I love this!

 

I substantially agree with this. However, once the 'fudges' have been done (usually the 'fudges' taking the form of additional terms in the equation), the resulting formula is just as real as it was to start with, just not as pretty. Mathematicians will argue from now till the end of time over the acceptability of a computation 'proof' over the classical analytic one. Physicists by and large, don't give a crap, whatever works, works. By their view, theory/math is not reality, only a description of reality, to be applied when it works, and and not when it doesn't. While Maxwell's laws of electromagnetism are both elegant and functional, they generally fail on small scales where the messy and arbitrary laws of quantum mechanics rule. It doesn't mean they are wrong on small scales, just misapplied.

I also generally agree. In the high-school definition of the scientific method, one (1) hypothesizes, (2) experiments, and (3) analyzes/ concludes. 98% of the discussion is on steps 2 & 3, virtually none about step 1. In step 1 is the art, fun, and mystery of science. For relatively modest proposals, one could say the hypothesis is almost entirely based on experience. I know say if with 200 hp, my car will go 150 mph, I have a pretty good idea (with a little guidance from math/physics) that this same care will go 180 mph with 300 hp. But if I want to go Mach 25, when the fastest winged airplanes have never exceeded Mach 3, I have to rely heavily on theory, because experience is non-existent. (The space shuttle did fly pretty much as predicted).

I'll try to re-state what I think MM is getting at in a way I think we can agree. Maxwell was a genius at analysis/conclusion and is recognized as such. However, he could not have done what he did without Michael Faraday, who while weak in the mathematical arts, was a genius in hypothesis and experiment. Without Faraday to frame the problem, Maxwell would have gotten nowhere. In today's science world (and engineering too), students are trained and rewarded to be Maxwells, not Faradays, that is given a "problem" they can mathematically analyze the hell out of it. But given "nothing", they are lost, or at best stuck with making small extensions on a track firmly established already. In my day job, I'm a "Faraday", so I get it. I set the direction and course for quite a few development programs where in a wide sense, the "Maxwells" get the rewards (status and pay).

While analogies with music are tenuous at best, it follows the same general course as when new ideas are introduced in science. The process goes (a) the idea is wrong, (b) the idea is right, but irrelevant, and (c) credit is given to the wrong man.

And I confess, we're waaay off topic.

 

I completely agree.


Ain't THAT the truth.

I don't agree. I think we are totally on-topic. However, I think we are venturing into a pretty esoteric place (which I admit I enjoy immensely).
After a very long time of "dumbing it down", its nice to look at physical things from a pseudo-metaphysical vantage point.

 

Some of both. Try another metaphor. You can with some care (keep it out of direct sunlight) measure the air temperature near Miami Beach by judging the height of a red liquid in a tube, commonly called a thermometer. Is it directly measuring the average velocity of molecules in a gas? No. But is it measuring something (expansion of a liquid with rising temperature) that is directly physically connected in a simple way to the average velocity of molecules in the surrounding gas? Yes! Calibrate the liquid's expansion to temperature and you get a pretty good measure of molecule velocity (aka temperature). With some statistics, you could also measure the average velocity of air molecules on Miami Beach by charting the percentage of women having exposed belly buttons. The correlation between the two is obvious, but the physical connection, tenuous, and the relationship between air temperature and belly button exposure is certainly not simple (spring break will throw off your calibration). Using MAF is like using a thermometer, mp is like counting belly buttons.

The plus of using manifold pressure is that it's easy to measure, cheap, and fairly easy to interpret (as long as it's a pressure gauge referenced to a true zero and not the typical car "vacuum" gauge). A much better gauge would be a "mass flow" gauge taken from the MAF output voltage corrected for temperature and absolute outside air pressure ("density altitude"), then displayed as kg/sec. (Your car's computer essentially does this in the process of deciding how much fuel to inject.) As a tuning parameter mp pales in comparison to MAF and there would be absolutely no reason to use it in cases where MAF information is available. However, once the engine is tuned and mp vs rpm vs a/f ratio is determined by dyno runs with the engine in the exact configuration in which it will be used (eg, belly-button exposure counted), those 3 parameters can be charted out and later used to set the power output desired for that engine. (For the dirty details, see the "Aviation Power Management" pdf I gave above).

(Warning! Any further attempts on my part to simplify this will get dangerously weird!)

 

The same relationship can be applied to a lot of famous physicists. Without Maxwells discovery of a constant light speed and his change to Apmere's law, the challenge of unifying Galileo's/Newton's mechanical laws would have never troubled Einstein. Or if Hendrik Lorentz didn't derived Lorentzian Manifolds Einstein wouldn't have a basis for his General Relativity (someone passed along the info about Lorentz's interesting Riemann manifolds, but I forget who.)

Most peopel are Maxwell's, expect for a few individuals who derive and discover based on no teaches or discoveries from the past, which is rare. (expect for Newton, but we all know Newton was an *******.)

 

Which, in our context, begs the question: Why bother?

It bears repeating:

 

Even Newton said, "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants". Special Relativity could be considered a natural progression of a lot of what was going on at the time. General Relativity however, came preciously close to having being drug entirely out of the eather (that's kindof a physics joke). If anything, Newton was arrogant and in his later years, suffering from mercury poisoning due to his chemistry experiments. Einstein was the *******, divorcing his first wife after the birth of their handicapped son (which he didn't want to be bothered with) and eventually hooking up with his first cousin (which would get him on the sex-offenders list these days ... but then Elvis would be there too).

