How are you seeing if you are making more power without a dyno?

[02reaper]

I try to gauge if Im making power with the engine TQ parameter in the scanner, but I'm not sure how accurate it is. What are those of you without a dyno doing to see if your actually making anymore power? Here is a stock log and a current log of my tune on my 2016 f150 3.5 ecoboost.

[jamesm]

Well, you really can't. You can *infer* things, i.e. correlating load increases to torque etc.. but at the end of the day if you wanna directly measure it you need a tool to do it. If you have a good, consistent spot to do runs you could use something like Virtual Dyno. I've found it repeatable enough to be useful in back-to-back comparison testing... even if it is a little wonky sometimes.

[15PSI]

Virtual Dyno has been recently modified to properly work with the new file formats in HPTuners. I provided Brad some test logs and he modified the executable so that it now functions properly. However, the first time I used the upgraded program, I was getting totally inaccurate HP and Torque figures. Now that I know your logs must be in either 3rd or 4th gear only, the output of VD is surprisingly close to real dyno numbers. So the lesson to be learned is log only one gear at a time; if you log multiple gear changes and log them into VD, your output will not reflect your true values. Of course, as stated by jamesm, you can also compare air mass (MAF systems) or VE (load).

[Atomic]

Theres not really a good way, but you can use fuel consumption as a good baseline. If you assume some BSFC and your injector data and fuel pressure is correct and your wideband works well, you can calculate how much fuel you are burning and how much power that translates too. In general, if you increase airflow and maintain a constant AFR, your fuel consumption goes up which means more power.

[02reaper]

Thank you all. Ill look into the virtual dyno.

[LSxpwrdZ]

Without a dyno the easiest way to do this is to setup a calculated acceleration rate PID in Maths and find a level spot that you can consistently get consistent results. If it's making more power it'll accelerate faster showing a higher acceleration rate.