I was somewhat disappointed with my/the cars performance. I ran a 16.2, then a 16.3, then a 16.2 again. Are these bad times? My sig shows what I have on the car. I was hoping to break into the 15's. I know a lot of it probably had to do with me. My car seemed to hesitate real bad at takeoff. I held the brake, took the RPM's to about 2000, and then when the light hit I'd let off the brake totally and smash the gas. Is this the proper procedure? I had almost no wheel spin at take off so it wasn't a traction problem. It would just sit there for a maybe half a second before it would realize,"Oh, he's pressing the throttle to the floor." Then it would go. What's the deal? To much throttle all at once?
Thanks for any help.

 

well for your trannys sake i woudlent hold the throttle that high, keep it under 2000 RPM's, what kind of reaction times did you have?

 

you didn't run with those heavy chrome rims did you?

 

I would like to run with either some 15" or 16" rims. I don't know how heavy my Shocks are. My reactions were .8, 1.06 , and I can't remember the other ones. Like I said, it was my first time and I was nervous as hell! I was the ONLY import there when I was running. Later on in the evening a Prelude and an Eclipse showed up. The Eclipse ran a high 15 and the Prelude ran a 16.3. I let the tranny shift itself, should I manually shift it next time?

 

Those Niches are SUPER heavy and the same goes for those GS-D tires. I am almost certain you are loosing about .4 of a second right there in et. Heavy wheels KILL performance, pure and simple.

What were you 60 foots?
What elevation are you at?
16.2@ what mph?


Dave

 

yeah dave has a point.. the elevation correction could bring you a close as low 15's.. but you need to run on stock rims/hubs, take the spare tire out, jack, subs if you have any

your technique seems ok... you might run a little quicker if you shift manually or if you have don's vb

 

Next time you race hold it at about 1500, and make sure you go on yellow dont wait for green.

 

Next time I'll put my stock 15" steel rims on and see what it does. My fiance has a set of Koenig Monsoons (17") with Nitto 555 Extremes on her car. Maybe I could talk her into swapping me for a night. How are the Monsoons for weight? I had a feeling those Niche were heavy. If they were causing that much of a loss of time then the steel rims should get me around the times I was expecting. All the other cars there when I was running were serious drag cars. Running like 11's and 12's. Quite a bit of snickering going on whenever I pulled up. It was funny.

 

please don't run with konig monsoons.. those things are extremely heavy and you will run just as slow.. the only rims i would drag are the Volk TE-37's but those are mucho $$$$ but they are light as hell

 

Yea, the rims play a big role, I am sure the Shocks are quite heavy.. you'll break into 15s with stock wheels... The reaction time, elevation etc.. are all little things that contribute, your car isn't slow, I'm sure it has more potential then that...
I think the Monsoons weigh about 22 lbs each if they are the 17 X 7" ones.. I'd still rather go with steel wheels, or get some Kosei K1 Racing wheels or something like that, which weigh like 14 lbs each, which is nothing... I had different sets of rims on my stock max, 16" 5 spokes and heavy *** Chrome Giovanna 17s.. performance was okay with the 16s but my car felt slow as hell with the 17s..

I've never been to the track, but I'm sure you didn't do that bad for your first time.

 

Use as small of a wheel as you have.... in addition to being lighter, there is much more sidewall in the tire. reduce the front tire pressure to about 20 psi, this will make the tire act more like a wrinklewall slick (notice that slicks also have big ol' sidewalls on really little wheels). Forgive me for bringing a honda into this, but when my 95 civic ex was stock i ran 16.20 on my 17"s and ran a 15.92 on my 14" wheels.

Neal
96 Max

 

I probably won't be able to go racing again for a couple weeks but I'll post whenever I do to let you all know what happened. Again, thanks for all the info and suggestions.

 

Where were you racing at? Elevation plays a big role.

 

I've got to disagree with the wrinkle-wall comparison of radials to slicks. Slicks are specically developed to wrinkle and push on launch. They are also designed to run are very little pressure (~12-15psi). Radials tires are completely different.

First off, radial tires hook up better cold. Doing a burnout with radials only heats them up and releases oil from the tire compound. It is purely laughable to watch the Honda guys roll threw the water and do a John Force burnout. Completely pointless. Radials only need a quick roll over to get the dirt off. I don't even do that.

Second, radials aren't made to wrinkle like slicks. Radials will "cup" if you lower the psi which increases your chance of having a tire fail. Don't ever take your radials down to 20 psi. The lowest you want to go is 24psi. Lowering your psi from a streetable 32 psi to 24-26 psi might help on launch. I usually run 26 psi in the front at the track, HOWEVER today at the track I experimented. I put my tires at 32psi all around (vs 26F/42R), had my track tools (30lbs) onboard, Koni fronts to "street", and my nose bra on. I ran a 14.8@93.5mph. My other runs with my "track prepping" netted a 14.7 and two 14.8s all near or at 94mph. Hmmmmm.........

Third, stay out of the water box if you can (see above). You don't need it if you've got radials and you'll **** off the RWD drag racers by tracking water into the launch box. If have to go threw the box, then do a short burnout to get the water off.


Dave

 

The elevation might be a prob and this is your first time. You only get faster. Rims make a big diff but i dont know how much. I ran a 15.5 w/ only CAI and on tripled dipped chrome rims. Anyone know how much faster i would be? With your mods, you should be a at least a 15.3. I am auto and i launch @ 1700rpm and i let my car shift by itself. You now, leaving it in "D". I run slower when i manually shift the damn thing and can miss "D" and slide it into "N" instead.