Marc S – Carlsbad in July – 12.14, clutch-limited..

I’m exhausted as hell so this will be shorter than my usual novels (but
still long) :)

– Billy ran an 11.97 I believe. YES! Finally an 11, now him & I can go
home & rest for the next few weeks, we are sick of going to the track
trying to get that 11 we both knew we could run :). Major congrats!

– I got a personal best of 12.14 @ 113mph. I continued to have major
problems launching… 60-foot times were mostly 1.8’s and 1.9’s. Highest
MPH for me was 113.6 mph. Other runs included: 12.15 @113.4, 12.18 @113,
12.18 @113 (another), 12.18 @112, 12.24 @113.2. I’m confident the car
could run 11’s… All it needs is a good launch… And/or remove the
headlight… And/or take off some weight like Billy :) hehe… Or add the
ITC… Or… :) But the bottom line is now that 11’s have been done I’m
taking a rest from racing for a month or longer & when I come back likely
it’ll be with additional stuff so I don’t have to just “squeak” an 11… And
I’ve got to figure something out about this whole clutch/launching
situation… Maybe re-treads for traction… Who knows. 4 puck clutches just
don’t seem to be the way to go for launching…

– Carlsbad… Anyone who went to Pomona missed out. Anyone who did not go
racing PERIOD missed out. There were 40 cars total at Carlsbad. I got
*16* runs in when I finally “had my fill”… Coulda kept going and probably
had 20+ runs! That’s 16 runs in about 2.5 hours time (2pm to 4:30pm).
Pretty insane! There were never more than 4-8 cars in front of you in
line! Weather was warm but the air wasn’t too hot unlike Pomona last week.

– DSM’s @ Carlsbad… Well, we just had our “West Coast Shootout” :).
Nearly 1 out of every 4 cars there was a DSM! We had about 9 cars (one
DSM wasn’t a Club DSM’er). With 4 of us running 12’s and 3 of us running
really low 12’s (and an 11!) we dominated and kicked muscle-car a$$. The
good ol’ boys were commenting how we were mopping up. I really enjoyed
killing some of the big loud big block slick wearing and super-charger
breathin’ brutes :)… We popped a lot of ego’s today :)

– We had an awesome drive after leaving the track with 7 DSM’s… The road
was 3 lanes wide, so we had 2 rows of 3 DSM’s (With Steve H. in the rear
trying to snap a picture)… Felt like I was in a fighter plane formation :)

– Personal thanks go out to Scot Gray & Henry S. Scot let me borrow his
BFG TA R1’s to try to get more traction (couldn’t get them heated up enough
w/ drag racing so they weren’t as grippy as we were hoping) and Scot and
Henry were both a killer pit crew changing the tires back & forth :).

– On a final note… Damn DSM’s are built tough :)… In the past week I
have put *27* 12 second passes on this car, mostly low 12’s, without a
glitch (knock on wood). Mike Ferrara wouldn’t like it! :)

Hope you all had a good 4th.
-Marc

July 4, 1998 | Categories: Blog | Tags: 2G, Customer Cars, Drag, DSM | Leave A Comment »

Marc S – Pomona in June – Awful new clutch, but 12.16 / 114mph

The good:

– The Pomona guys said it was the smallest turnout all year. We averaged
a run per hour for the first few hours, and then around 2:40pm it started
to become “run as often as you want”… You just ran & got back in line
again (with between 16 – 40 other cars!) So we ended up paying under a
dollar per run if ya don’t count the race gas :)

– Scott Terrace ran some awesome times, especially with his very short
list of mods… 13.3’s! This is right up there with those ol’ East Coast
stories of putting under $1000 into a DSM & being at low 13’s… Scott is
going for 12’s soon on the ultimate budget car!

– Bryan actually showed this time (hehe) and broke 13’s on his 14B car!
Yeeha!

