Shinwa Torque Checker

[dinglem]

Lucky eBay purchase last week. Only bidder so got it for around 10dollars(!) I already had the Shinwa Motor Dresser dyno and the super-rare Rolling Road from new back in the day so this completes the set!

Looks mint and even comes with the original instructions.

[NomadRacer]

That's very cool. Can I get a look at the rolling road?

[dinglem]

I'll try to put up a group shot of them all together shortly

[dinglem]

In the meantime....

[dinglem]

[NomadRacer]

Nice! I missed this era of equipment, don't know what I was doing but it must have been fun... legal? Probably not!

[dinglem]

We used these for picking standard motors out of a massive batch of stock, unopened fixed timing cans, and for that the only thing you could really check was like-for-like comparisons. We never tuned any motors on them, that's for sure. If a standard, over the counter 27T Single was revving at 18,000rpm and a hand picked team 27T Single sent by a sponsor was revving at 22,500rpm you knew which one was going to be quicker in the car, and so it proved, based on the same gearing on the RR giving a higher top speed and more importantly, from the results we saw on the track. Pretty basic stuff, and very fine margins, but some info was better than no info, and most people at that time had no info.

This is going through from the late 80's to around 1993 and they were still giving us the information we needed to know by the end of that time. Just a rough guide, and better than going in blind and just chucking a motor in and hoping it was a good 'un. We certainly got enough national series A Final showings, wins and FTD's and were never the slowest down the main straight! We knew through trial and error if you had a stock at over 22,500rpm on our dyno (they all varied but that was our benchmark) you were going to be as quick if not quicker than the rest of the A final field. Simple as that really. All of our hand picked team MG standards were at around that level, and obviously there was a gradual improvement through the years, and there was about a 4000rpm drop to the best over-the-counter standards we had, and still have, from our pre-sponsorship days. Also good for sticking back on the dyno between qualifying heats to check the figures hadn't dropped significantly during the day. We used to get sent matching pairs of hand-picked standards every few months through the season to make sure were making the A's and getting the MG name into the magazine tech-spec listings.

We all know the main headline 'top speed' on the RR, or 'max revs' on the dyno are only a tiny part of the performance story, same goes for full sized cars on the road. These just gave a very small insight into whether you were going the right way with your motor choices at a time when people bought their motors for how they looked and the pretty labels over anything else.

Plus, the main things is, they looked cool as fhook!

[dinglem]

A full set!

[jdpuk1]

Hello,

Do you still have a copy of the instructions for the Torque Checker?

If so could you post a picture?

[dinglem]

I do somewhere but filed away somewhere. I will do a little digging.

[jdpuk1]

Awesome, thanks very much

J

[jdpuk1]

Hi,

Any luck on the instructions ?

John

[Lurker]

Wow! I remember the motor checker, but I’ve never seen one of those rolling roads before. Thank you for posting.