Thread: J57ltr's 05' GTP wrecked again.

Ya, people can be a$$holes at work, 4 squares of toilet paper left on the roll, a couple tablespoons of water left in the dispenser. It's like " I didn't use the LAST of it so I'm not gonna change it out...." As far as the forklift goes, some guys at my work will idle it over to the parking spot and walk away, knowing the next guy is only gonna make it 10 feet before it quits. Dooshbags! Welding tanks, same thing...oooh you left me a sip of gas, or only a handful of turns of wire on the spool, you TOOL !

So it's been a while and the car's been doing pretty good no real issues with it other than when I had the wreck it knocked the boot off of the passenger side CV and it is going to need to be replaced. The Drivers side front bearing has been singing since December. I never did replace the Radiator or condenser that were tacoed in the wreck since they have been working perfectly. I still have the new ones in the box in the garage.

Last Friday I got a call from my little brother who is going to school over at Hennessey Motorsports outside of Sealy TX. for tuning school and they were having a track day at their ¼ mile track. He was going to be working at the track as well and they were going to be trading out with other students to get the feel for how it works. He asked if I wanted to go and I said I would and he wanted me to bring my car to run it. Well I needed to do some things but nothing too significant so I decided to chance it. I tried to calculate how many gallons I would need to get there and back without carrying too much extra fuel, I settled on ¾ tank. Drove out there and used a little less than ¼ tank getting there (E85).

I met up with a friend that I had invited and we got through the gate and went to park while I went through tech. I removed my headlight as I have in the past and it was suggested to me to limit the amount travel on the front suspension and to get some spring blockers for the rear. Well I didn’t have time for that. Other suggestions were to remove air from the front tires down to 20 psi and raise the rear pressure to 40. Well I know from my days driving RWD cars that airing down steel belted radials is worthless as tits on a boar hog, but I figured I would give it a try. I had also switched to a 3.3” pulley
First few passes:
7:02PM, 2.4683 60’, 10.4825@65.69MPH 1/8^th, 16.373@84.35 ?
7:08PM, 2.6175 60’, 10.7141@67.80MPH 1/8^th, 16.3961@87.33 ?
Realized that in the staging lanes I turned the car off and back on and forgot to turn the traction control back off, noticed on the second run it said traction control active. Doh!!
7:15PM, 2.4397 60’, 10.1539@70.12MPH 1/8^th, 15.6655@89.71 ?

I noticed that I was running pretty rich in the low 10’s dipping into the 9’s. The engine was still pretty cool with me being in the 160 degree range and trans temp about 140. I also noticed that I was only getting about 10 psi where I was hitting 14+ on a 3.4 so I surmised that I was slipping. So I parked the car and went to get something to eat and watch some of the other guys race for a little bit and talk with my buddy, brother and his friends and look at my logs. So I was slipping the pulley and didn’t really have the timing I usually do only about 13-14 degrees where I am usually about 17-18 degrees. I had also asked Noah to check out my tire tracks as I launched. He stated that they looked like crescent moons and I knew the tires were cupping and weren’t really helping with the lower tire pressure so I decided to up the pressure back to normal on the front and put the 3.4 back on. Got to the line and launched at 2K as I had been doing. Laid into it a bit early and spun pretty good.

7:52PM, 2.5494 60’, 9.9513@73.96MPH 1/8^th, 15.1844@93.03 try a little softer launch next time.

Went and sat and watched the races for a while contemplating my next move. Saw a nice Porsche running low 10’s all day long and a stripped Neon running mid 10’s. Watched an old about 85’ Chev full size crew cab dually complete with faded oxidized red paint. Looked straight off the farm. It was running mid-high 14’s and was a riot to watch. Saw a newer Ecoboost Ford truck that had an intake and FMIC click off 13.1’s they kicked some kid in a Dodge Cummings dually because he had oil and crap in the bed of his truck (Some people). Anyway I had decided to launch at 2400 where I had been last time I was at the track.

9:13PM, 2.4959 60’, 9.9206@73.61MPH 1/8^th, 15.1646@93.54 car was cold again and made another pas a few minutes later but didn’t let it get all the way warmed up.

9:24PM, 2.4018 60’, 9.6740@74.49MPH 1/8^th, 14.8732@93.89 starting to pick up a little.

A lot of the big guys were running and it was just too loud to hear what was going on with my car so I just sat out for a while. Then warmed up my car until I
was about 185 and went to the line.

10:25PM, 2.3239 60’, 9.4940@75.04MPH 1/8^th, 14.6588@94.66

10:29PM, 2.2471 60’, 9.3813@75.62MPH 1/8^th, 14.5136@95.16

10:32PM, 2.3173 60’, 9.4692@75.73MPH 1/8^th, 14.5911@95.36

Had a great time watched some cool cars and not so cool cars run hung out and talked with my buddy, my brother and some of his friends.

Things I learned or knew already. The car runs a hell of a lot better when it’s up to temp in the 190’s, airing down radials is a dumb idea and I need a smaller belt or larger tensioners for that 3.3” pulley.

