to have to just take back
what you've learned in the past here
and just apply it to the car
and make sure that you don't go too radical with the tune.
You know, make sure it's a safe tune
to get the car down there
because a lot of rotaries like to run on super rich,
and the timings are going to be a factor in them too,
so you've got to make sure that you've got a good,
you know, good range of timing in it.
That's pretty much like all the cars, you know,
all the race cars you do.
You just kind of have to, when you tune them,
and when I tune them and they go to the track,
there's something else I do to them
so we can actually go to the track and say,
"Okay, that's a safe tune."
On the track, I can just lean on them a bit more.
Andre: Okay.
Well, we don't want to take up too much of your time.
We know you need to get back on that dyno,
so thank you for taking the time to talk to us,
and we'll let you get back to it.
Joe: No worries. Thank you.
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