Made my first trip to the drag strip as a participant last night. Drove my wagon from home roughtly 60 miles to Bandimere for test n tune night. Rained for the first two hours we were there, then it cleared off and the track crew had it ready to go in 45 minutes. I've done my fair share of hot rodding around on the street and out of the lonesome deserted highway, but never at a track before, so it was a whole new experience.
I sailed through tech inspection easily and lined right up while it rained. I was #8 down the lanes when they started. Left at 2500rpm and spun the tires through first, short shifted the car through 3 gears around 4200rpm. I wasn't real sure what the hell I was doing, so figured I'd play it conservatively the first pass. About 100' from the traps I shifted to 4th, which in quick retrospect wasn't a good idea, but did keep the revs down. Clocked a 16.06 @ 89mph. Picked up my slip, and weighed the car. 4675lbs with me and all the tools/spares in it. So, not a terrible pass I guess given the altitude of 5000', heavy car, short shifting and a driver that knows as much as a bag of lug nuts about what he's doing on a track.
Thats a brand new Audi S6 in the right lane, he ran a 15.89 and his jaw was wide open at the end of the track as I was right there with him.
Second and third passes of the night were poor. Second pass me and Mr. S6 were paired up again by chance and gave our "nice car dork" wave to each other as we staged. I got a good launch, went to 5500rpm in first, grabbed second and as the revs hit about 4000rpm it started falling on it's face hard. Let up, power back so foot to the floor and grabbed third and same thing happened. Ran a 18-whatever. Same story on the third pass of the night.
So, I had two gadgets with me to help this newbie out. First my Innovate LM-2 recording the AFR and rpm's off the tach, the second a Gtech Fanatic SS/RR GPS accelerometer. First thing I did after the first pass was review the 1/4 mile data from the Gtech and it was exactly on. I was quite shocked. The ET, 60', 1/4 mile and mph were all right on the money. Amazing. I pulled the memory card from the LM-2 on all three runs and downloaded the logs into the laptop. Things looked ok around 12.5 on the first run, with some lean spikes between gear changes that were really short but noticeable in the car. I can probably adjust some of that out by loosening the secondary air-door a tad. Second and third pass the AFR was going so lean it was at atmosphere on the third pass when it fell on it's face, so I'm pretty confident it's running out of fuel. Fuel pump is a Carter 6905, which I thought would be adequate, but perhaps the lines are holding it back. Got just the stock fuel line from the tank an AN-6 from it to the carb with a canister filter hanging off the left cylinder head. I'm going to try raising the float a touch and see if that helps improve things before I start tearing into the fuel lines and doing upgrades.
Anyway, lots of room for improvement, had a gas and more small projects to tackle on the car for the next trip down for a night of fun. Should easily be into the 15's with some small amounts of work. Thats as fast as you guys pull your real cars to the track, but for this land barge it feels pretty good.
