Caithness
15+ Year Contributor
- 342
- 1
- Nov 2, 2003
-
Tampa,
Florida
The short version- I went back to the track after having made some changes and ran a new best of 12.180 @ 111.45 on the 14b with a 1.718 60'. 110 Sunoco, 25psi (I assume, I just pulled the WG line and was too busy to check boost during runs). 26 degrees timing peak.
Long version-
The last time out I hadn't even finished bumping up timing and boost before the track closed due to yet another breakage. I knew she had more in her just in boost alone (~21-22 psi max last time out). I decided to come back on the first Thursday test and tune after two weeks of big events, which was this Thursday. This turned out to be a huge mistake as there were 200+ cars there. Last time there were only 90 because it rained in Tampa causing most Tampons to stay home, but of course as it said in my last thread about 10 of those 90 cars broke on the track causing huge delays.
After working on the car all night, getting two hours of sleep, going to school, and then then getting ready to go to the track nice and early, I got there late because the alignment shop held the car longer than expected. I did my track prep quickly and got in line around 7:30. My car did not move again until 9:15. When I finally got my first run around 9:30, the nice, relatively warm and dry night had turned cold and damp and the track was already a bit slick. I went out and did a sort of a pre-launch to try to warm up my frozen tires. I got to the line and slipped the clutch out off the 5000 rpm stutter only to spin the fronts to a 1.9 sixty foot time. Result: 12.388 at 111- .006 slower than my previous best on less boost and timing. Annoying. At least I put a 1+ second whooping on the yellow Mustang in the other lane.
I got back in line and at this point the track was so slick they stopped the slick tires cars from running- street tires only. I got up to the burnout box and did a full launch through the staging lights. I was thinking that I could get the moisture off my tires and warm them up, and maybe clear some moisture in the groove all adding up to a better launch. My theory was proven incorrect. After backing up to stage and suffering the embarrassment of staging with my back tires (remember, 2 hours sleep- I swore I flashed the lights twice but my eyes deceived me
), I slipped the clutch slower than the first time and yet I spun all four, banging off the rev limiter, resulting in an abysmal 2.067 sixty and a 12.5 @ 111.99. Bad, but good enough to beat whatever it was I lined up against (I don't pay much attention to the actual racing aspect of the drag strip, as you may have noticed).
At this point my friends were all leaving, there were maybe 30-40 cars left, and the track was covered in a fog bank so thick you couldn't see the end of it. The night was done. I decided to stick around and at least get some fun out of the night hot-lapping until they closed. At this point it was so moist that I had to run the wipers every 30 seconds and wipe the inside of the windshield with a cloth just to see out.
I lined up with a silver SRT-4 with a black hood and trunk that had been running low 12's at 113 on slicks earlier; I thought it would be a good race but apparently that translates to about mid 13's on street tires by the margin of victory on my timeslip. I was going to try a part-throttle stutterbox launch, a technique that worked well for me in the past on my old bald tires on the street. I got distracted when I was stopped right before entering the burnout box for no helmet, got out to grab my helmet from the back, and then got another warning not to wear flip-flops to the track. By the time I finally got back in the car and up to the line I had forgotten about my part-throttle strategy (again, 2 hours sleep's worth of attention span). I didn't do the pre-launch because my clutch was getting a bit soft and it only seemed to be hurting me anyway. Right as I slipped out the clutch I remembered the part-throttle deal, and I instinctively let off the gas as the clutch engaged. Whatever I did, it worked, and even on that super-slick fog bank of a track I shot off the line with a 1.718 sixty. I knew the launch was good so I did a max effort no-lift shift into second and followed it up with some of my quickest shifting ever going down the track. I navigated to the timeslip shed by sense of smell and after blowing some fog out of the way I found I'd run my fastest time and best launch in the worst conditions. The track capitalized on the heavy fog as an excuse to shut down early and deny me another two or three runs in the remaining 30 minutes.
Anywho, this is the best I'll run on the 14b. I know it could run an 11.99 given better conditions, a 1.6 60', fixing a medium-size boost leak at the throttle body elbow that I didn't have time to fix- hell, I could temporarily pull 100+ pounds from the car in two hours' time and get it done. But to be honest, these last two trips to the track have been no fun at all and at this point I'm pretty fed up with drag racing. When I rolled up to the timeslip shed and got my new best timeslips, it was more a feeling of relief that at least something good had come out of the night than a sense of accomplishment and excitement. Driving an hour through heavy rush-hour traffic to wait two hours before I could get even one run in, spending 30 bucks in travel gas, 20 bucks getting in, and then 40 bucks on race gas, all for a total of 37 seconds on the track, not worth it. I'll go back to the strip sometime this fall, at a private track rental run by a local club and capped at 100 cars, and go run some mid 11's on an Evo 16g, cams, and meth injection. Until then I'm going to focus on autocrossing, which from my limited experience should be a ton of fun and something new after 4 years of focusing on straight-line speed.
