Till this thread, I haven't seen a problem with Danno. It seemed that he has offered some sound advice in the 5.9 forum for a while, and leapt at the chance to answer tech questions. I dunno about Danno. I liked the guy, but...
What I thought was iffy was that he sat back out of this header thread until devilBrad posted up the pics of the flanges, then he jumped in out of nowhere and had something smart to say. So he was watching the thread and waiting for an opportunity to hit John. He says he didn't want to be first to say anything because he was afraid of being struck by lightning. Cute, a reference to the growing cadre of people who resent John and laughingly refer to him as the Mopar god. After reading Danno's description of how his lifter trick works, I would suggest that he not only fear lightning, but also people who end up damaging their valvetrain when they decide to try thinner head gaskets, or have their heads surfaced and that missing .020 of "slop" becomes sorely missed. Nuff said.
The oiling thing was a bit bad, though, when Bryan called him on it. Nice to see that Danno owned up to it quickly and didn't get defensive.
One thing bothers me though.. this quote here:
If there is something bad about John we need to know it. I won't hesitate to make sure people don't get screwed here, so Danno needs to post up these incredible behind the scenes conversations with his friends. I'm eager to know what a guy who makes zero profit on parts and sells the best flowing R/T heads on the market could possibly have done to piss off your two friends. I've pored over every big Mopar forum I could find (over 10 of them so far), and I have yet to see a single thing posted by any of his customers that would lead anyone to believe he is a bad person. The only thing I've ever seen was Forseti's recent rage because John refused to prep his bare block. If you didn't read that, John was trying to save the guy money and also keep his own name clean just in case the guy messed up on the engine build.
In my own experience, I became a Southeast Performance customer after getting hosed by the other big shop. I ignored the warnings from John's group and found out the hard way what it takes to get decent power out of the Dakota. I was a customer first, and then a friend, much the same as everyone else who does business with him.
While Danno is at it maybe he could explain what he means by "seen the results of his games"? Whats that about? Lets hear it Danno - what results have you seen?
Maybe then we can talk about people who steal designs from people who trusted them or try to snake suppliers out from under people, and how that ends up biting them in the ass. Or didn't your friends tell you about all that stuff?
As far as Danno talking about dyno queens...thats another cute response from him, and another one without merit.
Up until November of last year I ran with a much more rarefied crowd, namely the E46 M3 owners. I had a 2002 and a 2005 M3, and I used both of them for road and drag racing. People chased dyno numbers as much as they chased time slips. Each camp had their arguments. The dyno guys would say the timeslip crowd was innaccurate because of different humidity, track prep, tuning, foot skills, tits in the crowd, whatever. The track guys would say the dyno guys could simply apply the wrong correction for better numbers, or even use a more powerful fan to blow more air in the motor. They argued about using 3rd vs 4th gear, hood up vs. hood down, etc. Naturally, the guys in each crowd would turn those excuses on each other when they lost grudge matches at the dyno or bleach box. Heck, the dyno guys knocked different brands of dynos, and the drag racers fought over ET vs. trap.
Personally, I just use a $30 GTech basic unit to compare parts and builds, and I think its just fine. Thats how I saw my KRaCkhead motor wasn't the greatest when I lost 2 seconds over my stock motor with the Kenne Bell S/C. Unfortunately I have a lot of pressure from people on this forum to come up with some actual numbers for you guys so I guess my GTech isn't going to cut it.
I have a 500+ hp R/T sitting dead in my driveway, waiting for a single, simple bracket to come back from the machine shop. It currently has KB mids on there, with a dual system going through a 2/2 FM. Let me get this thing finished, I'll get the DFI set up, and I'll do some runs for both crowds before and after.
The problem I see is that no one is going to come away from this very satisfied. I have been through arguments like this time and time again, and it just never rests.
Case in point: Steve Dinan, owner of Dinan Performance, came under heavy fire from the M3 guys when his S2 package for the M3 failed to deliver on its 361bhp claims. Many people were angry when their cars failed to dyno much higher than stock. Some people sued. Steve personally answered every customer's questions and pointed out that at every single dyno used by a private party, the intakes were supplied by a shop fan in most cases. In my own experience here, I have yet to see a chassis dyno supplied by anything bigger. Steve's company uses a wind tunnel fan that can supply something like 250,000 cfm, and can easily replicate wind speeds over 100mph for dyno work. On his dyno, the cars make 361hp, consistently.
A lot of people with a technical mind immediately saw Dinan's point. Some didn't, and the badmouthing continues. Yet the guy keeps turning out quality products and his business grows.
In our case we have a guy that seriously has been trying to get these headers built for two years. Its not because they suck, because he is a joke, or whatever you guys want to come up with. Its because no one cares about the Dakota as a market, and if every single one of the R/T owners decided to purchase these headers it isn't enough to get us noticed. I tried earlier last year to get some major manufacturers interested in some of my ideas for our trucks, and aside from doing me the favor of letting me get all the development done so they could sell the product, I got nowhere.
So guys, what happens if and when I get this machine rolling, and I post up my gains over my KB mids? What is going to happen then? In my mind I would think thats satisfactory, because I'll be using a built, tuned motor thats pushing quite a bit more air than a stocker, so these headers should show respectable gains. Many of you are running mids and shorties on lightly modded motors, along with a few H/C packages. It should be the right thing to do, yes?
Probably not. I will get people saying that I tweaked the tune so the Kenne Bell's looked worse, and there will be at least one guy who says he knows the truck should be turning better numbers on the KB's because his cousin has the exact same setup as me and I should be at least 30hp more. There will be people who claim that I tweaked the A/F for John's headers and there's no way the truck will be streetable. Someone 4000 miles away is likely to say I'm lying and all my time slips and dyno runs are faked, and if I was local he'd show me what a real truck could do. No way I pulled that ET with that trap speed. I've seen this all before.
Despite this, I'm still going to do the tests, and you can beat each other up trying to explain the results for all I care. S&S will explain the flange design, and the truck will make the numbers, you guys can work the rest out yourselves. Those who want to support John will do so, those who won't will still bitch about the flange, the collector size, and their day jobs. Nothing will be resolved.
And John will still keep selling top quality motors, despite all the "help".
