first trip to track

[wants a tr]

just got the car in feb, and have been doing maintenance work to it. i changed the plugs and wires, yada yada yada. you get the point. also ditched the airbox for a 9' k&n. the car is bone stock right down to the chip. went to the track with some good pep boys tires. lowered pressure to about 16 lbs. 93 octane in the tank. didnt mess with anything besides air pressure. i ran a best of 14.9 @ 90 mph with a 60 foot of 2.3. i cut a .05 light =]. i was kinda disappointed, i thought the car would go 14.5's or so. car has 110k miles on it. after thinking about it it wasnt that bad.

give me some thoughts or feed back of some sort.

-josh
slow 86 gn, but will get there

 

[UNGN]

Fuel pump
Valve springs
gutted cat
2.5" dual exhaust with free flowing mufflers
home port the turbo elbow and intercooler necks
make a converter lockup switch.
raise your tire pressure back up to 20-24 psi
right side airbag at 20 psi


With these above changes, an no other ones, you should be in the mid 13's @ over 100 mph.

With race gas, race chip and sticky tires, 12'S at 106 should be pretty easy.

 

[Rayk]

In my experience your trap speed is off by about 3-4 MPH for a bone stocker. If you want to base line your stocker before doing any performance mods here are a couple of things which may be causing the horsepower loss (about 30-40HP):
1) Valve springs
2) Low voltage at the fuel pump - needs a hot wire
3) clogged fuel filter
4) Are you shifting into 4th gear ?- only use 3rd gear at track
5) partially clogged catatylic conv.
6) Too much weight - empty trunk completely

All the above could easily account for 3 or 4 MPH on a high mileage car. Just a few thoughts. good Luck,

 

[wants a tr]

thanks for the replies guys. i actually have a new fuel filter in the back seat. and all those things you said are very good thoughts. i was gonna try the valve springs but i heard thats tricky. i will do some of that stuff and see how she does next time. oh yea i had the pressure at 20 lbs and i was cutting 2.4s 60' lowered it to 16-17 and i got the 2.3s 60 ft times. oh and i was just leaving it in overdrive. not shifting no nothing. smash it and go. good - bad ?


TIA,
-josh

 

[Rayk]

Leaving it in overdrive and smash and go is "bad". Leave the shift lever in regular Drive (D) so it will not shift into 4th gear.

And the valve springs often account for 1 to 3 MPH in a car with 110,000 miles. They even need to be replaced after only 40 or 50,000 miles.

As for starting techniques, I'm assuming you're using street radials. I would recommend about 25 - 28 psi in the tires (pump the fronts up to 45 -50). Then, off the line, don't just smash it to the floor! Brake stall to about 2000 RPM (about 0 to 1 PSI if you have a boost gauge). Then, when you take off, just let off the brake and press the throttle to the floor gradually. this should keep the tires from getting blown away and improve your 60 ft times to maybe 2.0 to 2.1. If the tires don't break loose then you can try staging with 1 to 2 PSI boost (or about 2500 RPM) and going down on the throttle a little faster. But with street radials that's about the limit on most stockers.

With this technique and a fairly good state of tune, your pure stocker should go anywhere from 14.2 to 14.5 at 92 to 95 MPH with a stock chip.

Have fun,

 

[UNGN]

Originally posted by wants a tr
. oh yea i had the pressure at 20 lbs and i was cutting 2.4s 60' lowered it to 16-17 and i got the 2.3s 60 ft times.

Both 60fts suck. If you lowered the air pressure down to 5 psi, you could probably run a 2.0 60 ft if the tires stayed on the rims, but you top end mph would be a little low. Are the wheels Spinning? If so, right side airbag at 20 psi. If not, leave with more boost.

60ft is only one of your problems. The big one is 90 mph, which means "less than 190 HP". If it shifted into OD for some reason, that can reduce your mph a couple, but you are still making less than 200hp.

A fuel filter won't help much if the fuel pump is dead. Going fast takes a little more work than just showing up at the track and running. You need to make sure your car is properly prepared and you keep it that way. Its way cheaper to spend $100 on a fuel pump now than it is to spend $2000-3000 on a rebuild. Once you have a fuel system you can trust, then you can add mods as you see fit and actually notice improvements each time you go to the track. With a stock fuel pump in place, your car will run inconsistant at best, and may break the motor in a worst case scenario.

 

[MY85pontiac]

well um since his is a first time thread here i'll jsut stick my neck in here for a spell and give my two cents.

i ran on the track for the first time last year. its an 1/8th mile track and i ran 12.5 second runs with a 55 MPH speed with 3.0 second 60 foot times. however 3 out of the 5 runs had a .020 reaction time on a .500 tree. i guess thats not bad for a first timer. the car is a 85 base model grand prix with a 3.8 n/a and a pre 81-th-350 and a 2.41 one legger rear. that rear gear really kills the take off on the car. i was having some problems last year such as a clogged up muffler, sloppy shifting, lack of a tune up, the car had stuff in it (i went to the track on a lark, it wasnt planned) but the muffler has been replaced with a maximum flow muffler from hooker and i have a shift kit from fairbanks in the tranny. i'm not sure what i'll run this year but i'm hoping to find out soon. one of the tech guys said my car has run better than some n/a buick V6 cars have run up there before. i dont know if thats true or not but i felt SLOW. so how much slower am i from stock? the th-350 has different gearing and makes the 2.41 gear act like a 2.14 gear and thats where most of my problem lies now.