I've been to the track once. I went this spring after I bought my car and did well, 13.4 at 107. I'm going again in early october. Any pointers on how I can be faster without putting any money into it?

What I did last time:
dropped rear tire pressures - stock 245's to about 22psi
launched about 2k rpm
shifted at 5500 (how high is the limiter, will I gain much taching more?)


Should I add air to the front tires? I've heard of removing the front sway bar, how long of a project is that?
I can't think of anything else to do to it, but that's why I'm asking.
I know I could put boltons, but it's not in the budget. I do have a lid, borla catback, and hood scoop, and k&n. Any other cheap boltons? A tune would do, but don't really have the cake for that. Hmm maybe get a tuned pcm from that guy that sells efi live...

 

Drag radials, a little practice and you should squeek into the 12's. Thats what I would do.

 

shift at 6k...5500 seems low to me.....and you can try diff shift points......i hear some people say they shift late out of 1st and early out of 3rd......I have an A4 but "back in the day" I have found et playing with shift points.....good luck

 

For a vert I'm not sure it has much more without adding money to it, it is heavy. I have found it best to shift out of first at around 5500 and shift the rest at 6200 (~limiter). Depends on your rear gear, you may want to shift them all at 6200.

Air and stab aren't gonna make much diff. Make sure you have a clean air filter, descreen your MAF, throttle bypass... Can't think of anything else free.

I don't know what your 60' were, so I can't advise there. If you get wheel hop I would try some control arms and relocation brackets, not too much $.

Brian

 

I remember reading a while back that it turns out the screen on the maf is not a filter, but is an air flow straightener to allow the maf to read the air flow more accurately. So if you remove it you will make your a/f ratio less optimal actually decreasing performance. Anybody know for sure?

 

Shift at 5,900 to 6,000 rpms, Bring front tire pressure up to 40, put back pressure at aroound 26psi on radials. Your times are pretty good for a vert with little mods. The track your at, what is the cutoff for a rollbar. I think here 13.5 and below requires convertibles to have a roll bar.

 

As I understand it, the NHRA rules have changed this year to allow down to 11.5 for a stock chassis without a rollbar in anything, I think that's how I read it. The have the rules available for download at www.dragway.com which is also where I'm going racing. Thanks for the help

 

It is still an air restriction. I descreened mine at the track and I gained .07 in et. I had no issues with it afterwards either. When my car was bone stock it would run 13.75s. I unbolted the links to the sway bar, took out the spare and jack, dropped the tire pressure to 25psi, descreened the MAF, and removed the air filter (track only). Then I ran a 13.56. This was all done the same day at the track.

 

I picked up 1mph replacing the maf ends (therefore descreening it). What it does more than anything (as I understand) is leans it out a bit by letting more air in that the computer knows is there. I chucked my spare and jack also. New clutch was the biggest improvement I've had in ET.

Brian