Car-lovers rejoice! One of the apps developed for the iPhone by a third-party company comes from Dynolicious … an apt company name because their app is a deliciously simple piece of software that turns any iPhone, classic or 3G, into a miniature and easy-to-use version of the sophisticated and expensive testing equipment used by enthusiast magazines, testing laboratories and the car-makers themselves. (iPhone with acceleration results shown). Remember to click to enlarge photos.
Sure, all their big-bucks fancy-shmancy test gear costs a lot more and is probably more accurate than an iPhone outfitted with Dynolicious, but there’s a huge saving grace apart from making all this info available to anyone with an iPhone: It costs $12.99.
And Dynolicious will run, with all its features, on iPhones (classic or 3G) or iPod Touch models running 2.0 firmware. You may now leave this screen to visit Dynolicious.com and then the iTunes Store to get the latest iPhone and iPod Touch software so you can download Dynolicious … Is it easy? Well, I did it myself … and without help from my wife! In our house, that means it’s easy. Simple, even.
Okay, are you back? Good.
Our home is in a desert with plenty of truly empty, flat and long roads. The area reminds me of Orange County, CA, 30 years ago, when the place was still filled with orange and lemon groves and fields growing strawberries, sugar beets and every other kind of agriculture far as the eye could see. They grow sand out our way, and the occasional Joshua Tree, cactus and Wal-Mart. All seem to thrive, though we shop at Costco (don’t cotton much to Wal-Mart’s anti-unionism, their world’s largest fleet of diesel-spewing trucks and a few other things).
Click below for much more on how the iPhone and iPod Touch can provide a passel of performance reports for any vehicle.
In fact, car-makers from around the world regularly stage new car introductions in our desert, often for cars and trucks not even sold in the US; seems Asian and Euro journalists enjoy junkets to Palm Springs as much as North American car journos like going to Tokyo and Frankfurt (the summer-long hot-weather testing by every car-maker in the world, in somewhat-nearby Death Valley, is for another posting).
So, we picked a long, empty and flat road (about 3 miles from our front door) and put our 2002 Toyota 
Prius hybrid, with 55,000 miles, through some initial Dynolicious paces. (Skidpad testing results using the Dynolicious software for iPhone and iPod Touch).
Our 0 to 60 time was a blazing 15.31 seconds. We covered the 1/8-mile in 13.20 seconds at 55.4 miles per hour, and the complete ¼-mile in 20.42 seconds at 69.3mph. Our maximum speed in the test was 69.5mph (which means my foot left the accelerator, which automatically stops the test session, fairly quickly when my co-driver yelled, “That’s the ¼!”).
And our Prius’ peak horsepower? A veritably throbbing 62!
Dyno uses the accelerometer hardware built into iPhones and can measure the performance characteristics of any vehicle (even motorcycles; I’m sure we’ll soon see reports of all sorts of weird things being “tested”). No external wires or equipment is necessary. Don’t even have to plug it into a cigarette lighter (or whatever they call them these days).
Once stopped and ready for a timed test run, input your vehicle’s weight and a few other details, including what Dyno calls drivetrain loss (though we like the term “parasitic drag” better) and the iPhone + Dyno are enabled to work their magic.
But don’t start just yet. Calibrate the iPhone (which takes about one minute) and slip it into a cradle or cupholder and your test session is on. The iPhone starts timing when you hit the gas. We found it’s best to wrap the iPhone in some foam rubber to keep it from moving during testing or being influenced by vibration from the vehicle. A passenger holding the iPhone steady in their lap during a run seems to work well, too. (If the iPhone can be properly mounted, even a 998cc F4 MV Agusta can be a test subject).
Dynolicious also maintains a history of test runs, displaying averages and trends in results. It also allows entry about modifications performed to your vehicle (new exhaust system, different tires or wheels or a different engine chip, for example) and will instantly show before-and-after results to easily identify gains or losses. Results are available in “time slip” form and as a graphic showing G’s, horsepower, distance and speed. It definitely adds new dimensions to “test and tune” sessions.
Not having a suitable area to drive around in circles as fast as possible until the wheels start sliding out of control, we haven’t yet tried the skidpad feature of the app. But if the horsepower, speed and times recorded during test runs are any indication, skidpad figures should be fairly accurate.
We’ve had our iPhones for quite some time now (at least in terms of a world with a 5-minute news cycle) and last week picked up our 3Gs. Its performance, compared to the classic, is outstanding, especially when it comes to truckin’ around the Web; Apple says the new 3G network works 3-times faster than iPhone classic, and we think it’s often faster than that. A quantum leap in online speed, definitely.
And a quantum leap for casual and serious tuners, both those looking for the most speed and horsepower from their car, truck or motorcycle, as well as those trying to create the best balance of speed, horsepower and engine efficiency for improved miles-per-gallon.
Comments