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Agreed, it will never work well. The engine is not running under load, therefore despite the RPM, it is not burning much fuel just spinning.



No, allow me to elucidate. My car is running under load. I made up a piggyback pulley for my dual mode damper (DMD, as you veterans call it) that is essentially a power takeoff. I have a lot of implements in shop and the back 40 that need a power source, and the John Deere 1400 Series loader backhoe's power takeoff is on the blink, so the Contour is pressed into yet another use: driving a hydraulic pump. I run a Gates Poly-V belt drive off the Duratec's modified FEAD to a Parker-Hannefin inPhorm 7900 hydraulic pump which, combined with the proper manifold block and accumulator, do a great job of supplying liquid power to much of my shop.

So in that regard, as long as I'm running the lathe, tablesaw, etc in my shop and hence using the hydraulic pump, the engine is running under load. Maybe not enough load though.

I saw a used Mustang MD250 inertia and eddy current chassis dyno on auction once at a liquidation sale, so maybe I can get one of those plumbed in to supply some real load to the engine. As an added bonus, all that hot water those dynos produce has to go somewhere - into my hot tub - which would be like killing 2 birds with one stone. But that's on the long term horizon.

Short term, I still have the not-enough-heat problem. I guess I will have to try loading the alternator, as Horseybug suggested. I still wonder, though, if moving to a stand alone system like the TEC-II would help here.

I wish I could post pictures but I'm kinda new at this computer thing. In terms of computer savvy-ness, I'm a n00bie; I kinda took the late 90's off because I thought that whole Internet thing would blow over. Maybe I can get my step-son's girlfriend to help me here (she seems pretty good with her AOL account).

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How do you hit a Deer fast enough in reverse to total a "98?



Oh man, that was a weird night.

-Harden Thomas