Today was the first time i have ever drag raced. I raced my 88 firebird formula 350. It's stock. I got a 14.755 @ 92.96
My reaction time sucked, .745 the seccond time i went it was .440
With practice i would have maybe ran a 14.5 ish
I also had my girl friend in the car with me. May 1 there having scholorship racing in Muncie indiana. 20,000! It's for people going to lincoln tech. Im going for auto body and collision, so i'm definatly got to do that again!

 

reaction times have no affect on et.

 

They don't affect ET, but they do affect win/lose...

Is that a .500 perfect reaction time or .000? Either way, I saw worse during time trials last Friday from people who paid to race.

Good luck, have fun!

 

I just baught a cold air intake and it comes in tomorrow, that should make it alittle faster.

Thanks alot for the comments. .00 was perfect i think

 

I don't know how much your girlfriend ways but for every 100 pounds of weight it is costing you .1 seconds. Try to have no more than a quarter tank of gas. No spare tire or other unnecessary weight in the car, back seat or trunk. I think you should make 14.5's easily. Allen

 

My girlfriend weighs about 140, i took out the spare tire. I baught a cold air intake today. That should help. That would be nice to run a 14.5 my older brother argued with me and said my car would do a low 15. Well, i proved him wrong.

"for every 100 pounds of weight it is costing you .1 seconds."
I didnt know that, thats really cool. Thanks for tips.

do you guys have anymore that might help my time?

 

I always manually shift my tranny when I'm racing. If I don't, it seems to shift sooner than what I want it too. What RPM are turning it too? Whatever you do, do NOT go over 5000rpm, there is nothing there for a tpi motor. What was your 60ft. time? You might be able to pick up some time there. Traction is a big part of drag racing my friend. Nice times for your first time racing though.

 

I dont think with those times taction is too much of an issue, but you can never have too much traction so it can always be improved upon for consistency sake. Traction will also play a MAJOR role in your reaction time as well especially since your trying to tighten it up to be competative. You spin, your gonna be late on the tree, you dead hook your gonna be faster on the tree simple as that.

Get the girl out since that extra weight also plays major into how the car reacts coming outta the box, with her you may be .700 R/T, lose the chick and maybe it'll speed you up to a .600-it can be that drastic as I've given quite a few rides and the added weight really slows down the cars leave.

I personally always ran/run with a full tank of fuel. For one I never have to worry about running out of gas when you least expect it-ask the guys that race everyweekend how many times they've seen that happen and it also helps put the weight ovcer the rear end right where you need it for better weight transfer and help to plant the tires.

Practice, practice practice is the only way your gonna nail the bracket thing down since most races are won/loss on the tree and nothing substitutes seat time-half the reason I live/lived at the track everyweekend during the summer to stay on top of my game.

Dont get easily frustrated and talk to others out there, more guys than not are more than willing to help a new guy out-that's how I got as good as I am as fast as I did by talking with the right people-use what they've learned over the years to shorten your learning curve and be open minded and make your own descions since there's always a few guys out there that will fill you full of chit because they got beat up alot as kids I guess. Have fun and good luck on the scholarship!!!

 

Unless the car dead hooks it is better to race on a full tank of gas.

 

I always was under the impression that you want that extra weight over the rear tires. I've never legally dragged my car, and don't know much about it but it seems logical that the weight over the rear tires would be beneficial.

 

60' was 2.14 I dont know if thats good or not. I do agree with weight over the rear wheels. Wouldn't that help getting more traction? How much weight would be a good idea to put over the rear wheels?

 

A full tank of fuel and throw the girlfreind back there too-just tell her not to yelp when she gets thrown against the hatch

A full tank of fuel is about all I used to run. Now that I have my system in there I have my 2 amps in the bottom of the trunk well and my big sub box wedged in there as well so maybe an extra 100lbs.

 

Remember gasoline weighs about 7 pounds to the gallon. So we are talking close to one tenth and one mph for the quarter between a FULL tank and under a quarter tank.

The group I race with uses the 1/4 or less tank rule. If I had followed my own advice I would be in the 12.6's and above 106mph in the quarter instead of whats in my signature. Allen

 

That is true if you run stickies and have no traction problems, but anybody that tries this game on radials will most likely be fighting traction issues and that loss of .1 in the quarter due to added weight for traction will no doubt be over shadowed by the lighter weight/slower ET since you spun in the 60'. "Most cars" will typically lose .02-.03 in the 1/4 for every .01 loss in the first 60'. That's a generic formula and every car is different, but is a common parameter amoung peers.

 

I didnt get a great amount of traction but it wasnt real bad. I tried torqing it up alittle the second time i went, i spun all the way trough first gear.
My tires are brand new. They cost me 500$


What should i do to get a good take off?
should i put it in drive or overdrive?
torq it up alittle?


and how ofen should i take my car to the strip?
I want to do it every week but i dont think that would be a good idea. So what about every 3 weeks?

I want to get some headers, what type are good but dont cost that much? And are they horrible to put in yourself. Me and my brother and uncle could probably do it. What all things would i have to take off?

