My slow day at the track.

Ok I took my car to the track yesterday, just for the fun of it. They only allowed RWD cars, so I was the only japanese car that was there, as well as the slowest car there.

I ran a 17.07 1/4 mile time and my car isn't even stock. What the heck? This is really discouraging, because it sucks thinking you have too put over $1000 just to get it into 15's.

I was only running 91 octane on a full tank of gas though, but I'm guessing tha twon't make a huge difference. I'm going to run it again after I get exhuast on only a 1/4 tank or less of gas running 93 octane.

Will exhuast make a big acceleration difference? Cause my intake didn't.

I heard from someone a stock auto 240 is supposed to run a 16.4. Myabe if I wasn't full of gas I'd run something like that.

Anyways after I ran to see how slow my car is, they started doing bracket racing. I was like, sure...whatever, I'll lose cause I don't nkow what I'm doing as much as thes pros here, but what the heck.

I payed my $10 to get into the race.

First up...my car versus a 13 second Ford F-150 lightning, the fastest production truck on earth.

I beat it.

Round Two...my car versus some seriously fast 12 second muscle car...think it was a nova or something.

He fouled out, I won.

Round Three...the guy running it tells me I'm probably going to get a buy in this round because there is an odd number of cars. There are only 8 cars left at the moment. So I wait there...and then at the last minute the fastest car in the race pulls up next to me...it's one of those crazy drag rail cars, he pulls up his number on his little dial in thing and shows me 9.76. I'm like...great...me versus the fastest car. The slooooow little rice burning nissan versus a .1mpg drag car that goes 0-150 faster then I go 0-60.  Anyways he ended up getting 1st place.

He wins by .04 seconds. That sucked, but I got further then I expected. I would have won like $200 for first place, and $70 for 2nd. Oh well.


My car is slow. How much of a difference will exhuast make?

(Edited by krunko at 8:39 am on Nov. 19, 2001)

[whateverjames]

exhaust won't do much in my opinion. bolt ons only don't do much until you get pretty much all of them. save for an SR, Turbo, or nitrous. ohhh i wish i would have, i could have saved money something for one of the above but i decided to get all bolt ons, got discouraged and started putting my money elseware. if i would have started with a turbo, i would have been excited and not wasted my money on other things and i would have a fast car now.

[AJ]

How did you beat the lighting? they are fast as ####,, was it a new or old one?.. the new ones will run in the 13's, but the old ones are in the 15's.  was this just a straight line race?

yes straight line...bracket racing..does matter if you run 4's you can still beat a car with a 17 second car.

[DSC]

whats bracket racing?

[vancouvers14]

cars launch at different times depending on their speed (avg of their last 10 races or something like that).  also, you can't go faster than your signed-in speed or you get a dq

[ca18guy]

#### you should have cleaned house in Bracket racing with a auto (oh well you were close).... anyway how did you launch your car? Did you hold the brake down then rev the engine up as high as it go's with out moving the car, then floor it when the light go's green? That is the best method for auto's. A 17 in the 1/4 mile sounds slow, you should atleast be breaking into the 16's.

[vancouvers14]

i didnt know your car was an auto.  17 sounds about right.  did you manually shift?

my best time of 17.07 was just putting it in D and turning overdrive off.  Do you think I should try to manually shift it?  Also when I ran the 17.07 I I hit the gas at the last yellow light.  I didn't rev up or anything.  I tried that first and got a 17.2 so I didn't do it again.  I might have just done it incorrectly.  Also I was running 91 octane on a full tank so that is part of it too.

Chance

[vancouvers14]

shift it yourself.  should help a bit, but the main problem is that its auto.

[BlankFlip]

would this work? if u put the e-brake up a little bit to keep the car barely in place n reved up then just drop the ebrake n floor it? (automatic)

[projectsilvia1]

there is nothing wrong with using 91 octane...your car is not set up to run 93 so why use it..plus the full tank of gas wouldn't make that big of a difference since it is only like 20lbs at the most...(13 gallon tank).  a cold air intake pipe and new plugs isn't going to make much of a difference either.. the best way to go is to lighten up your car.  or just get a motor...sounds like your car isn't running right.
late
mike

I've had zero problems with my car.  I even have 3 years and like 45,000 miles left on the warranty..it's nissan's best warranty so if something was wrong they would fix it.

I think I just need a turbo.  Will exhuast make a big difference?