– Had a first-timer come (I just know I’m gonna spell this wrong…
“Shino?”) and do awesome! Shino has a 2G FWD with limited mods and by his
3rd launch he had pulled a 2.3 60-foot time! He later pulled at least 2
2.2 60-foot times! (1/4 mi time was 14.6 I believe). Fantastic times for
a FWD & a first time at the track. Congrats!

– I had a new personal best & my MPH increased substantially.

The bad:

– Most of my times! Yeah, I know these times are faster than most, but
honestly the car has more in it so considering I started the day at a 12.19
@ 114.3 w/ a 1.857 60 foot time, the day was very disappointing for me.

The ugly:

– My 60-foot times were horrid. I could not launch the car worth a damn
with the new clutch. I wanted to rip that thing out and torch it. Even
with *11* runs (towards the end I was trying ANYTHING to see if I could
figure out a method to launch) I couldn’t do jack on my launches… Here are
some of the timeslips, then I’ll mention the “why”…

12.16 @ 114.5, 1.807 60-foot time
12.19 @ 114.3, 1.857 60-foot time
12.19 @ 114, 1.763 60-foot time (hit rev limiter bad on 1-2 shift)
12.32 @ 113.5, 1.897 60-foot time
12.32 @ 113.2, 1.922 60-foot time
12.34 @ 114, 1.895 60-foot time
12.40 @ 114.4, 1.972 60-foot time
Other 60 foot times included: 2.071, 1.971, 2.036, 2.254.

The day started off exciting… We knew on the first run that the engine was
11-second capable. Had the MPH, just needed a good launch… If I coulda
had a 1.71 60 foot time on that 12.19/1.857 run, the 12.32/1.922 run,
etc… Coulda grabbed an 11.9x. We all knew it and as the day went on I
was really really frustrated at not being able to improve the launch.

Here’s what was happening in-car:
I’d take the engine to various rpm, usually no less than 4500, and then
when it was time to launch I’d start stepping on the gas and then start
releasing the clutch. No matter how fast or slow I seemed to release the
clutch pedal, within the first few feet of launching, suddenly I’d hear
loud bangin’ noises coming from all 4 tires. The car ran *perfectly*
straight off the line and down the track, was not squirmy in any way. So
what did I figure? I thought I had wheel hop… That the tires were right
on the border of hooking up/not hooking up and were going back and forth
between the two, hence the physical banging I was feeling/hearing. (Every
launch now activated my windshield washers, too, so it seemed like I was
getting decent traction).

So stupid me, I spent almost all my runs trying to get the wheels spinning
a little more… I raised the RPM level of my launches, tried slipping the
clutch even more (it doesn’t like to slip at all), etc. I didn’t want to
be on the edge of traction… I wanted to have my wheels spinning more
cleanly for a little off the line, and then have them hook up solid… This
is how I got my low 1.7’s before, because the car still accelerates strong
with the spinning, and you don’t bog your engine. Most of the runs
Saturday I’d hit the rev limiter on the 1-2 shift too… Suddenly it would
jump to 7200 on my tach (my tach reads 300 rpm low) and there would be no
time to shift to 2nd before the limiter hit…

Realization of what was happening didn’t come until the 9th friggin run…
(I was kinda out of it the whole day from getting 3 hours max of sleep). I
can’t remember exactly how it happened but I mentioned to someone how I hit
my rev limiter at the 1-2 shift at my last run, and they responded “yeah,
you were in that rev limiter for a while”… (And I was thinking “that’s
odd, when rev limiter hits before I can shift, it’s usually pretty quick).
The spectator describes how my engine sounds *off the line* before I even
got to shift… Brah-brah-brah-brah (stutter stutter stutter). Ronnie comes
by & he confirms the prob… I was riding the rev-limiter throughout the
launch! It was impossible to hear the rev-limiter with helmet on, windows
closed, and big loud sounds coming from all 4 tires… Yeah, you could call
it wheel hop, but not because I was on the verge of traction… It was
because the engine was making so much power it was just annihilating all 4
tires and instantly going to rev limiter the whole way through 1st… As the
rev limiter hit, the wheels would go back & forth between gaining a touch
of traction & losing it again. The wheels were all spinning so evenly that
the car never felt squirmy in any way and simply stayed straight…

So yeah, I was running low 12’s with riding the rev limiter throughout
first gear. Engine made lots of power, clutch grabbed hard, tires couldn’t
hack it in any way. Plain & simple. Nice to know the why, but there
wasn’t anything I could do to go faster… Just couldn’t get any traction
with such a harsh clutch. The clutch did its job of holding the power. It
just did it too well! End of story.

