A strange night out at the track.

[BullDog71ss]

Due to colder weather brought in by some very much needed thunderstorms added with a break in the rain I figured I'd take a trip out to the local track to test out my newly added mods and hopefully better my times.

So off to the track we went with a half tank of 87 octane petrol, an SCT3 tuner and a video camera in hand.

After arriving at the track and teching in, I went straight to the almost empty staging lanes with a fully warmed and very heatsoaked car. Within no more than 1 minute I was already being flagged to the line against another s197 Mustang. I had a chance to talk to the other driver while we were waiting in the staging lines from our rolled down windows. He asked me what I had done so I told him I had a catless h pipe and a cai/tune. He responded with a very smug tone "Twin turbos!" So I figured I'd get blown away, which would be pretty cool.

After our little conversation we got lined up and waited for the ambers to flash. I held my revs at about 2000 rpms and as the last amber flashed I did my usual clutch dump, but instead of a little tire spin and hooking, it bogged which caused the front to dip harshly and the rpms to drop off to about 1200. So I held my foot full down on the throttle to power out of the bog, but the rpms seemed to take forever to pick back up and the car just didn't seem very responsive. But then again, niether did the twin turbo car, because it was pulling away at a very slow rate and then he must have missed a gear because I rocketed passed him to a very uneventful 15.044 @ 98.69 mph.
The 60' time for my first run was also a dismal 2.560.

At this point the night didn't seem to be going very well since I've never run anything over a 14.8 even on my most botched runs.

Since the track was very empty lastnight I was able to line up again and make another pass within 5 minutes and netted another low 15 second pass with about the same mph and same 60' times. I soon realized the car was bogging and stuttering with every shift down the track, which I knew was killing my times, but I couldn't figure out why it was running like this. I had noticed this for the last week or so driving around town, but it wasn't as apparent because I wasn't concentrating on what the car was doing very hard. I made a couple more passes and recieved the same results as the first two, which was very frustrating.

I figured the very humid 90 degree heat, added with a lot of heatsoak could have been the culprit of the extreme bogging so I parked it and lifted the hood to give the car a 30 minute cool down. Which worked out nicely because right after I parked my car a driver with a very modded chevy II popped his chute by accident just after leaving the line and dragged the chute to the end of the track. Then a car leaked oil down the track, this caused the track to shut down for about 45 minutes, which was a perfect cool down opportunity. At this point I was talking to my g/f about the car and how it didn't feel like it was responding like it should be and we both agreed that the weather might be the problem, but the 15 second passes seemed way too high. So I told her that if the cooldown didnt fix the issue then I was going to go back to the stock factory tune instead of the custom 87 tune I was using. She agreed this was a good idea.

After the cool down I lined up in the staging lanes again and waited my turn, but this time pushing the car with the engine off untill the last moment when I got flagged to make a run. Unfortunately this cool down didn't help at all and I made another 15 second pass with all the same issues I had on my previous runs. Just to back it up, I made one more pass with the same result.
Very irritated at this point I pulled over and got out the tuner to upload the factory tune. I was a little skeptical that this would help, but I was out of options.

Now with my factory tune installed I lined up to take another go. This time When I launched there was no stumble and no nose dive, just grip and smooth, hard excelleration along with perfect shifts. I clicked off a 14.215 @ 100.63 mph with a 2.2 60'. I was elated and very confused at the same time. Why would my factory tune work better than a custom tune that has netted people with the same mods as mine low 13 second runs? My next 3 runs were all 14.2 runs as well and my last run of the night was a 14.3 @ 102 mph, tieing my best mph that I made last winter in 50 degree temps.

Overall I was satisfied with my trip to the track lastnight because I beat my best time ever by a tenth of a second and the air temps lastnight were 40 degrees higher than my previous best pass. I'm sure had it been better temps I would dipped into the 13's lastnight.

Needless to say I'll be calling my tuning company on Monday to have a chat with them about what's going on with thier software.


BTW...That twin turbo mustang I mentioned never broke out of the 15's lastnight...ouch.

With tune...


Without tune...

[-The Stig-]

Originally Posted by BullDog71ss

a very uneventful 15.044 @ 98.69 mph.
The 60' time for my first run was also a dismal 2.560.

What was it you said???

Oh... yes...

Originally Posted by BullDog71ss

I'd stab myself in the face if I went to the track and couldnt dip into the 14's with my car. Those sort of times are shameful, even for a very novice driver on the hottest night.

Wtf is up with your tune? It ran fine when you were out in Cali racing with us, there wasn't any stumbles or hiccups.

And, if you're going to the track, what are you doing running 87? Why not 91 and the '91 tune'? You said that'd be the deciding factor in our races... (on a side note, I'm not sure why you didn't do that in the first place when racing me, you knew at some point we were going to run our cars. ) I'd want some serious answers from your tune providers, their shit shouldn't be slowing you down by almost a full second. Answers I say!

[BullDog71ss]

I didn't have to stab myself in the face cause I DID manage to hit 14's! Which was nice, cause stabbing myself in the face would suck...a lot.

I couldnt run 91 tune because I had more than half a tank of 87 before I set out for the track. The best I could would be to add 6 gallons of 91 on top of the 87 and set the tune for 89, but I figured the added wieght of the extra gas would offset any gains from the 89 tune anyway.

[-The Stig-]

Yeah, but you only have a 16 gallon tank. If you have half tank that's roughly 8 gallons, adding another 8 gallons of gasoline to it would only net you another 50lbs (1 gallon of gasoline is roughly 6.25lbs @ 72 degrees, being that it's Hell out there and hot as hell... because it is hell, the gas would be less dense and would actually weigh even less.)

50lbs worth of weight probably wouldn't of killed your times, you could of negated the weight gain by ditching any clutter in the car including the spare tire.

[BullDog71ss]

I'm not nearly as dumb as I look..heh.

The car was void of all clutter.