Well I got a wild hair to go racing this evening.... I know the tune is not right - but the car runs well enough (just driving around) that I felt confident it wouldn't burn the motor down to go and make some easy 1/8th mile passes.

The car ran well I think. Espc considering how rusty I am at driving it... The car really took off once the sun went down and the air temp dropped below 80*F.

Best pass of the evening was my last pass.
7.38@96mph 1.80 60ft.

Other passes once the sun went down were (reverse order)
7.52@95mph 1.82 60ft
7.67@95mph 1.84 60ft
7.88@94mph 1.91 60ft.

I steadily got faster as I got braver in turing the motor harder on the gear changes ( I wound 2nd pretty tight on that last pass) - however I'm trapping in 3rd gear and only turng around 6000rpm... I feel like it will going to trap much better once I get the 3.91 gear out and my 4.10 back in it...

First pass - I made with the sun still up and the air temp around 85*F - Straight in off the street (about 10mile drive to the track). I blew the tires off it to the tune of a 8.01@94mph with a 2.2 60ft.... I was horrified and very disapointed.... But the MPH told me I had potential if I could get my head on straight and wait for the DA to go down.

Dropping down to 18psi in the MT ET radials really helped out from the 23psi I had on the first pass as well.

I was leaving at 3500rpm and just easing the clutch out until the car bogged and nosed over - Then rolling on the throttle... No power shifting or anything. Got to be easy on things when it's your transportation home....

Now to get "someone" over here to fix this darn tune....

My lovely woman made a few videos and I'll link them once I can get them uploaded to my photobucket.
Will

Sounds like it's running strong even without the right tune.

1.8 60's... what rear end do you have? I'd be terrified to leave that hard on DR's with a stick haha.

Good times for sure mang. Wish I lived closer to a track heh

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Currently it's a Stock Case, Stock Posi unit D44 with a 3.91 ratio gear (Dana gear with the small pinion with a welded sleeve for the big pinion brg).

I also have a Stock case, Stock Posi unit 4.10 ratio waiting to be put back in the car (Yukon gear with the big pinion).

Suspension is all stock with the FX3 set to the stiffest setting. The halfshafts, stub axels, ect are all stock 60K mile units.

**EDIT** to add: The front and rear sway bars are still hooked up.

Like I said I'm not comming out hard at all. People were telling me to "turn it loose" all fricken night - but since I'm the one who pays to fix it, I'll decide how hard I'll come out on the clutch.

Bogging the motor on the launch like I was doing last night really kills my time. I think the 4.10 gear will help out a bunch and if I can get the car down in the 1.60 60ft's I should be able to go 7.0's with some good driving (no one saw any of that from me last night either).

Thanks for the positive coments guys. I'll keep at it as time allows.
Will

fantastic stuff man, love these cars.

But for straight line stuff, once my business gets going well I'm finally gonna tear into my rustang.

OK - I've REALLY got to get some camera training for the lovely woman...

This is the 7.88 pass. Nice burnout I think - but you would think grandma was leaving a red light... I don't think this even qualifies as a "launch". I was trying to get the car away cleanly from 2500-300RPM so I wasn't paying attention to the light or the truck. BTW I just looked at the time slip and that Dodge Cummings Turbo ran 8.07@87mph which is hauling the mail for something that big.



This is the 7.67 pass. I actually tried to cut a good light here and left around 4000RPM. You can see how much faster the car recovers from the bog on initial launch.



Since I'm always driving the car I don't ever get a sense of how it really sounds under power but the videos really say alot. I can't believe that burn out is my car.... sounds like a fricken race car. Then the exhaust note going down the track is just great - espc the 7.67 pass where I actually turned the motor some real RPM.

Will

Sounds real good, picks up power quick

That's mid 11 second territory man, hauling the mail for sure!

In car cam! In car cam! In car cam!

Nice vids. Well, aside from the shaking

How are you lined up against a truck and an Integra with an 11 sec car?

Most tracks don't split up cars on TnT nights. They usually won't let motorcycles run against cars, but some tracks even allow that.

