I Got A Hot Date Wed Nite!!

When I showed up at the Cruise in the new Buick a couple of months ago there was a lot of speculation about the 455. We're mostly over 60 in our Rod club. Any way one thing led to another and "GTO" Joe challenged me to a match race and I accepted but set a couple of months for tuning ect. We are headed to the drag strip Wed nite to settle it.

I have advanced the ignition curve, added posi, and worked with the car in practice as well as repaired a couple of necessities as brakes and AC.
Here we go 70Stage1 tribute 30over, deck and heads cut 15, Comp cam, TH400 and 2.93 going against a 66 GTO 389, 30over, trips, 4 speed and 3.55 posi and its a heavy convertible. It should be interesting.

I used to be a designated driver in an earlier Rod club 50 years ago and this will be my first run at the strip in 50 years. Those were the days of flagmen, and I probably won or at least tied most of the "out of the chute" battles. The chute is like a fistfight, first lick is a big advantage.
Anyway, 1/2 tank of gas, spare out, tires aired up and some practice on the online trees. What am I missing?

I'm airing the backs to 30lb which is a little high but it seems to launch better with breaking them loose and get those RPMs early with the 2.93 gear. The TH400 goes 1-2 at 4000 in Drive which leaves a little on the table. If there's time to compare I'll manual shift it at 4500.

How wide is the stage area? I read I want to stage tight rather than deep. Is the stage area a standard distance or do they vary?

Onward to Glory and hopefully a GTO kill.

Chuck

 

Cut weight like wrestlers do! Or inhale some helium to make you lighter :bla:

Kidding. Good luck!!! KILL THAT GTO!

:beers2:

 

Hi Chuck,

Here's a basic primer about drag racing from the NHRA.

http://www.nhra.net/basics/basics.html

You can also check with your track's safety requirements for your class racing, as you'll have to comply with some basic needs. Do you have a doubled throttle return spring? Battery hold down, coolant o'flow tank, no windshield cracks? Apart from that, anything necessary to pass a mechanical safety inspection will be needed.

If you are using modern street radials, you'll have to avoid the waterbox and motion to the starting line attendant of your intention, once you've been signalled to move forward to the burn out box.

You may want to put the spare back in the trunk, as the drag strip starting pad can be slick for street-tired cars. You'll need the extra weight for traction. You'll find out after your first pass. You, actually, have better traction on the street.

Leaving it in "D" is fine, even, if you automatically short-shift into 2nd gear. With a 2.93 gear you'll have lots of oomph in 2nd gear, almost to the finish line, before it snaps into 3rd. Do you have a shift kit in the Turbo 400? That can save a tenth or two in the et.

These are basic guides, only, and I'm sure others will have practical suggestions from their racing experiences. Good luck, we're all with you, bud!

Nando.

 

I don't have years and years of experience but I have been down the track a bunch in the last 3 years.

I've found that all my street tires hook very very well at the track. Way better than on the street. Go around the waterbox, do a small burn out through first gear and stage.

The spare won't make that much of a weigh difference but it may or may not be heavy enough to affect your traction. For every 100lbs you shave that's 1 tenth.

You've got a lot more motor than that Pontiac but I am willing to bet that Pontiac will surprise you especially if it's hopped up. I think you'll be able to take him if he is close to stock.

He's got a lot better rear end gear plus his is a stick. If he has some mods it will be close but I think you got him

For what it's worth, my good friend has a STOCK (even stock log manifolds and stock intake) 68 GTO with a 400 and an auto with 2.96 gears and on street tires he has run 13.1Xs. That's pretty amazing

 

They sell kits for modifying your shift point, an adjustable vacuum modulator is cheap and easy to install, would only take a few minutes to install, then you can turn the tiny screw inside the end and you can get those shift points up a little. otherwise you can take out the governor and modify it also. I'm sure there are some threads on here somewhere for doing that mod also. Worked for me. The stock th400 does shift kind of lazy @ 4000 rpms, the true stage 1 cars had a snappier shift more like 5000 rpms, you are right it does leave a bit on the table. When I started to get higher shift points I noticed my old 430 would run out of steam in the top end of the rpm band before shifting, I installed a stock stage 1 fuel pump and that took care of it, pulled hard till the rpms were @ 5 grand, that was all the farther I dared push the stock mill with over 100,000 miles but it made a massive difference.

I took my mom's 69 Electra to the track back in 1982 and it ran 16.78 stock, removing the air cleaner it went 16.40, undid the Y-pipe and ran 16.12, held it in 1st a little longer(no tach installed yet) and cut it down to 15.78. So there you have it, completely stock and cut 1 second from my times. Plenty of opportunity there.

 

Oh yeah, a big part depends on the other guy's driving and car's state of tune, I bought my girlfriend a 68 Javelin back in the day, it was a 290-2bbl auto and she took it out cruising and told me how she spanked a 68 GTO in 4 races in a row, some from the dig and some from the roll, he had a 400-4bbl. Talked to the owner and he was pretty ticked when he found out what exactly beat him and was going to have to spend a lot of money to get it to where it needed to be.

 

Hey Chuck,
If he is near stock, you have him by over 70ftlbs of torque, and his GTO weighs about 4200, so you have him there, if you can hook up and get him out of the hole, I don't see him being able to get around you. Go around the water box, unless you have slicks.
If both cars were factory stock, you would have him by like 1 second
so good luck and let us know how it all turns out.

 

He might be an experienced 4 speed driver, there is no gauranty that he will spin out of the hole...