I am gonna see about getting my rev limiter raised to 8000, perhaps that
will help a little… Now I know how a FWD’er with a built engine and no
slicks feels. I honestly think though that if I had my “old” clutch in the
car (before it blew a spring), 11’s coulda been mine :). Time to invest in
some tires.

Which leads us to today (Sunday)-

Billy- Kick some butt and bring us that 11-sec time slip we’ve been waiting
for… Our cars are definitely good for it. As long as you didn’t get my
type of clutch installed last night you will do just fine :)-. Good luck
to Josh too!

June 28, 1998 | Categories: Blog | Tags: 2G, Customer Cars, Drag, DSM | Leave A Comment »

Marc S – Carlsbad in June – 12.20, but bye-bye clutch

Lots of mixed Carlsbad news… This will be lengthy.

Twas a very hot day which sucked for getting good times… On the positive
side it wasn’t too crowded, I got 5 runs in between 2pm and 4:15pm before
my car called it quits :(.

Run 1. First run had me really, really worried. 12.75 @ 105, w/ a 1.77 60
foot time. The car was hot & one or two of my shifts wasn’t quite as fast
as usual but that time was really off!… Checked peak EGT… 810 degrees…
Ok, running too rich. Leaned things out a couple notches.

Run 2. 12.34 @ 110. Phew, getting better, new personal best. 1.71 60
foot time. MPH still has me worried though. Was already getting 110 at
Pomona, before the cams, and the cams definitely have the car pulling
harder. Checked EGT’s… Still low. Leaned things out a touch more.

Run 3. Off to a decent start. 1.75 60 foot time, 7.89 ET in the 1.8th,
and 1/8 mph is almost 1 MPH higher than Run 2… Go to shift from 3rd to
4th… I don’t think I had my clutch pedal in all the way in time as I jam
it to 4th… But the *shifter* goes into 4th anyways but feels like it has
no weight when it gets there. Step on the gas but I’m not in gear, the
engine just revs. No 4th gear. For that matter, no any gear, the shifter
moves into all the gears with almost no resistance & I’m “in neutral”.
$h!t. Now I’ve done it! I coast through the 1/4mi – 12.98 @ 85mph!
What a run that woulda been if I had 4th gear :) My MPH in the 1/4 was
less than my MPH in the 1/8 and it was still a 12 :). I come to a stop at
the entrance to the return road (end of the strip), put on the hazards, but
the lazy Carlsbad officials just stare at me… So I think about it as I
move the shifter around… Ok, no resistance at all, & always in neutral…
Almost as if… The shifter ain’t attached to the cable no more! I yank
the plastic panel off under the shifter & look down there… Yep! The
cable came off. (It lost the cotter pin). I put it back on, get it in
gear & am on my way. Later I rigged a new pin by bending a key ring…
Problem solved.

Run 3 gives me time to think… Why are my EGT’s still so low, and what’s up
with the MPH (1/4 MPH for Run 3 was unusable but 1/8mph showed very minor
gains)… Then it dawns on me… My boost is low. Never raised it on the
way to Carlsbad. I had set it late the night before when the air was very
cold. I was probably running 18-19psi in the heat!… Up the boost a
touch… Time for run 4…

Run 4. Got a decent launch, but had a bog problem which to be honest
plagued me on all the runs… I’d get off the line quick w/ spinning tires
but would then hook up early, have a quick bog, and then take off. This
likely affected all my times that day. Gotta do some tuning, the cams
changed a lot of things. 1.73 60 foot time. 1/8th: 7.78 @ 88.35. 1/4
mi: *12.20* @ 109! I’m excited about the ET but still puzzled about the
MPH. For comparison, I ran 86-88mph in the 1/8th at Pomona in my 12.4 –
12.5 runs & always 110mph in the 1/4. I up the boost a little more (it was
probably still a little low, 19-20) & lean things out a little more in
preparation for Run 5. Looks like I will get several more runs in so I
have time to tune in small increments.