Long version-
The last time out I hadn't even finished bumping up timing and boost before the track closed due to yet another breakage. I knew she had more in her just in boost alone (~21-22 psi max last time out). I decided to come back on the first Thursday test and tune after two weeks of big events, which was this Thursday. This turned out to be a huge mistake as there were 200+ cars there. Last time there were only 90 because it rained in Tampa causing most Tampons to stay home, but of course as it said in my last thread about 10 of those 90 cars broke on the track causing huge delays.
After working on the car all night, getting two hours of sleep, going to school, and then then getting ready to go to the track nice and early, I got there late because the alignment shop held the car longer than expected. I did my track prep quickly and got in line around 7:30. My car did not move again until 9:15. When I finally got my first run around 9:30, the nice, relatively warm and dry night had turned cold and damp and the track was already a bit slick. I went out and did a sort of a pre-launch to try to warm up my frozen tires. I got to the line and slipped the clutch out off the 5000 rpm stutter only to spin the fronts to a 1.9 sixty foot time. Result: 12.388 at 111- .006 slower than my previous best on less boost and timing. Annoying. At least I put a 1+ second whooping on the yellow Mustang in the other lane.
I got back in line and at this point the track was so slick they stopped the slick tires cars from running- street tires only. I got up to the burnout box and did a full launch through the staging lights. I was thinking that I could get the moisture off my tires and warm them up, and maybe clear some moisture in the groove all adding up to a better launch. My theory was proven incorrect. After backing up to stage and suffering the embarrassment of staging with my back tires (remember, 2 hours sleep- I swore I flashed the lights twice but my eyes deceived me
), I slipped the clutch slower than the first time and yet I spun all four, banging off the rev limiter, resulting in an abysmal 2.067 sixty and a 12.5 @ 111.99. Bad, but good enough to beat whatever it was I lined up against (I don't pay much attention to the actual racing aspect of the drag strip, as you may have noticed).At this point my friends were all leaving, there were maybe 30-40 cars left, and the track was covered in a fog bank so thick you couldn't see the end of it. The night was done. I decided to stick around and at least get some fun out of the night hot-lapping until they closed. At this point it was so moist that I had to run the wipers every 30 seconds and wipe the inside of the windshield with a cloth just to see out.
I lined up with a silver SRT-4 with a black hood and trunk that had been running low 12's at 113 on slicks earlier; I thought it would be a good race but apparently that translates to about mid 13's on street tires by the margin of victory on my timeslip. I was going to try a part-throttle stutterbox launch, a technique that worked well for me in the past on my old bald tires on the street. I got distracted when I was stopped right before entering the burnout box for no helmet, got out to grab my helmet from the back, and then got another warning not to wear flip-flops to the track. By the time I finally got back in the car and up to the line I had forgotten about my part-throttle strategy (again, 2 hours sleep's worth of attention span). I didn't do the pre-launch because my clutch was getting a bit soft and it only seemed to be hurting me anyway. Right as I slipped out the clutch I remembered the part-throttle deal, and I instinctively let off the gas as the clutch engaged. Whatever I did, it worked, and even on that super-slick fog bank of a track I shot off the line with a 1.718 sixty. I knew the launch was good so I did a max effort no-lift shift into second and followed it up with some of my quickest shifting ever going down the track. I navigated to the timeslip shed by sense of smell and after blowing some fog out of the way I found I'd run my fastest time and best launch in the worst conditions. The track capitalized on the heavy fog as an excuse to shut down early and deny me another two or three runs in the remaining 30 minutes.
Anywho, this is the best I'll run on the 14b. I know it could run an 11.99 given better conditions, a 1.6 60', fixing a medium-size boost leak at the throttle body elbow that I didn't have time to fix- hell, I could temporarily pull 100+ pounds from the car in two hours' time and get it done. But to be honest, these last two trips to the track have been no fun at all and at this point I'm pretty fed up with drag racing. When I rolled up to the timeslip shed and got my new best timeslips, it was more a feeling of relief that at least something good had come out of the night than a sense of accomplishment and excitement. Driving an hour through heavy rush-hour traffic to wait two hours before I could get even one run in, spending 30 bucks in travel gas, 20 bucks getting in, and then 40 bucks on race gas, all for a total of 37 seconds on the track, not worth it. I'll go back to the strip sometime this fall, at a private track rental run by a local club and capped at 100 cars, and go run some mid 11's on an Evo 16g, cams, and meth injection. Until then I'm going to focus on autocrossing, which from my limited experience should be a ton of fun and something new after 4 years of focusing on straight-line speed.
