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Ignition_Key and his Accord

On the day Shawn was performing our first dyno test of a 2008 V6 6MT Accord, TOV reader "Ignition_Key" was flying into Cleveland, OH to take delivery of his own car from another one of our readers, "HONDA AVFM". "HONDA AFVM" works at Motorcars Honda in Cleveland Ohio and apparently took good care of "Ignition_Key". It's the must-read feel-good story of the week.

Shortly after Shawn posted the Dynapack results of the aforementioned test, "Ignition_Key" posted an offer for us to dyno his car here in Georgia. It turns out "Ignition_Key" lives not too far from the TOV's global headquarters, so it was very easy for us to set a time this morning at Dynolab in Marietta, GA and perform today's tests.

Before we made the day's first pull, Finny (that's Ignition_Key's offline name) asked what I thought his car would make, and without thinking much, I predicted 235whp. So we made the first pass, and the car dutifully put down 234.4 whp. I figured I'd be close, but I also figured my number was a little conservative. So after a brief cooldown, we made another pass. This time the car made 237.5whp. Not bad, but being that it was only the 2nd pass, I figured there could be more in store. We made a few more passes, and the car's power kept notching upwards, until we finally had back to back runs with essentially identical results. The final figures: 239.5 hp and 224 lb-ft at the wheels.

Click to enlarge

By Comparison For your reference we've run a few more plots, one pitting Finny's 2008 Accord V6 6MT against the 2008 Accord V6 5AT, and the other one showing the difference between the 2007 TL-S 6MT and 2008 Accord V6 6MT. On the TL-S vs Accord chart, the difference looks pretty dramatic, but keep in mind that these dyno sessions took place nearly 6 months apart and the atmospheric conditions between those two days differed greatly. The dyno system tries to account for the differences in atmospheric conditions by applying standard SAE correction factors. Given the high temperatures during the TL Type-S' testing, the TL-S was given a rather large correction factor of 1.04. Today's conditions during the test of the Accord were closer to ideal, thus the Accord's results only had a correction factor of 1.01 applied. Interestingly, overlaying the uncorrected plots (3rd graph) shows that the Accord motor's output is nearly identical to the TL Type-S's. So then the question is: Are the standard SAE correction factors fully applicable or are they overcompensating for the difference in conditions? The only way to answer that question would be to re-test the TL Type-S under nearly identical conditions.

Accord V6 5AT vs 6MT

'07 TL Type-S 6MT vs '08 Accord V6 6MT

'07 TL Type-S 6MT vs '08 Accord V6 6MT (uncorrected)

Video Clip