POWER TOOLS

REMEMBER when a 500rwhp pull in the Summernats Horsepower Heroes competition was enough to win the thing outright and bring the crowd to their feet? It wasn’t all that long ago, but a lot has changed in the years since. These days you’re nobody unless your street car is good for a horsepower figure in the four-digit range, and fetching accurate, repeatable numbers out of a 1000rwhp car on a traditional roller dyno is problematic to say the very least.

But dyno manufacturers are catching up, and Aussie mob Mainline Dynolog Dynamometers has brought a range of hub dynos to market that sidesteps many of the common issues associated with roller dynos.

“Hub dynos have been around for 20 years, and there have been some systems designed overseas that are really quite portable,” says Mainline’s Craig Mahoney. “But the challenge in designing a hub dyno is that they need to be able to capture three times more torque than a roller dyno, due to roller diameter relative to tyre diameter. As a result, early hub dynos were very limited in terms of torque-handling capabilities.”

The Mainline Prohub range has come about due to Mainline identifying a gap in the market for a range of hub dynos capable of handling mega-horsepower street cars and even Pro Mod-style drag cars – the kind of vehicle that you couldn’t even dream of running up on a roller dyno.

We had the opportunity to witness the base-model Prohub – the 2000hp-rated PH2000 – being put through the wringer by Sam Fenech’s 3500hp JSS Racing Megatilt Doorslammer, with interesting results. But first, let’s take a look at the relative pros and cons of engine, roller and hub dynos.

MAIN: Sam Fenech and his crew with Mainline’s Todd Lewis and Craig Mahoney