Run 5… Disaster strikes. The run was bad from the very start. For the
first time, my less-than-happy-to-disengage-when-hot clutch has a very
noticeable impact at the track. I try to shift to 2nd & it doesn’t wanna
go in. Wait for it to drop in (the run is totally blown now) and I
continue on… The rest of the shifts ain’t feeling too good. Cross the 1/4
at 13.3/107.5 & the shifter doesn’t wanna come out of gear. I manage to
get it out & am barely able to force it into a lower gear to get back to
the pits. Park the car, figure I’ll let it cool down while I grab lunch &
hope it’ll get back to normal like it usually does once it cools.

No dice this time. I go start up the car. With the clutch pedal pressed
to the floor & feeling “normal”, the shifter will NOT go into ANY gear no
matter how hard I press. Shut off the engine & it will go into the gears
but no chance while it’s idling. I put it into gear while the engine was
off & THEN started the car with the clutch pedal fully to the floor… Sure
enough, the car starts moving immediately as if my foot is barely on the
clutch pedal. Can’t get the thing to disengage at all.

Thank god Corey Dennen showed up today :)… Felt great not to be stuck
there alone!  After finding out how insanely expensive it
would be to flatbed the car back to RRE, we decide to try to drive it there
by starting the car up in gear. My poor starter motor :) but yeah the
starter gets the car moving, and I make it out of the track w/o the ability
to disengage my clutch :). Stops were an absolute hell as I tried to gas
the engine to make it slip the clutch, while keeping my foot on the brake
to stop the car, & keeping the clutch in to at least slightly disengage it.
Got to hear lots of scary noises coming from the engine compartment. :)
Fortunately this only occurred a few times. We got more & more ambitious
(started in 1st at the beginning, then started in 2nd ’cause driving slow in
1st was unbearable, and finally said what the hell, started it from 3rd
gear & got on the freeway). Corey drove his car & escorted me the whole
way to RRE. Thank god there was little traffic & it was practically a
normal drive… 70mph/5500rpm in 3rd gear the whole way there :). Dropped
the car off at RRE, & Corey dropped me off at my home some 40+ minutes
away… I owe Corey big time! Corey, thanks for being there for me!

That’s pretty much the tale, time will tell what the culprit was. One thing
seems pretty certain- this was just the end result of a problem that’s been
plaguing me since having the clutch first installed. I’m very interested
in finding out the “why”… If the problem is specific to the Clutch Masters
clutch, they’re soon going to find that there aren’t any DSM’ers left who will
run one of their clutches– so many people have switched to ACT already &
have been telling me to do the same.

Performance notes… 12.20 was nice, I think the car is 12.0x capable
though. I have confidence that these cams added nice horsepower.
Considering they were installed less than 24 hours ago with 1 minute of AFC
tuning, I think there’s some serious AFC tuning work to be done to get the
car running more optimally. That, combined with more boost (21-23) & some
real gas instead of 100ish octane should hopefully shave a couple tenths
off. Time will tell. For now I’ll worry about having an operational car
:).

