This past weekend I went to a 2 day event at Shannonville Motorsports Park. Street class did not allow slicks there so I dug out my old BFG DR's and took to the road to test them out a couple of times, when I got back and took them off, one was down to the cord and the other barely showing so no tires to race on.

After some head scratching and not being able to come up with another pair of DR's on short notice I decided to try launching in 2nd gear using my auto shifter mod (http://forums.maxima.org/showthread.php?t=481106) and street tires. On the road it seemed to work quite well so off to the track I went. I was able to run a 14.3 @ 101 in the 1/4 and 9.6 @ 80 in the 1/8 which was the distance of the race. 60' times were in the 2.19-2.25 area so not too bad. The first race I ended up placing second against 2 Camaro's running slicks so after the race I asked the race director if I could run slicks the next day because the guy that beat me was on them, he got all hot and bothered and and wouldn't deal with it. However yesterday they both had changed to street tires but he still allowed the win to the other guy.

So after 6 rounds I finally ended up winning the purse so all in all not a bad weekend, second place on sat and first on sunday. Now I have to get a new pair of slicks because they are shot too after 155 runs so far this year and the auto is holding up well too with all the punishment.

So what I am really trying to say is that if you don't want to spend the bucks for slicks and want to bracket race the 2nd gear starts are da bomb and I still managed to embarass some V8s even in 2nd gear. The best race was against a Camaro running 9.5 to my 9.7 so I got the jump and he quickly caught up and passed me until the engine finally hit 4k and then the 3.5 jumps like crazy and catches up and passes him before the stripe, shocked the heck out of him, he told me later he thought I was toast when he went by.

This mod is also very good for the dyno because you don't have to worry about it downshifting before 4k so you can get a reading through the whole power band like the manual trans.

 

Good show Jim. Congrats on the win.

What were your 1/8 mile traps like?

 

80 MPH, your broken engine has affected your eyesight.

 

lol I guess so...

 

Hmm, I might have to do your mod then

 

Hey jime thats great. My concern with it is, wont launching from 2nd gear cause alot of stress on the tranny and build up more heat? how did your tranny temp gauge read? I remember when i first wired up my shift mod, i had a wrong wire connected so i only had 3rd gear and trying to just get the car to move caused my tranny temp gauge to go up rather quickly and pretty high. I installed fuel pump, fpr, and i am ready to spray 100, u think launching on 2nd with streets would be safe on nitrous, would it basically be the same as lauching with ur 3.5?

 

I monitored the temp quite closely and except for the time that the starter kept me at full stage for about 10 seconds the temp wasn't any higher than a 1st gear start.

Don't think I would recommend launching in 2nd with nitrous, thats stretching it. Nitrous gives a HUGE amount of torque at low RPM and would probably be disastrous on the trans in 2nd.

 

Yea that was my worry, i guess im stuck with getting slicks then lol. or i can just spin down the track. FTL

Thanx