lol , I was thinking about calling my car Maxinstein since the motor is from a 2002, the tranny and ecu from a 97 5-speed, rear seats from a I30, radio and shifter trim from a se

 

Well, that would call for a - special - decal........

 

Wow. Nice times. I wish I was in the 12's. Congrats.

 

Congrats on the new PB!

I have left the zip tie thing and completely locked the front end down. I got this idea straight from Jime (Thanks for the help Jim!).



I used aircraft cable which locks the top and bottom spring perches together. This prevents ANY movement on the launch. This does not work well for the street b/c of the subtle bumps. It causes severe traction loss when you come off the bump due to the elimination of rebound. But on a smooth track surface, it is definitely helpful. My local track prep is very poor, but I was still able to get a 1.80 once with the 75 shot launch and several low/mid 1.8s with the 50 shot launch.

You don't want to compress the spring too much. I believe that leaving it near stock height is best. Plus, my crossmember and Ypipe already sit low enough on the track with the 22" MT slicks that it always trips the staging lights and not the tires!



My rear springs only have 4 rubber blocks in them each. I haven't tried locking the rear just yet. But once again, I got the idea of using plastic boat trailer rollers from Jime. I already have all the stuff to do it, but haven't tried it yet on the track.

All this 1/4 mile talk is making me depressed with my broke VE.

 

I feel your pain just did a 3.5 swap and my tranny just coughed up 2nd gear

btw when I swap out my rear shocks I am going to try something with the rear to lock it out and ditch the springs for weigh reduction at the sametime

 

Interesting mods you two have brought up - but they're not for me. I keep the car in a condition where I can change the front tires and drive 500 miles to Denver - then come back home in comfort. That's my personal standard - no fixed mods that ruin the suspension travel and handling.

Aaron, I always liked the cable mod for holding down the front end, but even my local return roads have a lot of bumps that might break something. Street driving would be impossible.


t6378tp, what the heck have you been doing with your car? I've noticed your sig photos changing, but I don't remember many details ????

 

Just find a boat roller that is the exact length you need and bore out the hole so it slides onto your strut piston. I haven't run this setup yet, but I have everything the way I want it. All I have to do is bolt it in without the spring. Jim said he can swap out his 4th gen strut in about 15 minutes. The 3rd gen takes a little longer though so I can't really do it at the track like Jim.

 

Yeah, street driving is not really possible with the front end locked. But it only takes me about 2 or 3 minutes to lock everything into place. I leave the cables routed and all that I do is jack up the front end so I can get my hands in there and tighten everything down. It's not a fixed mod. The only thing I did to the spring perches was enlarge an existing hole just barely enough so I could get the cable through. I believe I used 1/8" cable.

Also, I drive my car 800 miles one way to South Florida several times a year. So I need a smooth ride myself.

And I wouldn't worry too much about the return road while having it locked. The potholes and bumps at my local track are pretty bad too. I have to go 5 to 10 mph on my way back to the pits while trying to dodge all the holes. But even if I hit a large hole going slow, it won't hurt the suspension, just maybe the slicks and wheels.

Go ahead and give it a shot and see if you like it. If your 60 foots don't improve once you figure out your best tire pressure with the new setup, then you will have only wasted about 5 bucks and a little time. But it definitely helped my 60 foots.

 

I'd go for it if I could connect and disconnect the holddowns easily. It takes me too much time now to get unloaded and teched-in and everything else made ready. My check-list is as long as my - arm -. But being able to hook up quickly - hummmm - I guess I need to think this through. You must use some pretty stout cable, eh? (trying out Canadian today - for good luck).

 

All I have to do to unhook my cables is undo my 3 cable clamps (leave the other 3 in tact), pull the other end of the cable to give the suspension plenty room to travel, then I zip tied the excess cable onto on the spring coils. When I'm ready to hook it all back up, it will be easy to do. For me personally, I hook it up at home, then drive the 30 miles to the drag strip. The only problem I see with driving on the street with the cables in is that you lose all rebound with your struts. So, you will lose traction too easily if you want to hit the gas through an intersection.

But you could hook it up while at the track. You will need two jacks though. One to lift the car to give you enough room to get your hands in there and one to raise the control arm and compress the spring to your exact ride height. I just measured the distance between the two perches when the car is sitting with the slicks on.

Here is Jime's setup:



I just went outside and measured the cable on my car. It is 1/8", which is more than strong enough. My first plan was to use 1/16-3/32" metal cable with it wrapped a total of 4 times instead of 2 like Jime had. But, with the stock 3rd gen suspension, there just wasn't enough room to hook it up easily. So, I enlarged the holes in the spring perches to handle 1/8" cable and only routed it 2 times. If you pay attention to the working load limit of the cable you are buying, you'll see that 1/8" cable should be plenty big enough. The WLL is nothing compared to the tensile strength of this cable though. I just like to over engineer stuff.

I don't know the exact WLL of the cable I got. But the WLL compared to the breaking strength is usually around 5 times as much. So, if you get a WLL of 400 lbs, multiply that by 2 per strut assembly. Then 800 x 5 = 4000lbs. So you would need roughly 4000 lbs of force on one strut housing in order to break this setup, which is 8000 lbs overall for the front end of the vehicle. I don't imagine that my cable is stressed out very much at all. It hasn't broken yet. If it does, I don't see anything major happening anyway.

Or instead of wrapping the two cables underneath the bottom perch and dealing with several cable clips, you may could use a quick link or shackle that could easily connect the two cable loops. Just a thought.