Portable Dyno( or Road Dyno) VS Hub Dyno

Hi everyone,

I discovered the existence of the Portable Dyno (or Road Dyno) with a sensor hanging at your wheel to measure the torque and the power (with curve has the press).

Would you be more reliable than a virtual dyno software?

I have a lot of doubt about the reliable and the repeatability of the results. I hesitate between the purchase of this type of device and the manufacture of a Dyno hub. What do you think?

I had to google that, and I gotta say, kudos for the idea! It definitely looks like a nice tool for your average hobby/bootstrapped tuner

Having said that, from what I understand, it will basically be like a less precise inertia-type dyno. You can only get WOT measurements, and those would really be more of an approximation than quantitative measurements.

The one I found was €2100, so it's not like it's cheap. For a professional tuner I think a real dyno is a must, but for someone just working on their car with no access to a dyno, might be worth it compared to the cost of a real dyno.

They dont measure torque, they only look at wheel speed and derive power or torque from acceleration. Some may be able to give reasonably accurate WOT power figures provided they factor the large list of major variables in and that is all you want, but they are not going to be able to give you any indication of torque in steady-state conditions. Typically the vast majority of your tuning work is done steady-state on a chassis dyno. This type of tool would not be very useful for most EFI tuning applications in my opinion.

Can someone post a direct link to the product, please?

If it's what I suspect, there may be, as Adam pointed out, way too many variables that it can't take into account.

However, for comparative testing, anything that accurately records what affects a change makes to the same vehicle, can be useful.

I have seen a few very similar looking devices, not sure if they are clones or rebranded, but "Dynoraod" or "Dynopro" are a couple of examples. https://mydynopro.co.uk/ https://www.magicmotorsport.com/car-dyno-dynoroad/. They generally involve an acceleration run, then a coast down run to derive drag etc.

You are better off with a conventional automotive data logger that can do user maths channels. Take in vertical & horizontal acceleration/displacement, a factor for rolling resistance and power factor for wind resistance with assumed CD. Will give you calculated wheel power at any logged load/rpm. Something with quality internal sensors/gps frequency and enough inputs/software power rather than some shitty gimic. You could do this a couple of decades ago with a quality logger which was at least as repeatable as dyno dynamics load dynos, it's even easier now with CAN protocols.