FLOGGING IT

To test the electrical interference resistance the box was attached directly to the coils of a running engine. While the engine was running the PROgressive was put through its paces and worked reliably each time, every time. This may not appear to be a laboratory high tech test but it is as race car real life as it is going to get.

I thought I would show you what the solenoid sees. I set up a test on our flow bench and logged it. Here you see a full ten second pulse sequence using a common .110 orifice nitrous solenoid. While there is little need to progress the solenoid longer than 3 seconds in drag racing it does verify that the box can do the job. If you need to progress longer than this then you have other chassis issues that need addressed first.

This strip chart shows a normal nitrous run with readings taken just before the solenoid and just before the jet. Note the rise time on the blue line as the line fills up and the jet pressure meets the pre-solenoid pressure. It fills up fairly quickly.

Now, let’s look at what takes place in progressive mode. The rise time takes a little longer to reach full steam (which is what we want) and the total flow available to the jet is reduced. The blue line also shows how you can run out the progressive for the full ten seconds. If I had programmed it to go to full flow, after a second or so you would see the blue line rise up to almost meet the red line for the rest of the race. I say almost because, as you noticed in the first normal nitrous run, the pressure drops off the longer the run goes. This is due to the bottle volume being reduced.

Zooming in to the rise time using the progressive, we can see a curve as the jet flow rises to meet the solenoid reading. This is exactly what we need and the first 2 tenths to a second of activation time is what does the most good as a traction control. The rest is wasted energy.