[ca18guy]

There is nothing wrong woth a auto. I think you need to work on your launch, perfect the brake and gas method I described above, you should be able to get the RPM's near the 3K mark by holding by that method, thats alot better then launching at idle, shifting through the gears help with some cars and hurts others, if your auto rev's all the way up to redline there is no need to shift if it doesn't it may help to shift it all the way to redline. Also if you were there with a full tank a gas that really hurt your times, goto the track with only a 1/4 tank and you will feel and see a difference in your times, 13 gallons of gas wieghs alot more then 20 lbs.

[BlankFlip]

to give u an idea of what a cat-back will do here's what i remember from when i asked a question before. i asked what times ppl run if they have intake w/ cae, headers, n cat-back exhaust. they said they ran low 15's, but could probably be high 14's maybe. i think that's about a seconds worth of improvement, so i would guess u would be doing 16's. but don't think about time so much, think about car lengths or something. a lot of ppl say it ain't worth it to get a turbo cuz ur times will only be like 3 seconds faster, but think how many car lengths that would be in a street race or something (3 seconds) especially at high speeds.

(Edited by BlankFlip at 4:10 pm on Nov. 19, 2001)

[whateverjames]

3 seconds faster in the quartermile is an ass woopin! .5 is about a car length.    i've heard a full tank of gas weighs almost 100 pounds which would add .1 seconds. these are guesstimates.

[LanceS13]

A full 13 gal. tank of gas should weight somewhere in the vicinity of 80lbs....definitely more than 20lbs.  Running on less than a quarter tank should yield some improvement.  An exhaust should help out top end quite noticeably...it did mine anyway.  I assume an intake and header would produce similar results.

[wherezmytofu]

u should of left the car on d3...no need 2 shift to d4

[Grant]

wait a minute, 13 gallons? how come in the manual it says 17.125 gallons on my 240sx?

[LanceS13]

I dunno...everybody esle was saying 13 so I just went with it.  If it is 17 gallons then you're carrying over 100lbs. worth of gas.

[BlankFlip]

is it really 17 gallons? if so, then i'm not getting as good gas milage as i should. i think i should be gettin' over 400 every time if it's that much. guess it ain't all highway though.

[LanceS13]

I had always thought is was somewhere around 14...anybody's owner's manual say different than 17?

[matic 240sx]

hey if you read that on here, it was me... i have a 97 auto and i ran a 16.4 stock... I had 1/8 of gas, and DON'T SHIFT MANUAL... let it shift on its own and take off overdrive... and everything should be off... and my car was warm... if you cut it off between runs then stop... your call will run slower...

but i ran a 15.7 when i just cut off my muffler and welded a straight pipe from the silancer and put in a cone filter... (dont ask, it just happened)

now i have injen with CAE, catback, and other crap but i haven't ran it yet


(Edited by matic 240sx at 9:19 pm on Nov. 19, 2001)

[BlankFlip]

actually, i found a site that says my car has a 17.2 gallon tank. here's the link if u wanna c some other basic specs as well.

<a href="http://cg.superpages.com/cgi-bin/php/used/reports/full/spec?CarRef=U257" target='_blank'>http://cg.superpages.com/cgi-bin....ef=U257</a>

[whateverjames]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Quote: from LanceS13 on 11:13 pm on Nov. 19, 2001
I had always thought is was somewhere around 14...anybody's owner's manual say different than 17?
</td></tr></table><span id='postcolor'>

it's about 15.7 gallons for the S13 and 17.7 gallons for the S14 &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; and remember folks, when you're on E, you still have about 3 gallons left <img src="http://www.zilvia.net/f/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':D'>

[matic 240sx]

i have read on many web sites that nissan has high restrictive exhuast... my friend that works at a muffler shop says my 240 did... &nbsp; when i got my catback and cold air... i really could tell the difference

Ok, well here's my plan. &nbsp;Early next year I'm probably going to get apex-i n1 dual exhuast...I'm going to bring my car to the track with less then 1/4 tank running 91 or 93 octane. &nbsp;Hopefully I can run a 16 flat. &nbsp;If I get that fast or faster I'll be really happy. &nbsp;Yay.

Chance

[misnomer]

Also take altitude and weather into consideration. Lower altitudes and cooler weather result in denser air. Though, this won't impact your times as much as your launch. I doubt there's a problem with your car, practice launching :-)