Traction is good now, my 60' times were down considerably by 6/10's of a second on average at 1.60 - 1.70 and reviewing my old slips is far better than my memory as my top speed was not off by as much as I had first thought. In fact it was pretty consistent at around 82 mph and would like have likely been up a little had I not been forced to let off it to allow the trans to shift.
I put the car on the lift yesterday and backed off the passing gear linkage (too much) and no more issues with it not shifting at the limiter. After installing the new carpet I had initially set it up by wedging a 2x4 between the throttle and the drivers seat, I will need to have someone come and hold the throttle through the floor as I reset it to mimic what it will see at the track or when actually passing.
A nice period correct looking ratcheting floor shifter will be added some time down the line at which time I may begin to shift manually and I received a nice shift ball as part of the kit from Gear Vendors with a Mercury head emblem in it which is already wired up and used in place of the floor mounted dimmer that was also included. It has about three feet of wire as a tether so for the time being I can hold as I launch and just set it in the seat next to me when not needed or roll it under the seat while at car shows. Allowing the Gear Vendor to split first happens around 4K which is well inside my power band and while it may sound good in theory it is not ideal even with the lower gearing of the wide ratio trans where as splitting second gear manually does seem to make a lot of sense if done correctly at 5800 or so just before the trans would shift into third on its own at around 6K so long as I disengage it should a shift into third be needed. Timing will be key!
I am told that the track pics from the weekend should be posted late Tuesday night or Wednesday so I am looking forward to seeing just how much the front end does come up. From the drivers seat I could definitely tell the difference in how the car launched compared to before, there was little to no wheel spin, but I had no sense that the tires had left the pavement. Right now the front end is still all stock and the sway bar was left in place by the next track day I will have installed all of the parts from Open Tracker Racing, the Calvert drag shocks and removed the sway bar so I should have even better weight transfer.
I would like to get a Go Pro so I can get some footage to analyze and critic for areas to improve and there are plenty I am sure, it will take some practice to be consistent but I can see that 7's are definitely in my not too distant future.
