OT: Dyno services, What are the economics of it all? Options

[bondo]

I know of this portable chassis dyno for sale..

My current employer insists that I could make money hand over fist running a dyno shop. It's true that I could charge a premium as being the "only dyno service in the county", but perhaps there is a reason there are no dynos in this county?

I would have to get a loan to start up, and be profitable enough to be able to pay back the loan and make a living. Anyone know of a basic business model for a dyno shop? I assume I would need insurance for the equipment, as well as liability insurance. And then there's advertizing, etc. Does this all work out to a easy money, or just scraping by?

And then there's the question only I can answer... Do I really want to run a dyno all day?

[lapuwali]

I will agree that if all you offer are dyno runs, that you won't make much money, as you won't attract that many customers unless you offer the pulls at a really low price.

The money you make is off "consulting" (i.e., offering tuning advice), and parts sales.

I'll disagree pretty strongly that acceleration dynos are "junk". Many of the most expensive "load" chassis dynos offer computer controlled systems that allow them to operate in "acceleration mode", because a lot of real-world drivability problems only show up this way. The most expensive systems in the world, used by the F1 boys, essentially allow them to "record" and "play back" laps on any racetrack they come across, and apparently lots of other real-world problems show up in these systems than the old "brake" dynos, or they'd not be spending the zillions of dollars required to make this shit work.

The key to getting any dyno, but particularly an acceleration (aka "inertia") dyno to work is data acquisition. If you can record what the engine is doing during a pull on the dyno, then there's no real need to bring the dyno up to some set engine speed and hold it there while you tweak it. You'll have the data sitting there to be analyzed. You can even put someone else on the dyno while you're poring over the data from an earlier pull.

If you have all of this stuff, and know how to use it, and know how to interpret the data (very difficult), then translate it into actions that the customer can perform to improve their engine (turn this knob, buy this part, etc, which is even harder still), THEN you will make money with a dyno. You don't even have to sell them ALL of the parts, though you'll be more attractive to customers if you have the parts to sell, and even more attractive if you can install them, too.

Other shops AT AN AIRPORT are complaining about noise? That's pretty serious. Bikes can be very loud (and most now rev a lot higher than 8000rpm), but small aircraft are pretty noisy, too.