 

First thing, weather the tires cost $1-- or $10,000 makes no difference, compound will be the biggest factor and tread design the second biggest when trying to get traction. If a person is running a high mileage radial the rubber is going to naturally be harder so they can get the long miles out of them-but it also means they're gonna be bad for traction on a drag strip because they're so hard it wont "bite"

How you take off is gonna depend on you and your car. You can try leaving at a dead idle, footbraking to a certain rpm (which could be from 800-2000 rpm, you just have to experiment and find the sweet spot. When I started racing I was runing radial tires and foot braking, my most consistent traction came with only 18psi in the rear tires, one hellava smokey burnout, and staging at 1800rpm. But again, every car will like different things so you'll just have to play with what you have and experiment until you find what works.

Dont look at it as, if I go this week and wait two weeks the car will live longer. The car will live much much longer if you never took it to the track (let's be honest)...BUT....with a proper maintenance schedule on the engine/transmission so everything is working properly this will help prevent damages by being on the race track. Keep the rpms low when racing (lower the rpms the longer the motor will live) so there's no need to try and spin 7K out of you mill if it's not built for it. When racing your pushing everything to the max, if there's a weak link, you'll find it-then fix it right so it's no longer a weak spot and move onto the next one. If it's gonna break, it's gonna break so dont get bent outa shape if it does since it happens to alot of people that go out there.

Headers, do a search in the exhaust board, lots of info from guys that installed diffferent kinds and what their results were. If you could keep a 3/4 length header they're gonna be easier to install than a full length header, and be fore warned now that anytime you start modding your car, it's very rare anything is a true bolt on. Most parts will have to have some modifications to make it work. My friend said it perfectly one day when talking about race parts---"they cost twice as much and never fit" and that's that in a nutshell

 

I raced in the lincoln drag. Sad to say i didnt win. I got beat by a 5.0 mustang hatchback. My dial in time was 9.5 and i ran a 9.59
I had a reaction time of.465.

I beat the guy on evrything but reaction time and he still won.

There had to be at the least 600 people racing.

I'm going to pick up some picture of my car from walmart so i'll post a picture of my car when i ge them.

 

http://www.cardomain.com/id/88formula88

 

If you guys are running a sportsman tree that red light gave him an easy round

Try to tighten up your dial also, running a 9.59 on a 9.50 dial your leaving too much in the bag and will have to be all over your brakes to keep from breaking out and losing that way. If he stayed green with a perfect .500 light you would been waaay ahead of him all the way to the finish line since you jumped the gun and left waay before he did. Try to remember bracket racing is NOT racing the other car, it's racing yourself. The other car is just a judgement point for what you need to do at the finish line.

It's hard to accept, but at some points in time you have to hit your brakes to win the race, other times you have to let the other guy drive by you to win (he'll break out) practice is the only thing that'll get you to where you need to be. Driving the stripe is THE single most difficult part of bracket racing.

 

amen to that!

 

I didnt break out. .00 was the perfect. He beat me by .234 on reaction time. I got closer on my dial though.

 

7 pounds per gallon, so you are saving close to 70 pounds which might be 7 hundredths of a second.

Now think about 70 pounds directly over your rear tires, no worries about fuel starvation and better 60' times. Would you rather have your theoretical 7 hundredths off your ET or 1-2 tenths off your 60'.

 

Your .465 RT gave him an extra .231 seconds to play with. He didn't have to get closer to his dial-in than you did. Your chances of winning when you give the other guy two tenths to play with are pretty slim. You could run right on your dial-in and still lose. You could break out and he doesn't and he still got to the stripe first.

IHI, I agree with your conclusion, but you had his dial-in and run #'s backwards.

 

I understand now. I need to work on my reaction time.

 

RT is a huge factor. People fret over a hundredth or two dial-in difference, when their RT's are varying by several hundredths. I lost my last race run with an .062 RT, breaking out by 2 thousandths of a second, and got to the stripe 2 hundredths after the other guy because he had a .015 RT (on a 2 hundredths-over run).

There are basically 3 parts to a bracket race: 1) Knowing what to dial and being able to run it; 2) cutting a good light w/o redlighting; and 3) judging the finish line comparing your closing to the other guy's closing.

To expound on IHI's braking comment: It was only in the past couple of years that I picked up on the "brake if you aren't catching them" approach. Assuming similar RT's, if you aren't going to get there first, maybe he's breaking out. Or, if his RT is better and you're both breaking out, you'll let him go ahead and break out. It's worked for me several times in the past couple of seasons.

 

What the five7kid said about breaking if you know you arent going to catch them is correct. I won a round at a Super Chevy show doing just that last year. If you're in it to go rounds, you need to learn to race the stripe for sure. If you are in it for "fun" and to run your car as hard as you can, to get the best ET you can, just run it ***** out every run. Its all what you want to do. Typically, I just run the car as hard as I can, unless its at a bigger event like a Super Chevy show or something. I'm more interested in the cars performance, which is also why I normally only take the car to the track when the air is good. Key thing, have fun!