Jeff

A 1.9-2.0 60 foot and you're into the 13's I bet. That is the biggest struggle on getting quick times.

Yeah I think I may pick up a set of wheels to mount a larger softer tire on. These tires are regular 225-55-17's with a traction and wear of A but they are cheap tires (Otsu I think) that I bought not long after I bought the car, so they are going on about 2 years or so. I think I am going to get a set of 16's and then look into tires to get for them. I may look for some spring blockers for the rear. and may look at that cable mod for the front as well for the track. The temps were much hotter this time than when I went in December and I'm glad I was able to cut faster times once I went back to my original setup the way I ran last time. I am not sure what the DA was but it was it certainly wasn't 48 degrees it was in the 80's by the time I got home a little after midnight. I haven't even looked at my last runs yet since I was sick from Sunday to Wednesday. The funniest things of the night:

On my last pass the Announcer calls out my name and where I am from and says "He's going to run the wheels out on that Grand Prix." Then about halfway down the track says "If he doesn't run outta gas first."

On my 14.8 second pass one of my friends was filming and some little kid in the background starts talking crap singing "The black car is going to wiiin, white car's gonna looose." It was a Honda of some sort and was loud as hell. Anyway I beat it from the line all the way down. He didn't say anything else...

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y5/J57ltr/IMG_0176.jpg

So for this idiot pulled out in front of me while going the speed limit down a main thoroughfare and didn't even pick a lane. Insurance is fighting now. Luckily I have a extra headlight but my charging system isn't working and my horns aren't either. It's easier when you mess your own stuff up it seems. Luckily I have a witness.

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y5/J57ltr/IMG_0175.jpg

it'll get back but I'm sure this is going to take months instead of days.

Jeff

Photo bucket is screwed up now it seems.

new links work.

Originally Posted by J57ltr

Photo bucket is screwed up now it seems.

new links work.

Still a no go on those pix .... :0

his account is private, why the links dont work.

i cant see em either, sounds like carnage tho, sounds like hes ok as well. i hate car crashes.

Yeah pretty much damage to the right fender hood and bumper cover along with damage to the light and knocked out my fog light and driving light. Then on the way home lost the charging system and have no horns. So it's sitting in the driveway until they try to decide who's at fault. I already said that if you are turning into a main lane of travel and get hit (especially when you aren't in a lane) you are at fault period. Don't know why the images won't work they seem like they aren't working anymore at all.

That sucks. At least they were insured. Typically in Houston there is a good chance of the person not having insurance the police don't care. I am dealing with that right now.

Yeah I had to deal with that on my Park Ave. got rear ended by 2 Mexicans that didn't have insurance on either car. I used my insurance to deal with that. Then my wife backed up and someone speeding down the aisle hit her and they raised our insurance &100 a month.

So it's been a while and I have only dropped .1" in pulley size. I made a new exhaust system to replace the old baffleless Flowmasters that were driving me absolutely insane. I will post pics later when I find somewhere to host the images. It started with a 3" ZZP catless downpipe after reading all the people with cat codes after install of the catted downpipe. I bought a 3" CARB compliant cat and Vbands to make it an easier install. Everything I have had since 2016 but just got around to doing it in March. I scanned and saw no reduction in boost, KR (when it happens which isn't a lot), in airflow at all. The next thing was I was dangerously close to maxing the MAF. I was going to use the LQ4 maf as I had one laying around, but the amount of airflow headroom was negligible. They are easy as pie to tune, but I didn't want 47 couplers in my intake tract. I decided to use the LS7 maf in the 4" intake tube I had bought a few years ago. So I bought an weld in adapter and at first a 3/16" pitch 5/8" thick honeycomb since I had a 90 and a 45 before the straight part of the intake tube. This didn't really work well as the steps on the LS7 become too coarse and PCM tops out at 10Khz. So I worked on it for a while trying to get it right but it always seemed to have surging issues at part throttle cruise. We had a get together with about 9 cars that showed up at Royal Purple Raceway. Unfortunately there was a rule change I was unaware of and that was that any car with a sunroof must have a helmet. I was the only car with no sunroof. The car was not well tuned in but even on the 3.4" pulley I picked up 10 kPa (1.4 psi) and a decent amount of airflow with the stock maf file in place. I was having KR at the top end of each gear but was running come hell or high water and after the cars and house were flooded during Harvey I wasn't really worried about it. I ended up being the first to show up at the track and one of the guys I tuned before he moved onto a V8 RWD was there and he filmed with my camera. So my first run out with an extra 217# of tools was a 13.966@98.93 with a 2.190 60' time. After that I was able to offload my tools and make 3 more passes which were not as quick bu faster.

Run 2 was 14.279@100.49mph with a 2.421 60' About 30' out I thought the trans was slipping but stayed in it. When I came back they all said I spun pretty good.
Run 3 was 14.098@100.19mph with a 2.371 60'. same thing I spun but not as bad.
Run 4 was 14.711@99.59mph with a 2.580 60' and that time I smoked the crap out of the tires and knew it.

That was the last run of the night other than the runs on the way home.

To be continued....