I’ve only had the pleasure of being in one dyno room in my lifetime, and it was pretty clean. By clean, I mean no explosion, burn, or flying part scars. But why?

I wonder if the particular dyno room I visited was in a facility that didn’t push engines to the point of failure? Maybe it was because they weren't prototype engines, they modified existing ones.

I’ve heard several horror stories from Caterpillar dyno rooms. Talk about a heckuva rush, to be in charge of throttling the destruction of a brand new engine! Failure is just as important as success in the Research and Development world, and allows for improvements and learning. Arguably, more will be learned due to failure than from success, and not just engines…

The big yellow company also tests brand new equipment by rolling them down hills! Imagine that job for a moment, you get to tumble a multi-million dollar piece of equipment off a cliff, and, basically investigate what happened. Like, what broke first? What broke the easiest? What held up? Will the engine turn over? How mangled is the cab? Could an operator have survived the impact? Can the machine be salvaged for parts?

Sign me up.