I agree that the 162 main will suffice for us most of the time without much notice here in FL….fortunately for us we are having somewhat of a cool Fall which can give us an opportunity to test in all kinds of conditions…for example, this saturday it was about 50 degrees in the morning with about 80% humidity–cold and damp for us Floridians.  By Saturday afternoon, the front had past by and the humidity had dropped into the 50% range and the temperature was high 70s – low 80s.  And yes, we’d ultimately like to use the aim software to do just as you suggest — compare peak rpm and rate of rpm increase at different weather conditions….honestly can’t say if track conditions that change with the weather would effect engine performance, maybe someone can chime in on that.

Dont want to get too complicated or consider too many variables, so as not to confuse him and loose his interest.  My goal is to come up with something that is fun for him and allows him to learn something about two stroke engines in the process.  I may call the guys at AIM after Vegas and see if they have any good ideas.

I hear ya on the science teacher thing…this is a 10 week research project and he’s 11 years old…I didnt  have the academic disipline at 20 to complete something like this!  School sure has changed since the 70’s.

Thanks Eric, Dan and Mr Towles for your interest and replies, we appreciate all of your input.

Mr Towles — thanks for making the tire issue clear as day for us, I think you are pointing to the same variable that Dan has pointed out in his post, that tires can possibly cause flawed results unless we were to test new tires every session which is not an option for us.  I think you are correct about the only way to truly prove the hypothesis is to run it on a dyno with no values input for weather adjustments, which may be an option depending on schedule and timing.  We could use that dyno run as a control result for the experiment, and at the same time introduce Matthew to what a dyno is and what it does….Thanks Mr T!  See you guys around soon…planning on driving any this weekend?  Bring Corey out, I could use a good humbling experience! ;-)

Fortunately for me/us, this a 6th grade science project and not a senior engineering thesis, and we’re not testing to prepare for racing, so the research will be what it will be, regardless of whether we see changes or not.  After we’ve gathered the results, if we cannot see noticeable differences in our data collection due to weather conditions, then we can “turn the table” on our hypothesis and question why we didn’t find what we thought we’d find and why we think we were not able to prove our hypothesis, thus bringing about new hypothesis — How much does tire wear effect peak engine rpm and rpm increase?  or more clearly, How does tire temperature effect engine performance?…and on, and on…I guess its more about an introduction to using the traditional scientific method model and seeing what arises from following that lead.

I realize there are countless variables that could possibly effect our research, however I think that bringing too many variables into the experiment for his first research project might be overwhelming and confusing for him right now.  That’s why we chose weather as the variable — easy information to collect and weather does effect performance in one way or another, or so it’s been written.

We’re still open to other ideas that may produce a larger range of results, however we’ve got to keep it simple to understand for an 11 yr old.  Again, all comments and responses are welcomed and appreciated.

And thanks Dan for the kind words of support, I’ll update this thread as we move through our research.  Please share with your wife as you stated, I’d be intreested to know her thoughts and if she has anything additional to suggest that may help us along during the project.

Thanks again everyone for taking time to comment, much appreciated.