95Mustanggt and I took a drive down to Kennedale Raceway (1/8 mile) for the last exercise of 2001. The air was cold and the yellowjacket was ready to run.
Only 2 riceboys were in the mix (10 sec. 1/8 miles...hehe)
The rest were true gearheads with some VERY interesting cars...
One HEAVILY modded Corvette (definately not street legal), looked like he'd be into the 5 sec. range until halfway down the track something blew. If I had to guess, he was spraying heavily and went lean. He coasted the last half of the track and STILL netted a 6.7... insane...
The was also a fast mustang running about 6.5. One time he got squirrely going into 3rd and almost lost it.... I thought the ambulance was just a few seconds away.... I'm glad he recovered it by the end of the track...
The fastest street legal car I saw was an LS1 Trans Am hitting about 7.9 at 85mph... the word in the stands was that he was heavily modified and spraying...
There were 3 other lightly modded LS1 Camaros running 8.8 and 8.9s
Now to the fun part...
I forgot to lower the tire pressure for the first run against a lightly modded 80s style Vette. Light went green, he got a decent launch while my stang saw absolutely no traction from first and second gear. I finally found some traction somewhere in third gear. I fully engaged the clutch and I finally got the hammer all the way down....
The Vette actually pulled maybe a fender on me while I was going through hell looking for traction. The middle of 3rd grabbed and I started walking the Vette... HARD...
After that fiasco, the score was Mustang 1 (8.8), Vette 0 (9.2)
I later talked to the guy with the Vette, he had his heads ported and had dynoed 320 hp at the rear wheels....
With a TOTALLY crappy run halfway down the 1/8, I reeled in and left behind a light car with 320rear wheel hp....
The ET was DEFINATELY going to drop tonight...
I immediately rectified the tire pressure oversight and set up for my next run while 95Mustanggt gave me the bystandar's view. He told me that I looked like I hit warp drive somewhere down the middle of the track...
After a total of seven runs, it is abundantly clear that the barriers of reaching my goal ET (mid 12s in the 1/4) is:
Traction: I need some 9 inch wheels and tires REALLY bad and some upper and lower control arms couldn't hurt. I still can't find traction in 1st or 2nd gear without riding the clutch and babying the throttle
and the DRIVER!: I still need much more practice as Spring comes around....
The final stats:
I'm STILL averaging a crappy 2.1 second 60 foot but I'm starting to see some results from deep staging.... I'll continue to work on that in the spring.
Best 1/8 mile times were in the 8.4 second range, which is really crappy considering the next bit of info...
My best trap speeds were darn near 90mph (89.8+). That is around 113mph for the quarter, which SHOULD produce a mid 12 time slip if traction wasn't so hard for me right now.
A bit of good news in this:
Remember the heavily modded\sprayed Trans Am street god who was running 7.8\7.9s? His trap speed was consistanty 4 to 5 mph SLOWER than mine...
I think its going to be a good Summer...