Some people claim that at critical moments in human history, aliens in human form show up to re-direct the course of events. My history and philosophy of science professor ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_S._Westfall ) wrote what many consider to be the definitive biography of Newton, and he brought up this claim, stating that while reading Newton's original writings (he read all that were available), he repeatedly had the feeling that this man was "other-wordly".

 

IIRC, he didn't even divorce her initially, but simply abandoned her.
That might suck from an outsider's perspective, but when you are acutely aware that you have but one life to live, difficult decisions take on an entirely different cast.

Others might call this "divine inspiration". Neither reasoning is rational nor required.

The human imagination is an amazing thing and when that trait in that rarest 1/100 of 1% of the population is allowed to function unfettered by practicality, the highest levels of understanding are revealed.
I think it is another example of the math vs. practical experiment paradigm we've been exploring: Those great minds - Einstein, Pascal, Gauss, Newton, etc. - explained their understanding to us with math. But they came to that understanding - those leaps of comprehension "drug out of the ether" - by running grand experiments in the laboratory of their imagination.

 

True to a point. I would say that a much higher percentage of humans are capable of higher inspiration, but are in situations where operating unfettered is impossible. As to the second, have you ever watched someone working on their car and get stressed out over their clumsiness with the tools. With a little talent and experience, we gearheads can reach for an unseen bolt with a socket on a long extension, "feel" the bolt head, engage, loosen, and then, 9 times of 10, draw it out without dropping it on the floor? How do we do that? Hard to say. It's even harder to explain to someone else how we do that. For many science issues, math is a big part of your toolbox which hopefully also contains many other tools. In my rather limited foray into higher level "abstract algeba", there was a seemingly endless period where I was not only dropping the bolt, I was dropping the extension and the wrench too. After a while though, I started being able to manipulate the bolt without seeing it, so to speak. Whether physics or auto repair, it takes both the right tools and a rather-mystical familiarity with them to get the job done. Your-Imagination-Will-Vary

 

This is true and extremely important, if the psychology of today was known through out those times we could safely bet all of them had a slight autism or asperger's syndrome. The fact that they could 'see' the experiments within their mind may seem natural but the imagination needed to concentrate and predict is "other worldy."

 

True. The last time I had a MP gauge on a car was on a 1970 Camaro with a Holley spread-bore carburetor. I do wish that I had a mixture control and an EGT on the RX8 though. Even at light-throttle highway cruising, I am sure it's still running way rich, and I'd love to lean it to peak EGT and get another 10-20% mpg. Or failing that, a button to switch between "power" and "economy" settings of the ECU.

 

Yep! (Don't ask me how I know this.) Maybe with a touch of "ohhh, it's shiny" ADD thrown in. Makes one wonder how much genius is being medicated into submission these days.

 

yes

Where I expanded on this and suggest that this information could be transfered to another identical engine with a similarly sized turbo and used to make an APPROXIMATION of power is where everyone here seems to disagree with me .

However I have seen numerous dynos that seem to support that and i have not seen anything to contradict it - yet .

 

No one disagrees with you in that this sort of nearly random guessing of output is possible.
The point is why bother?
If you have mass airflow available as a data point, why would you ignore it?

You are holding a digital vernier caliper. Why would you just close one eye and hold your hand up and guess the length?

 

1 it's real easy to do
2 you might not have the MAF information available
3 calibrating the maf is easy to get wrong so is only valuable info when you are 100% sure you got it right (see point 1 again)

 

So is trepanning.

Why would you not and why would you go forward without it?

I wouldn't trust the info from someone that couldn't calibrate the MAF correctly any more than I would their pressure/power assumptions.

You are looking for a short-cut. Go for it. You and anyone else that thinks that information is valuable can go sit in a corner and jerk each other off while the rest of us will use real data to come up with real conclusions that can be used in real situations to make real power.

 

No - I actaully use maf information predominantly to see what gains i get by doing different things . I just find pressure useful as well .

 

so its agreed then? we're all going to Miami Beach to try HiFlite's belly button experiment? we should go for 2 weeks of course- just before spring break and spring break week

 

well - I do prefer that idea to MM's suggestion LOL

 

Where's the link to that thread?!?

 

#231 above. I second Zoom44's suggestion and move that Brettus brings the beer. Fortunately the laws of physics do not preclude the enjoyment of beach babes.

 

Preclude? They require it!

 

There are different dimensions of enjoyment

Genius is ill defined, just as words are a very poor way to communicate.

For example:
MM and Brettus are both right.
OD

 

Though there may be other discussions where the outcome is something to that effect, this is certainly not one of those discussion.

Brettus is asserting that you can effectively and decisively come to the exact same conclusions about tuning and power as you can with mass air flow using instead only manifold pressure. In an attempt to "soften" this ridiculous assertion, he has gradually inserted language into the discussion about "known values" and other terms of equivocation. These insertions have only served to turn his boost argument into one that supports flow without directly conceding the point.

The first post of this thread essentially said what needed to be said about the subject with respect to refuting what Brettus went on to assert.

Sounds like a really cunning Illegal.

 

seeing as MM seems to think I've softened my stance - I here re-submit my very first post in this thread . Note the text in bold .