On the bright side… Those low 12 second runs really had people talking
about DSM’s at Carlsbad & admittedly it’s nice to get the attention :)…
Lots of people coming by to ask what the hell was done to the car & to
offer their congrats. It was great overhearing a conversation some guys
were having- “Did you see that? 12.2! I’m not talkin 12.6 or something…
This was a 12.2! He was just GONE!” :)- Some Mustang guys were
actually belittling how slow their cars were in comparison – wish I coulda
got that on video tape. Ok, “big-head” mode off. Thanks to Scot G for
making those Club DSM cards a few months back. There was a modded turbo
DSM guy there in need of the right parts/advice who didn’t know about Club
DSM/Socal DSM. The card came in very handy! I sent him Mike’s way since
as we all know, Mike @ RRE has too much free time on his hands & needs more
customers to bug him. :)

Sorry for the rambling… Am tired/drained & not looking forward to the
rental car expenses/inconvenience. But, it coulda been a lot worse so I’m
kind of thankful.

Oh, that reminds me… Here’s a good piece of info I hope you never have to
use- a good Carlsbad towing service. I fortunately didn’t have to get
towed, and it was the cost of towing that had us looking for every possible
alternative- Between $2-$8 per mile! AAA basic membership only has 7 free
miles! Call La Costa Towing – 760-730-0348. They normally charge
$35/hookup + $2 mile, but they said they’d give me a deal & charge me $150
complete to flatbed the car all the way to RRE/Huntington Beach. May be a
good chunk of change but that’s a good deal given the usual rates.

Hope everyone did well & stayed in 1 piece at Buttonwillow.

G’nite,
Marc

June 15, 1998 | Categories: Blog | Tags: 2G, Customer Cars, Drag, DSM | Leave A Comment »

Marc S – Pomona in May: 110mph and Sub 12.5’s

Had a great time yesterday! Sorry that more people couldn’t make it…

Pomona: The Viper club had its own class… It was a blast watching those
things run… Some of the modified ones were insanely fast & clicked off mid
to low 10’s. Quite a few Vipers ran high 12’s and very low 13’s though.

An Impala SS club showed up too… About 15+ Impala SS’s, ALL with the same
rims and either black or very dark brown paint. They all had little “SoCal
SS” stickers on their windows, many of them w/ a web address… They were
the local chapter of a national club, just like us… Gotta love it. Unlike
us though they get great turnout at these events. There were only *4*
SoCal DSM’s that ran at the track (a 5th showed but didn’t run).

My track times… I ran a 12.40 @ 110 mph. 4 runs total, the slowest was
12.52 @ 109.1. This is on a 16G, stock 2G motor/2G head, and a lot of
great work & advice from Road Race Engineering. (Thanks RRE!)

On the way over to the BBQ, me & JR spanked some obnoxious NOS Civic that
dared to have big writing on the back that said “Bow down to those who are
faster than you!” (or “Bow down to this car” or something like that)… Hehe
I kinda got separated from the caravan I was following (JR, Scott T, Jeff T
& gf) to the BBQ ’cause I had to teach that Honda a lesson :)… (Thanks
everyone for waiting for me to catch up!) This was after I said right
after we left the track “let’s drive slow & also be sure not to step on the
gas since we’re running pump gas now & the ECU still thinks we have race
gas”… Ah well!

BBQ was cool, thanks John! I suggest everyone brings sunglasses next time,
either that or someone has to pry the digital camera out of Dani’s hands so
we don’t get nailed by the flash! 1 beer for Dani is 1 beer too many! :)

Nice seeing everyone, looking forward to the next event.

-Marc

May 25, 1998 | Categories: Blog | Tags: 2G, Customer Cars, Drag, DSM | Leave A Comment »

Marc S – Mid 12’s! (Carlsbad, March 1998)

Yesterday at Carlsbad was a really awesome experience for me. Got some
great runs in & had some funny encounters with the Carlsbad folk/rednecks.

