If I bring my car to college this winter it will be going from Minnesota (alt. 924 ft), to Montana (4,913 ft). I know it is Fuel Injected, so no carb, no jetting, but anything that might come up? This won't happen until after Christmas when I drive it over so if the cold weather would make any difference...

Feel free to chime in with any thoughts.

 

Nope. Your car has everything it needs to adjust to the altitude change. Make sure you are using premium fuel - as you may experience pinging with lower octane while making the ascent (I am not sure of how quick your ascent is).

 

Just be prepared to now be a 16 sec. car... if you're auto 17 sec. ...

 

I hear that the higher the altitude the less octane you need, for example Colorado has 85 octane where the altitude is really high.

 

The highest we can get is 91...

 

Uh, not sure, but I'm probably closer to 15 sec man. Wouldn't it slow because the air is thinner and therefor less air?


EDIT: Oh, I misread your post, i30ds. I thought that you said I would have a 16 second car if I had a 17 second auto right now. As though it would improve. gotcha. Ok, so lower octane fuel? Can I go as low as 87? 15-20% loss? wow, that's drastic.

 

Plan on losing 15-20% power to your wheels.

You will not require as high octane fuel as you did at lower altitudes.

So besides the colder temps and lost power, nothing at all.

There's less barometrci pressure @ higher elevations, that's why you lose power (less atmospheric pressure)

760 torr @ sea level
@ 7400', I have ~590 torr.

 

YUP ! .............

 

Not at 5000 ft... I'm at 5400 and a 350Z 6pd is a flat 15.0 sec car up here... All the 4th gen 5spds up here are high 16s too.

NA suffers the most. With boost the altitude still effects you but not as much.

There is an NHRA correction table though so you can see what your time would have been at sea level.

 

^^^^ yeah, yeah. I misread iyour previous post and therefore responded strangely. Tried to correct myself. Read EDIT in post 6.

With boost, you would have to crank up the boost to have comparable results, correct? however, would your engine feel it more, or would 8 lbs up here be like 6-7 down there? Or, if 6 is safe, does that mean that 8 may be safe? or still 6 cuz it's the same engine and would make no difference?

 

From NHRA DA correction I'm a low/mid 13 second car

 

Sorry, but you're and you can't really put a number value as to compare what boost dos what at x,xxx altitude comapred to x altitude.

Environmental conditions vary FAR to GREATLY to really get a good solid #.

 

there is a formula somewhere on the net that gives you the loss in 1/4 mi due to particular altitudes....

 

I have read that just boost by itself helps close up the time difference to some degree... and this also appears to be the case with the boosted cars at the track up here. The end result is the same though, you just can't make the power that you can at sea level. Thats why we use the NHRA conversion table up here.

I do feel that more reading is required though.

 

Would cars be really quick below sea level......say in New Orleans. Ok, I'm going to hell for that one!