How My DeMan 4.5L Spyder Made MORE Power on WORSE Gas! - TheSmokingTire

Hello kids! Welcome to World Motorsports' incredible wind tunnel dyno down here in Torrance, California. On the dyno right now is my 718 Spyder with the four and a half liter Deman Motorsport naturally aspirated engine. I love everything about this car except for one thing that stinks. And today, with the help of Mitch and Scott of M Engineering, we're gonna fix it. You see, this thing makes unbelievable power. It's so fun to drive. I can use it as a car. I can use it in the canyons. People use them as race cars and they're excellent. But when I got this car two years ago, Rick Deman said, you have to run the plutonium. So I carry this yellow case around with Boostane. This turns California 91 into 98 octane racing fuel, which I was told keeps my engine very healthy. But with the latest advances in tuning technology, Mitch from M Engineering, one of the best tuners on the planet, says that he can tune this car to run on California 91 pump octane with minimal losses to the power, which sounds very appealing to me. Most people don't go to the dyno to lose power. They go to make more. We're probably gonna make a little bit less, but we're gonna improve my convenience in the process. So let's see what it does on a baseline run with the race fuel in it. And then they're gonna play on the computer. We're gonna fill it up with 91 and see how close we can get. Depending on the car, dyno tuning it can either be very straightforward or a little more complicated. In the case of my 718 Spyder, the first thing you have to do in order to get the car on the dyno at all is remove the rear diffuser so that you can strap it down. The very first thing they did was remove the ECU entirely and back up the tune on their computers. That way, if what they were doing didn't work out, they could always go back to the way it was before. I showed up to the dyno with two gallons of race gas remaining. We'd probably burn that off on the dyno. We had to do some baseline pulls to see what the engine was doing and what kind of power it made. Fortunately, the numbers were very strong, consistent with what Demand's engine dyno showed before the motor originally went into the car. All right, so Mitch and Scott have done some baseline pulls on the 98 Octane. Three pulls and what we've got is 517 wheel horsepower at 8,100 RPM and 356 pound-feet of torque at 5,800 RPM. That's actually a very strong number. When Rick originally built the engine, the dyno tested it on a bench and he said 568 horsepower, 450 torque on an engine dyno. Now, as we know, no two dynos read alike and going from an engine dyno to a chassis dyno throws in a whole other set of curves. But according to Mitch and Scott, 517, 356 at the wheels is what they normally see for cars of this type. That's a big number. So the goal is now we've got basically no race gas left in there. We're going to throw in 10 gallons of 91 Octane, do it all over again, and hopefully we don't lose too much. After about an hour of tapping keys on their computers, I filled it up with nothing but California 91 garbage Octane. This was the real goal for today, to get the engine to run properly on regular pump gas. I expected to lose a little bit of power because that's how Octane ratings normally work. Somehow on the very first pass, the power went up. So it went up. Uh, all right. Is that normal? Fuck out of here. Really? Plus six, plus ten. What a delightful surprise. Rick's off the shelf map on 98 Octane. This is now Mitch and Scott's M engineering Protune on 91 Octane. And on the first pull, it's six more horsepower and 10 more torque at the wheel. 523, 366. That was not expected. I'm so excited for you. They kept fiddling and doing more pulls, and the engine started to sound different, smoother. The exhaust coming out the back was cleaner with less soot. And ultimately, we made 527 horsepower and 368 pound feet of torque at the wheels on 91 Octane. That was frankly unbelievable. I then consulted with Mitch's Porsche expert, Scott, about how that could happen. I expected the power level to go down because that's usually what happens when you go from race gas to, uh, 91, especially in our shitty California 91. But Scott from M engineering here said, I don't think so. And, uh, so thank you for fiddling the keys, Scott. Yeah, sure thing, man. And, uh, basically how did that happen? Well, we start with our OTS calibration and we data log every run and review that data and optimize ignition timing and a lot of fueling changes on that map actually to get the most you can of the 91 here in California. That's usually a little rough to run on. Can you, as you're doing pulls, I think you did like three or four pulls on the 98 and then maybe four or five pulls on the 91. Can you, are you just, just looking at numbers or can you actually feel it in the car also? Uh, yeah, you can feel it on the car. The last couple of pulls, when the cats get hot, you just, it just feels really smooth and you're like, I wouldn't felt really good. And then you go review the data and make sure that it matches up with what you felt and what the numbers show. And you've done quite a few of these four fives, right? And so is this, is, is my car, uh, pretty consistent with what you expect out of a four or five? I think for this four or five on this dino setup, it's right in where we like to see it. And with the protein we did today, we got a few more ponies out of it. I mean, I I'm super impressed with the numbers. Uh, Mitch said, uh, our peak horsepower was five 27. Our peak torque was three 68 at the wheels, but he said across the entire RPM range, an average of about 20 horsepower for any given RPM value. That's an unbelievable gain for going down in octane rating, right? Yeah. Especially on a pump gas tune and a car to make power like that everywhere. I think you're going to really like it. I'm extremely stoked. I did not expect this to go this way. I thought, oh, we'll lose five, 10 horsepower, but I won't have to put the stuff in. And now here we are with a more power, a smoother torque curve, and I don't have to put the stuff in. I mean, that's amazing. Oh yeah. We were coming here today to just not lose power and to make power. It's like, Hey man, we'll take it. I mean, it really does show the benefits of a pro tune from a place like M engineering, particularly when you're working with a built, you know, racing engine. Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. Well, thank you, Scott. And Mitch is hiding over there. He doesn't want to be on camera anymore, but thanks for coming down to LA and doing it. Shout out to world motor sports for the use of their dino lovely folks down here and the best dino in the area for sure. And, uh, I can't wait to go get behind the wheel of this car and go driving. We'll see And remember always fight your tickets on the off the record app available in the Android and iOS store, or go to off the record.com slash TST.