I don't think the gearing is the biggest factor in this equation. I am guessing its power to weight ratio, and rotational weight. I have longer gears but a shorter final. The ratios work out to be fairly close. If I remeber right it about a 2% difference depending on which gear your in. I was going to go with 2.572, 1.684, 1.115, .833, .617 with a 4.929 final. But I was under the assumption the transmission was out of a 94 USDM GSX. Not a early style Galant VR4 trans. So I just went with what it had for gearing and freshened everything up with a tweaked stage 2 from TRE.


I was told when I bought it that it had 380hp and your DSM link was reading 387? I really need to get my car up on a Dyno and find out what its actually pushing. I will need to if I want to get into a race class.

What does your car weight with you in it? With my fat ass in my car its ~2890 +/- 15 lbs. 3/4 a tank of gas with out me or the passenger seat it weights in at 2575.



Hopefully we can get on the same track at the same time again and give each other a run.

RusherRacing said:

Um not sure what you did there Rich,

I don't think the gearing is the biggest factor in this equation. I am guessing its power to weight ratio, and rotational weight. I have longer gears but a shorter final. The ratios work out to be fairly close. If I remeber right it about a 2% difference depending on which gear your in. I was going to go with 2.572, 1.684, 1.115, .833, .617 with a 4.929 final. But I was under the assumption the transmission was out of a 94 USDM GSX. Not a early style Galant VR4 trans. So I just went with what it had for gearing and freshened everything up with a tweaked stage 2 from TRE.


I was told when I bought it that it had 380hp and your DSM link was reading 387? I really need to get my car up on a Dyno and find out what its actually pushing. I will need to if I want to get into a race class.

What does your car weight with you in it? With my fat ass in my car its ~2890 +/- 15 lbs. 3/4 a tank of gas with out me or the passenger seat it weights in at 2575.



Hopefully we can get on the same track at the same time again and give each other a run.

Click to expand...

Yeah, maybe at Hastings in August Okay, I'll stop begging now.

Chris if my car can hold together I will be at Hastings!

RusherRacing said:

What does your car weight with you in it? With my fat ass in my car its ~2890 +/- 15 lbs. 3/4 a tank of gas with out me or the passenger seat it weights in at 2575..

Click to expand...

It weighs 3230 with my fat ass in it and 3/4 tank of gas.
I guess that's about a 300 lb difference, eh?

This is all sort of coming together and making sense. With equal horsepower and lighter weight, of course your car would be faster on the straights.

What is most fascinating to me is that my car appears to be a lot faster than I thought it was. Gear ratios don't lie, so according to StealthTT's table I was hitting 146 mph at Road America last year! Three times a lap! That also means 157 mph is within reach if I can hit 7000 rpm in 5th gear.

Oh. lordy, I would love to end my racing career knowing that I hit 157 mph at Road America. I can't wait to tell that story when they haul me off to the Iowa Home for the Bewildered.

This also means at Road America i am going to be sqeezing every last MPH out of my car. I think at MAM I am about tapped out when I get to the end of the straight. I think its time for me to learn some data logging on my AEM, and possibly an addition of a data aquisition of some sort (even Gtech pro)... Help me tell where my car falls flat on its face.

Here are some shots by my son, using a handheld point-and-shoot.

The first one is of my modified Stoptechs. You can see the 15 mm spacer in the caliper, which lets me run fatter rotors.

The last one is my ace tuner, Mike the Mechanic (StealthTT) opening the hood to check everything after a run.

I have a short video, taken by the same camera, but I don't know how to post it.

RusherRacing said:

This also means at Road America i am going to be sqeezing every last MPH out of my car. I think at MAM I am about tapped out when I get to the end of the straight. I think its time for me to learn some data logging on my AEM, and possibly an addition of a data aquisition of some sort (even Gtech pro)... Help me tell where my car falls flat on its face.

Click to expand...

The AEM has great data acquisition with a similar torque and horsepower estimater as the dsmlink. If you go on their forums, it's available for download. It was created by the user BlackMagic I believe. It's a great tool for finding shift points if your car falls off in the top end.
If I were you, I'd find your horsepower limit for a TT class and then get it dyno tuned for that limit. The guys at LSE Performance in the Twin Cities are close to you. They have a ton of AEM experience and know the specific tune needed for roadracing (i.e. safe and conservative). They can set up your knock table to make auto corrections like I told you about.
Or if you have the time and capabilities, I recommend learning it for yourself. It's great to be able to make changes at the track if something happens (fuel filter starts clogging, lower octane than normal, bloody hot day, etc.)

One caveat though, I don't know how much track time you have, but you should learn car control and preservation of momentum first. It's easy to go out there with a 2800lb-380hp car and seem fast. But you'll hide bad mistakes with horsepower. Learn good habits and driving skills first, then turn up the power and run slicks. You'll be a much better driver in the long run and have a better chance at competing with the other bad@ss drivers in bad@ss cars.

Breaking fewer parts is cheaper too! I plan to run a stock powered VR4 next year with big brakes, rollcage and other safety equipment, and reliability mods. The big brakes are almost a necessity on the 3000 and Stealth due to weight. The safety equipment is my personal preference. It's not needed for HPDE or Time Trials. I have high deductable health insurance and can't stand to sit still for very long. Big medical bills and broken bones are not worth the cost of the safety items to me. I plan to make the car reliable with cooling improvements both radiator and ambient air flow, old component replacement like bushings, and comfort items like a wide-angle mirror. All these things will let me concentrate on improving my driving.