I do think you have him beat

I don't think a 66 GTO convert is anywhere near 4200 lbs though, hell that's almost what my '59 weighs and it's almost a full 2 feet longer

 

Hi Robert,

And it's because of that rear overhang you can hook up so well at the track.

Nando.

 

Im thinking maybe 3600-3700 pounds.
And if the man owns a 66 GTO 4 speed vert and asked to race, theres probably a good chance he might know how to drive/race it.
Should be a good race. Im sure youll represent our Buicks well.:beer
Good luck, be safe and let us know the outcome.

 

Thanks Guys for the kind words.

The cars should weigh pretty much the same. Curb on the GTO is 3650 plus convt is 3850. The Buick is 3800 as well for the 455.

I'll throw a extra spring in the tool bag but I haven't heard anyone mention that.

The track is like one year old, specifically built for drag racing, and my mechanic who races there a lot says better than street asphalt traction. Its all concrete.

I'm going to skip the burnout as the cooler tires will leave more burnout for the run. I'm going under the theory that the burnout raises the RPMs quicker and with a 2.93 "bog" is a possibility if the traction is greater than street. The car came with a bog problem, its running a 750 Summit carb with vacuum secondaries which isn't optimum. The bog is now tuned out but may come back with greater traction.

I can't find the answer on how wide the stage area is. The link above gave a pre-stage distance of 7in. I read an article on staging deep for ET get movement before braking the beam and stage tight for match race but how wide is the actual stage area? If its inches I'm going to forget it.

The GTO is not practiced, I spent some time today with him at a show and he's afraid of breaking something. Hard to tell-- if he's playing me? But I would have heard if he ever had it at the strip.

Fox's Den-- yes I know the benefits of being a cool hand against a less experienced driver. In my day I ran a Caddy Eldo 330HP powered 34 Plymouth Coupe with 11 inch slicks. I had lakes out the side in front of the mufflers and could make a lot of noise in narrow street races. Same with practice burnouts of the slicks just for smoke and effect!

Chuck

 

Hey Chuck,

What do they charge for spectators on Wednesday nights? I'd like to see this!

Best Wishes,

 

It's in inches. Seven sounds probable, from lighting up the first staging light to lighting up the second one is only a few inches, and I'm sure a couple more would unlight the first light.

 

Hi Chuck,

Some tracks may not allow deep-staging, but if your track does, do you think your reaction time will not be good enough and that's why you are considering it? I believe you can practice on your drag racing reaction time on-line. I think the link for the program was once posted on this forum.

Would leaving against the brake, once you're staged, at above idle, at say, 1000 rpm, help with your possible bog?

Nando.

 

On a street car I don't think how deep you stage will really matter. I know in my truck I can light up both stage lights and then creep forward another inch or 2 but it's not going to make a huge difference. You probably won't notice a difference at all, in top fuel and funny car it matters because they accelerate 500 times faster so an extra inch can mean a few MPH or a few hundreths, in a street car it might mean one mph and a few hundreths which doesn't really matter, the race won't be that close

I wouldn't bother with practicing reaction times. On street tires you'll need to leave when you see the last yellow light come on. If you wait until green or try to take off as soon as green hits you'll get half second reaction times or worse. Unless you're running slicks and can pull like 1.5 60' times. The better you hook and the faster you are the longer you can wait. If you're running like 15s you need to start leaving way before green

It would probably be better to leave idle-1000RPMs. I wouldn't leave any higher than that with those gears

 

I think you can win it, go and smoke him!

 

See if he has long wheel studs on the back of the car and what tire he is running. If he has long wheel studs in the back or any type of drag radial chances are he is playing you. You will know as soon as the lights start to drop, not to many guys are willing to dump the clutch at 4K to get out of the gate.

 

On some cars, if you torque it up a bit on the line, you will spin less, and the reaction time is quicker. Could be worth a car length or more. Test this and see how it does.

 

The less you spin leaving the better. I would heat up the tires and if you have a bog, well, better work on that before the next race!

If you have a safe place to do so, air up your fronts to 45 or so and deflate the backs to 20-25 or so. Do a brake torque burn-out and see how it launches after you've got the tires warm. If the bog is truly gone, this is probably what you want to do. It might feel like it's quicker on the street when your smoking them on take-off, but I'd bet your 60 ft times would say otherwise.

As you said, "first lick is a big advantage". And if you can control spin coming out of the hole without a bog, you'll be in good shape.

Oh, and what's the criteria for winning the race? Best ET? Fastest MPH? Or who crosses the finish line first? If you can get him to agree to ET or MPH , then you won't have to worry so much about being rusty at the lights and having a slow reaction time. I only run a few times a year and I can tell you my reaction times are usually pretty bad.o No:

Sounds like fun!

 

Get a couple of runs in before you line up to race so you can sort out the process. Stage last and "burn him down", if you want to play mind games.

Leaving on the last yellow gives time for your reaction and the car's response as well. I stage to just light the stage light, then roll power on from idle when the yellows come down. I'm probably moving before the other guy, but my car doesn't hit hard enough to give me too many red lights. With a little practice, you can get a smooth and consistent launch.

I run a 3.08 rear in my GS, and it's easy to blow the tires away. You should have plenty of torque too, so walk it out carefully - if you spin the tires going down the track you'll lose half a second even if you can hook up again.

Now, for burnouts I smoke the heck out of my street radials, right through the water. I have tried sneaking around the water and little dry hops, it's just not nearly as much fun. My 60' times are always right around 2.0 seconds either way, so the burnouts don't seem to slow me down. Slip 'er into second, power brake a little, and smoke 'em down - sure fire intimidation for a stick car with inexperienced driver. If he's scared to break it, he sure doesn't know how to do a burnout.