I finally left the gym around 10pm after chatting with my ex-girlfriend for a little bit and then took off for home. Unfortunately I was not riding my R1, but was on my 750 Vulcan, still a low 12 second bike. About 2 miles out from the gym I am stopped at a short light and when the light turns green I ease it out around 2Krpms and all of the sudden all I hear on the left is a turbine sucking in MAD air. Well I am too low in my powerband to nail it (the vtwin tachs out at 9K :), but I give it some gas to pickup but by that time he is quite a ways ahead of me. I already know that this is no normal car, it looked to be a kcar of some sort but couldn't make it out. Anyway he gets hit by the next redlight and i can't pull up next to him because the middle and right lane have a car stopped. So I pull up behind him. I was on the passenger side of the car and their were no markings shone by my headlight so I turned it to face the left rear and what do I see? A nice little checker followed by GRAND NATIONAL. Also while I was behind him I took the time to notice he was running VERY thick drag radials. Judging by the turbo I heard when be blew past me, I deducted it definetely was not a stock turbo (I knew a guy that had a GN before, sounded much bigger). So I am pretty sure that he is gonna jump the next light but I am not gonna do a hard launch because if he doesn't floor it I won't be able to miss him. Well, he does floor it and I matched him up to about 70 where we both back down at the same time for the same reason, we are into a long stretch or road that smokies LOVE to sit on because it is poorly lit. Anyway we smooth it through the next few miles untill we get out of town and are now just waiting for a stoplight to turn red. It took about 6 miles for us to finally hit one (it was on a very long un-populated road with no crossroads), but it was a good one, a newly paved road with no oil and no crosswalk paint yet (yay). He definetely has an automatic because he was brake boosting while the other light turned red. I was red-lining my bike as usual (poor ol girl takes a beatin) and the second the light turned green we both launched very hard, his dr's caught VERY good and he took the first leap ahead, but only by about a 1/2 a car, but the second his traction stopped giving him the edge, I reeled him in during 1st gear and was able to to gain about 1/2 a car on him up to 50 before I needed to change to second. I did a hard shift into second and almost before I put my foot back down it was time to go into third around 75. During second gear I made even a little more progress pushing him back to about 3/4 of a car. However once I hit third the wind really started to hit me hard, even with leathers and a helmet a cruiser doesn't have the right shape for cutting the wind. During third I was still able to accelerate decent enough, however he had made up a good amount of ground was his nose was probably about 2 feet behind me when I dropped it into 4th. By this time I was doing about 95 and had to crouch as far behind my small gauge cluster as I could to drop my wind drag as low as I could. During 4th gear he was slowly starting to walk me about 110 he was about a car length ahead of me. And by 115 when I needed to change to 5th he had a feet form his bumper to my front wheel. So I dropped it into 5th but it was all over, I ran out of legs around 135 and he just pulled really hard. By the time he hit his brakes he was a good 5 cars infront of me. Anyway it basically only took about a third of a mile to do all that, and once when you hit 100 in about 8 seconds, the odometer starts to really spin after that. Anyway we slowly backed it down and pulled off to the side of the road and talked for awhile. The guy was really cool and said he had done alot of work on the car, I believed him. Anyway he popped the hood for me (it had the turbine G under the hood for those wondering) and gave me a quick run over of some of the stuff he had done. The engine wasn't as clean as I would have kept it, but it wasn't growing buildup or anything. Anyway he said that he had upgraded the stock turbo (duh) to some HKS ball-bearing turbo (GT3_ _ _) can't remember the exact model. Anyway we bullshitted for a good hour atleast before we went seperate ways. Before I left I asked him for a run on my R1, he sayed sure, but we needed to do it at firebird and he gets to use slicks. I agreed, which I may regret later, so he gave me his number and we took off.

Anyway that was the big thing of my night tonight.

pssh GN ...

whatever i'll take that on with my Tonka Trucks...

PSHHH!


Hahah, thats cool! I love GNs, so badass.

I'd deffinately dip one if i could afford it!

Damn, that sounds like a hella tight race, right on!:cool:

nice :cool: racies :D

ahhh the almighty grandnationals. beautifully mean looking car. never though that americans would use a turbo car like that instead of a v8. well what do you think the results are goin to be if you were to race his bird?

That sounded like a lot of fun. Those GNs are a handfull.

Best lookin box car ever made. Not being sarcastic either, for the boxy styled vehicles everyone was making it looked the best.

Yea, Grand Nationals are SICK FAST! A stock GN will do high 13s.

Originally posted by TatII
ahhh the almighty grandnationals. beautifully mean looking car. never though that americans would use a turbo car like that instead of a v8. well what do you think the results are goin to be if you were to race his bird?

He doesn't have a firebird. Firebird is the name of the raceway outside of phoenix. I think I will have a hard time if he puts in his new stall speed converter, he was having problems bogging right after the launch. And with slicks on? It will be very close I think.

The GM folks who figured that a 3800 series V-6 would work with a turbocharger deserve a medal. Good run, and it's nice to hear the guy was cool too.

Originally posted by R1-rider


He doesn't have a firebird. Firebird is the name of the raceway outside of phoenix. I think I will have a hard time if he puts in his new stall speed converter, he was having problems bogging right after the launch. And with slicks on? It will be very close I think.

unless his GN is capable of low 10's or better (which it very well may be) you should be able to take him on an R-1, as long as you can keep that front wheel down.:D I've seen a few busa's running at the track and their front wheels don't touch the ground for the first 300 feet or so of the race.:ylsuper

Originally posted by MadZ


unless his GN is capable of low 10's or better (which it very well may be) you should be able to take him on an R-1, as long as you can keep that front wheel down.:D I've seen a few busa's running at the track and their front wheels don't touch the ground for the first 300 feet or so of the race.:ylsuper

yes however the only problem is that I can run low 10s on a ideal drag strip. However the launch pad at Firebird is not top notch, so I can't launch nearly as hard as I normally could. I normally run 11 flat at firebird. So I think it will be a close race. probably end up doing the run a few times.