Carlsbad highlights for me:

First, I wanted to see if I could run in the far right lane, the one with
the short line & all the big bad-a$$ V8 trailer-queen cars that get
preferential treatment. I knew the response I’d get if I just drove into
it & asked the official if I could run there, so I walked up to him first
(so he couldn’t see I was an “import driver”) and said “This lane’s just
for those who run 12’s and faster, right?”… He said “Yep”… So I said
thanks, went back & got in the fast lane with my DSM :). A few people
looked at me funny (it must seem strange seeing a nearly bone-stock looking
DSM with a quiet exhaust driving up the fast lane) and I felt a bit nervous
& wondered if I’d get kicked… So I’m almost to the staging lanes & the
beer-bellied track official comes up to me and says “Hey, do you know what
you run?” and I said “Yep. 12’s!” and he looked at me funny, wanted to
argue, but couldn’t say anything… So he let me run. :) (Fortunately it
was a 12). So, if this isn’t great motivation for everyone to put on more
mods and hit a 12, what is? You can run in the elite V8 lane and tick off
the Carlsbad rednecks too! :)

One of the guys I raced had a built El Camino or something… I ran a 12.6
to his 12.8 and also had a much better reaction time which made it look
like I was even more ahead… He parked behind me in the lanes afterwards
and we had a great conversation… “What the hell do you have in there?”
(2 liter 4 banger). “Well how much does that little thing weigh?”
(3300+ lbs). (Pause/confusion, expected a much lighter weight, not
understanding this isn’t a Honda he’s dealing with). “JEE-SUHSSS! I saw
you jump ahead of me off the line and I’m thinkin ‘that’s a quick car but
now I’ll catch him and fly right by him… And you just kept going and I’m
saying ‘$h!t! I can’t catch this guy! What the hell?'”

The absolute highlight of the day was after making my 4th run and getting
in line for my next run, two of the Carlsbad officials walked back all
excited and started talking to me… “What the hell do you have in
there! Holy $h!t your car runs fast! We couldn’t believe how fast
you got off the line! You’re running nitrous, right?” (Then they
freaked when I said no & showed them the pretty stock looking engine
compartment). “Yeah we’ve been watching you race all day, the guy starting
the lights was commenting ‘Damn that car can go!’. Hey, what are you
doing tomorrow? You gotta come back tomorrow and race in the real races!
You could win $300!” (The emphasis on $300 made it sound like a year’s
salary). :)- Jokes aside though, several of the Carlsbad officials I
spoke to were very friendly to me & others w/ imports, irrespective of our
timeslips.

Here’s my run’s-

Run 1
1.811 60-ft, 5.257 330-ft, 1/8: 8.150 @ 83.80, 1/4 mi: 12.773 @ 103.85
mph
Beat my previous best 1/4 (12.85 @ 106mph) by a tenth, but mph’s were down
by 2

Run 2
1.743 60-ft, 5.134 330-ft, 1/8: 8.013 @ 85.78, 1/4 mi: 12.642 (mph not
shown)
With that 60 foot time, I figured for sure that would be my fastest run for
the day. MPH were back up in the 1/8th but the left lane which I was
running in wasn’t reporting mph in the 1/4 for most of the day.

Run 3
1.777 60-ft, 5.230 330-ft, 1/8: 8.092 @ 85.59, 1/4 mi: 12.755 @ 103.66
mph
Another 1.7, but not as good a run as the last one. Mph’s are way too low
and I noticed that when I shift from 3rd to 4th, it’s not pulling as hard
as it should. Though I’m running mostly 100 octane unleaded, I decide to
actually *lower* my boost for the next run to see if it will have an impact
on my MPH.

Run 4
1.735 60-ft, 5.175 330-ft, 1/8: 8.031 @ 86.60, 1/4 mi: 12.618 @ 107.1 mph
Another low 1.7 60-foot, and my MPH’s have increased substantially.
Apparently lowering the boost helped.

Run 5
1.718! 60-ft, 5.126 330-ft, 1/8: 7.958 @ 87.36, 1/4 mi: 12.525 @ 106.79
mph
Great way to end the day… Almost broke a 1.6 60 foot time (On worn-out
225/50 BFG Comp TA ZR’s). Dropped into the 7’s in the 1/8, and dropped
another full tenth off my 1/4 mile. I was working on a better 2-3 and 3-4
shift for Run 4 & Run 5 & I think it helped. I concentrated on keeping my
foot on the gas during the shift, and while in both runs I still ended up
letting off on the throttle somewhat, I kept my foot into the gas at least
part way & just jammed the shifter into gear. Surprisingly, it dropped
nicely in there w/o a fuss or a grind.

