Took my car to Maxton, NC for the ECTA land speed races there this weekend and had a bunch of fun. For those of you who like to go fast - and I mean mucho mph not jut ET - you should check in to it. You get 1 mile to get up to speed from a standing start and they time you in the last 1/10 mile and you get .9 mile to shut down.
The track records for cars and bikes were obliterated this weekend with the fastest car (3rd gen firebird with small block and twin turbos) running 241mph and a turbo bike running 272. That is VERY fast. As a comparison - a normal lt1 Camaro will run about 128 in the standing mile.
I took my junk to the dyno wednesday to dial in the nitrous tune and found I was down by two cylinders. Swapped plugs, wires, comrpession checked ok but couldn't figure it out but it wasn't making any mechanically bad noises so I decided to take it anyhow. On 6 holes and a 200 shot it went 175 pretty much 4 times in a row. As far as I could tell, Sonny's Vette has held the record for the fastest clocked LT1 car and I was kind of shooting to bump his 197mph record and hit 200 in the mile. Alas it was not to be. Still had fun and will figure it out before the next meet in May.
my 96 Bird. 383 LT1 w/AFR 227's 14:1 and a pretty big roller cam

 

Awesome sounds like fun. Get that engine right and try it again.

 

I've wondered about trying that event but I'm not clear on their rules for "normal" street cars. At what point is a rollcage required?

I expect my car to have ~ 120 mph traps in the quarter but it's gearing-limited to around 160 to 170. Would I have to have a cage? I'm not willing to chop up the car for a single event.

Same for my brother -- he's got a Mercedes CL65 AMG (twin turbo v12 - 605hp, 740tq) and would at least be able to hit its 155 speed limiter. Don't worry, that goes away as soon as the warranty does

 

Nevermind -- found the rules:

So I'd have to stop at 135. I could see a roll bar for road racing or anything involving turns but you've got to really screw up driving a street car in a straight line.

I'd feel 10x safer in my car at 160 than I would in my truck at 135 (if it could hit it anyway) and yet the truck would be allowed!

 

Without a cage you'd be tech'd to 135 but they typically will let you fudge over that by 5 mph or so. Also, they only check your mph in the final 1/10 mile so whatever you do up to that point is up to you...

 

How much power did you make to run 175? Also, I thought Jim from SpeedInc ran 199mph in his TT LT1 Camaro?

 

He probably doesn't know how much power he was making because he was only running on 6 cylinders during these runs.

 

He ran 175mph on 6 cylinders after he dynoed it on 6 cylinders... looking to see what the 6 cylinders layed down.

 

It was making 365 at the wheels (th350 trans) on a dyno dynamics chassis dyno with just the 6 cyls running before hitting it with nitrous. I could visibly see that two holes were not running by looking at the plugs and the headers tubes with a temp gun. Just ran it anyhow. Still haven't had a chance to dig into it yet.

 

normal lt1= 128 in the standing mile?

128
138
148
128 just seams slow for a car that traps about 100 in the 1/4, that leaves 3/4 more to gain speed

just how far does it take to wring one of these out?

I want to do Maxton bad just need $$$$ roll cage, rear end without c clips, driving suit, speed rated tires

thats a couple of thousand just to run
Ive read of guys running close to 135 a few times then killing it on the last run

 

Sweet! Sounds like a blast!

Are you spraying a 14:1 set up or is that what you calculating on the gas?

 

I'm spraying it and it is 14:1. Running 114 octane.

A lot of the LT cars do run well into the high 13x's and 14x's but the bone stock ones don't fare as well. The ones that do run fast are usually hampered by tech stuff like no roll cage, etc.

A theoretical test (I don't condone ACTUALLY doing this...) would be to find a deserted road that has mile marker signs and go from a dead stop for 1 mile and use GPS to track speed. It's been my experience that most factory gauges are off 5-10mph over 130mph so the GPS is the way to go. You might be surprised how different cars fare.

 

GMHTP got a bone stock 2010 SS to run 151. 151 with a 426hp car weighing roughly 3800-3900lbs, it sounds like it shouldn't be hard to beat that with a cammed LT1. Considering you can get more than 426 crank hp out of a cammed full bolt on LT1 given the right parts choice and tune, and with hundreds less lbs to carry with you...

 

I'm interested in little tricks to improve air flow, lowering? taping the hood seams, front end taping

how strict was the teck?
what kind of tires did you run?
gear ratio?

 

The biggest thing is to drop the car on the ground. I use Eibach lowering springs up front that I also cut a half round off and the rears are coil overs that I adjust so it barely keps from scraping the ground. Drag radials are really the best bet for the rear and front runners up front. Tech is pretty strict but fair. Safety is their number one thing and if something is unsafe they will definitely let you know. I ran a 2.80 on the first pass then swapped it for a 3.08 for the remaining passes. I keep a 3.69,3.08,3.00,2.92,2.80 and 2.54 on hand for quick changes depending how fast we're trying to go. One of the good things about a quick change rear end besides just taking 5 minutes to swap gears is that you just flip the gears top to bottom and you have numerically higher gears which are good for drag racing - in my case ranging from ~4.69-6.09.