My brother told me yesterday that for every 100 lbs I drop off the camaro I will gain a .10 of a second on my quarter mile. Is this true? If not, what is a more reasonable estimate?

 

More or less. It's more of a rule of thumb though. Also depends on whether it's sprung weight (above the suspension) or unsprung (below the suspension).

 

It's pretty accurate but anything can happen during a run to slow you down again. It depends on how consistant your car is.

But using that theory, if you shave off 1000 pounds you can gain a full second. That's why some very fast cars can go that fast with very little HP. They don't weigh very much. A dragster usually weighs 1500-1800 pounds.

Put my engine in a 1800 pound altered and it should run 8's.

The easiest way to make your car faster is to get rid of extra weight. Most F-bodies are around 3500 pounds plus the driver. Trying to get a race weight down to 3000 pounds is a lot of weight to remove.

 

Carbon Fiber body!!!!!!!!

 

Good luck.

Some companies out there offer the majority of Camaro Body parts in Fiberglass. A pretty complete fiberglass body conversion would easily shave a couple hundred pounds. However, u gotta have A LOT of $$$$$$$$ for that.

 

And just think how fast it would be at 300lbs!

Rich Krause

 

Sounds like an episode of Monster Garage.

 

www.bosshoss.com

How about a 502/502 BBC in a 1300 pound motorcycle?

As for the power to weight ratio, many cars in NHRA could go much faster but NHRA has put a minimum weight limit or engine CID limit on most of them. Top fuel engines must be between 490 and 500 CID. There are many 700+ cid engines that could easily be used. 200 more CID in a top fuel is a lot more HP.

Minimum weight after a run is 2175 pounds. I'm sure if they started using a lot more carbon fiber parts, they could get the weight down far below that.

If the class was unlimited, there's no reason they couldn't get close to a 3 second run. They're in the mid 4's now.

Many classes including S/SS and Comp Eliminator have to add weight to meet the minimum weight break for the class they want to run in. At least then after you've removed as much weight as possible, you can put back weight where it's needed. Take all the weight off the front and move it to the back where it can be used better.

 

top fuel cars can't handle that many cubic inches they tried that before thats why they are limited to 500 ci hemi. no other motor can last when pumping 7000+ hp out of them besides the hemi ( design).

 

The limits in Top Fuel are there for safety/liability and cost reasons. I wonder how fast they could go if the cars were really unimited in terms of displacement and weight? I think traction would be the limiting factor. But if they also were to change the tire rules and/or allow "launch control" a la F1 it could really interesting. I think you would also create a huge problem with stopping the cars. But it would be cool.

Rich Krause

 

They've always had traction problems and produce more power than they can use anyway. When they got rid of the transmissions and started to use multi stage clutches things improved and ET's dropped. Now it's just how well you can get the clutch dialed in. It's not really a factor on how much power they can produce but how much can they get to the ground as soon as possible. Once they get moving down the track is where all the extra HP can be used.

Just like trying to launch a NOS car, it's hard to give a big shot right off the line and expect the tires to stick.