My wife drives the car on a daily basis like grandma. I on the other hand drive the car like it's stolen. This supports that the pulley and sri are having a major effect.

 

Except that logically, the two parts should have that dramatic of an effect. An intake isn't going to increase the power that much and a pulley technically increases the power by zero HP.

 

Here is an easy test. Swap cars! If you are a half car ahead, it is the car. Personally, unless everything is the exact same with exception to the mods she has (tire wear and etc.); I think it will become a hairsplitting exercise for what could amount to a couple of tenths of a second. There are a number of things that can cause this. I have gained up to 2 seconds on the track by increasing tire pressure by about 10 psi. Not saying the short ram is not improving power, I just don’t believe it’s doing anything for low end power. As a general rule lightweight pulleys only amount to 4 or 5 hundredths of a second on the track. They just reduce inertia by reducing the weight by a couple of pounds or so. Not sure you would see the gains from a pulley, maybe a mpg or two but that’s about it.

 

Did the same thing this weekend. It's definately not the driver.

 

I did not think it was the driver. I was just being sarcastic. I discussed the pulley w/ a couple of my coworkers today and both felt that with the crankshaft probably weighing at least 50 lbs and the original pulley being about 5 lbs, even if you could lighten the pulley down to 0.5 lbs, the crankshaft is so much heavier it would not make a difference. After round tabling it a while we think any actual benefits (5+thousanths of a second or so) could be from just reducing the overall weight of the car. For the short ram intake, we were on the fence. one guy felt that some SR intakes do improve power enough to gain a tenth of a second or so (about a half car length). If we all had to choose, we unanimously chose the SRI over the pulley. That being said, in autocross and roadracing were every pound counts, alot of drivers might use them.

 

When I go back to roadracemotorsports, I'm going to just get the sri and test again.

 

Good Luck dude. Hope it works out for you.

 

you know that is a really great find. further highlighting the learning aspects of the CVT in regards to USER/Driver Input

 

I have definately learned quite a bit from that paper. I think everyone who has a CVT should read it. The driver inputs can also trick the ecu into preventing the car from shifting. When I am on the track in cvt mode, if the car is about to change the pulley ratio and I want it to stay in a lower gear (higher pulley ratio), if i tap the throttle 2 times it will shift back to where it was and stay there for a while. Left foot breaking also works but i'm not as good with that. Working on that.