Misc notes on the runs:

I usually launch around 4000-4400rpm and drop the clutch fairly quickly
(but not a complete “drop”). In my first run it netted a low 1.8 and I had
pretty good traction. In the next run, I brought the rpm up a little
higher (4500-4600) and dropped the clutch even quicker. I got major wheel
spin on all 4’s and I think a bit of wheel hop (loud thumping noise coming
from the rear). I figured for sure that it was gonna be a crappy run, but
when I got the timeslip I had a 1.7… I continued with that method for the
rest of the day and ran consistent 1.7’s… My conclusion is that some
wheelspin on an AWD is a *good* thing. You’d think it means lost
acceleration but apparently it’s still moving you forward quite well and by
keeping the revs of the engine up due to wheelspin you stay in a stronger
power band.

Less extreme boost = better mph/ET (for me)… I had actually heard this
from another fast 2G owner & didn’t believe it at the time… I was probably
running 22-23psi initially, and I lowered that & ran better. (For me, the
16G can’t sustain 20psi past 6300rpm no matter what, but below 6300 it’s
possible). I’m assuming the higher boost is causing ignition retard, but I
don’t know if it’s because the ECU is detecting knock, or if the ECU just
doesn’t like so much air flow and is out of range…

Anyways, it was a fantastic day. Great seeing everyone again, thanks for
sharing it with me. Thanks also for putting up with all my enthusiasm
about my runs… Claim Jumpers was cool, other than Dani head
butting/attacking me every few minutes. (Grin). Some day we’ll learn to
harness her near-limitless supply of energy and we’ll power a DSM into the
9’s :)-

-Marc

March 22, 1998 | Categories: Blog | Tags: 2G, Customer Cars, Drag, DSM | Leave A Comment »

Marc S – Into the high 12’s! (Carlsbad, January)

Hi all,

The Carlsbad event was great! Ok, the track is neither well-run nor
well-maintained, but the company was great & I really enjoyed the runs I
got in.

– Caravanning down from RRE was cool. About 9 cars. We managed to stay
together pretty well & kept it around 80mph. It sure was fun watching how
people looked at us & listening to the comments when we were at the gas
station. Hey, anyone up for practicing formations? We could have double
and triple lines, diamond formations (how fitting), etc! (Grin) Regarding
racing around for the last couple miles… Heyyyy I just wanted to make sure
my boost was set right :)

– Once our 8-9 cars made it there, our numbers were around 15+ cars & 30
people.

– Timeslips… I hit the 12’s! (Yahooo!) I ran a 12.86 @ 105.04 and
then a 12.85 @ 106 (best). This was the first time I was traction limited
with an AWD… I was spinning all 4 tires off the line & through much of
1st. Some of that was most likely from having dirt/mud on the tires (good
ol’ Carlsbad). I think I can knock a couple more tenths off with a combo
of a better launch (I was doing 1.8 60-footers) and by leaning the fuel out
more. With race gas, temps never got past 860 degrees Celcius, & I woulda
liked to be near 900 as I crossed the 1/4 mile line.

– BBQ… Very very nice! Mike Cornwell is the man when it comes to BBQ!
(He’s just a lamer when it comes to spelling my first name… You wonder why
I keep my last name as an “S”? So Mike can spell it!) :) The food was
great & it was cool to kick back with everyone and watch race footage.

The Carlsbad meet really woke up my racing bug… I gotta get back to the
track for more timeslips… Anyone interested in heading up to LACR in a
couple weeks?

-Marc

January 22, 1998 | Categories: Blog | Tags: 2G, Customer Cars, Drag, DSM | Leave A Comment »