You might be interested in a new software product offered by Red Mist
Enterprises ([link lost in import] called Visual Dyno. It's cheap (about
$80) and gives you lots of interesting information about your car. You
enter information about your torque curve, gear ratios, weight, drag,
inertia, shift points, etc. It calculates the time-to-speed and
time-to-distance curves for you and displays them as graphs. The neat thing
is that you can see the effect of any changes you might be thinking about
by just entering the new values (weight, shift points, gear ratios, etc.);
the curves are recalculated and redisplayed immediately. It's a really
convenient "what if" tool. It also displays the forces that work on the car
in each gear, which gives a lot of insight into why some changes work and
others don't, when you're wheelspin limited, when you're power limited,
etc.
The program can also be used to calculate a torque curve for you from
time-to-speed measurements that you make. Just enter your measured values
into it and it figures out what the torque curve must be in order to match
the acceleration. Same thing for aerodynamic drag -- just enter coast down
measurements and it calculates the aerodynamic drag numbers.
Visual Dyno also calculates the optimum shift points for you and displays
the traditional gear chart curves. It runs on Windows and Windows 95, comes
with an installation program, lots of on-line help and a 241 manual with
lots of technical discussions. The on-line help and manual both describe
lots of techniques you can use to estimate all of the vehicle parameters,
in case you don't know them already.
Check out the web site ([link lost in import] for more information. If
you look in the Products section, you get some links to sample screen shots
that give a good idea of how you enter information and the graphs you see.
