Hey Curtis pardon my ignorance but what does that opacity measure? Is it unburnt hydrocarbons maybe? I'm just curious...lol I know when I lived in Colo I always thought it was getting to be a Calif East with all the BS

Opacity testing here is just a measure of a beam of light passing through smoke. The higher the percentage, the more light is being blocked off.

OK thanks, was just curious

No problem.

Here in CO with diesel testing, they don't really care what's in the smoke. They just test for how much smoke is coming out. The smoke cold be white, black, grey, whatever... they don't care. Just don't block off too much light and you'll pass.

The thing I hate though is the test is far less involved than testing a gasser. Yet emissions testing on a gasser is only $25, done every two years. A diesel is anywhere from $60-$90 (depending on the shop), and done every year. Freaking ripoff.

That surprises you? Heck, they get you at the pump AND testing.

The perils of owning a more "green" vehicle than a gasser.

Well, dyno run this morning had it's fair share of glitches. The dyno operator had trouble getting it set up to record runs, then the calibration wouldn't set and stay set, so the horsepower and torque numbers ended up way low, and last... the printer wouldn't work.

So we had to write down the dyno results, and got to see the graphs on the screen in between pulls. The opacity meter was also still hooked up, so I got to see the smoke output between the pulls.

Had 3 runs that we were finally able to record.

Stock tune: 189 hp, 376 tq, 39% max opacity
My tune: 223 hp, 409 tq, 48% max opacity
Another tuner's race tune: 225 hp, 393 tq, 76% max opacity

Those are the results, and unfortunately there's not much I can say as far as max power. My tune and the other race tune made close to the same power according to those results, but with very different amounts of smoke. It's fair to say that I can't really compare power because of the dyno calibration. I had other tunes I was also going to compare, but unfortunately the dyno problems plagued us way too much. The only thing I can really compare is smoke, since there wasn't any dyno calibration needed to set it up. Visibly, there was a huge difference in smoke. The guys in the shop noticed that right away.

Peak torque for both of the tunes (not the stock tune) showed up at around 2400 RPM. Peak HP for both tunes showed up at the end test range at about 3500 RPM, basically the HP curve just kept rising until my foot came off the pedal. Both graphs looked almost identical. Basically it seems the rollers weren't putting down nearly enough load. Peak torque and horsepower should have registered at much lower RPM's. Stock tune had peak HP and torque occur at lower RPM's, and HP fell off above 3000 RPM as the stock tuning pulls the fuel back in a hurry.

At this point my only other option is drive out to a different dyno and see what I can do. Maybe I could head up to Greeley and pay a visit to PFI. That's the same shop that dyno'ed Blowby's truck IIRC.

Please note, do not ask me who's tunes I'm testing alongside mine. I will not name names, as I have absolutely zero incentive to start some tuning war, bashing, etc. This is simply a test of my own personal efforts, not someone else's. I simply wanted to see how my efforts stack up against others. Personally I've been very happy with my tuning, but at this point I don't really have concrete power numbers to show everyone. Sorry to disappoint.

Being that this is PHP's forum and out of respect to Bill, I will say that Bill's tunes were not part of that test.

I've bent over as far as I can go. Any further and I'll pull a hammy :disbelief:

Thanks for the update!