So I went back and calculated the Density Altitude (DA) for the evening.

Beginning of the night (5:00PM) we had 1867ft DA.

By the time the track closed (9:00PM) we had 587ft DA.

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Yea Josh pretty much covered it. Test and tune nights are a free for all. You run who ever lines up against you in the staging lane - except Old Dominion won't let bikes run cars or street cars run against the bracket cars (unless it's a grudge race). One pass I'm running a huge Diesel pickup truck that is darn near as fast as my Corvette and the next I'm running an Acura...

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You know, I'd really like to do that but I have no clue how well duct tape would hold the camera...

Speaking of the camera…. I'm going to buy a new one this weekend. The current one (Sony) is about 4-5yrs old and has been nothing but problems from day one.

I'm really tied up with the closing on my new house (on the 28th). I've been really neglecting the car for the past year with the searching for a house, then the loan applications and just regular work - which has me traveling across the country at least a few weeks out of the month.

Racing the car this Wed was just a load off of my mind for a few hours. All the time and $$$ I spent to build the engine and then just letting it sit in the driveway was really getting to me.

The new house has a nice 2 car attached garage and I'll feel better about running the car hard once we are moved in and I have somewhere to work on it when it breaks. Last summer I broke the rear gear and had to change it in my tiny "uphill" driveway... I don't want to re-live that experience.

That said I plan on taking the car again next Wed, if the weather is good. I think I am going to jack the rear spring up a bit and disconnect the front sway bar. I think I have good starting base to refine for RPM and clutch slip to launch the car now. I'm going to work on that and screw around with the FX3 shock adjustment to see how much difference it makes.
Will

Do yuo have a roll hoop or anything? I have a camera mount I don't use anymore that bolts to a bar.

whats your car dyno? have you run it in the 1/4?

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My car has a 4pt roll bar. I'm working on something for a new camera this weekend to see if I can get a few in car videos.
Will

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I'm sure you remember some of the problems I've had with it over the past 3yrs but here is a recap.

The car orginally dyno'd 440RWHP@5800RPM.... it was a long drawn out saga to find out why it wouldn't make any power up top - My tuner at the time had the car over 3 weeks and told me he thought my intake manifold conversion was the problem... I went and got it and started looking at things myself. Eventually I found that I had a bad batch of valvesprings from Crane...

A new set of valve springs on the car and it made 478RWHP@6800RPM - but a retard dyno operator spun it a bit too hard on the next pull (7500RPM) and broke a few of the new outer springs resulting in (we found out later) 3 bent exhaust valves and a damaged piston...

I fixed the springs a 3rd time but the motor just never ran right after that and would blow oil everywhere if I turned it hard and cut the throttle apruptly (thanks to a collasped ring groove and stuck ring)...

Since I knew had to pull the motor back apart, I changed the pistons and bumped the compression up over 1pt to 11.66SCR and had the intake manifold fully ported. I also backed the cam up 2* when it went back together to pick top end power up some (it had too much bottom end 1st time around). It has not been back on a dyno and has not been tuned or even had a WBO2 in it since the orginal tuner had it...

I honestly don't know what it makes in it's current configuration. No where near what it should because of the tune.

I have not made any 1/4mile passes with the car in it's current configuation. These 1/8th mile passes are the first time I've raced the car in over 3yrs.

My 96MPH in the 1/8th mile indicates the car is capable of very low 11's in the 1/4mile as is. The 7.50-7.30 1/8th mile time indicates (as Josh Said) Mid 11's in the 1/4mile.

After all is said and done (and the tune is fixed, suspension tricked up, good launchs ect) - I hope to get the car in the 7.0's-6.90's @ 98-100mph 1/8th mile which will put me solidly in the 10's @ 130+mph 1/4mile.
Will

well at least i know someone else is sharing my pain. i have had a few growing pains myself not near yours but none the less its not fun. at least you are able to drive yours. i have a few things i want to do provided i get some decent work over the next few weeks i hope to get somewhere with it. cant wait to see what your car can really do once you sort out the tune.