A virus attack kept me from posting this past week. Mark was cool enough to fix the prob pretty quick although we seemed to have lost the original blog header for now.
Anyhow last weekend at the IDRC drag event at Fontana, I got a chance to drag race the XS Engineering time attack GT-R. I showed up Saturday and the starters wouldn’t let me run because the car didn’t have passenger and driver’s side windows. Road racing = windows down and drag racing = windows up. I had to go back to XS, pick up the regulators and glass and install them at back at the track. The thing I don’t get is that they will allow a 7.3 second motorcycle without a cage or door race, but they wouldn’t let me race without windows or window nets. I understand the track people are just enforcing the rules, but what a crock of shit. The people at Fontana are pretty nice as far as drag strips go. Most drag strips do not give a rat’s ass about imports so it was nice to deal with tech guys and starters that were cool with imports.
On Sunday I ran a best of a 10.4@137mph which was a bit faster than I expected. The KW triple adjustable motorsport dampers with 22kg front and 18kg rear springs probably weren’t optimum for drag racing. Neither was the aggressive road race alignment or the Nitto NT01 tires. The super wide compression and rebound range of the KW dampers did help drop my 60 ft. to a 1.7 though. What I can tell you is that the stock transmission mount (long story) for the Getrag sucks ass as it caused me to mis-shift all except for my first 2 runs out of 6 total. My 10.4 run was the 2nd run of the day so I figured I should take it easy at 1.8 bar and short shift at 8600rpm which caused me to shift into 5th gear around the 1000ft mark. The engine is tuned to 2.2 bar and 9700rpm. I think a perfect run would have yielded a 10.0 run. With a drag suspension, drag radials, alignment, 9700rpm shifts and a Nismo transmission mount I think the car definitely has 9.40s in it without too much drama. Maybe next time. In any case, I ended up winning the GT-R Challenge and $500 for 1st place. Lucky for me Aki in the Garage Bomber R32 red lit in the finals. It was good hanging out and talking with people too.
Here’s my 10.4 run racing Sean in the RB Motorsports R32.4.
Here’s the same run via Sean’s in car camera. Sean missed 4th gear.
Click to enlarge time slip. Cool car number, eh?
Aki’s R32 ran a best of 9.77 on a hurt head gasket (Cometic!) after the finals. He will be replacing it with a Cosworth head gasket of course.
The guys at Apex let me use their trailer to tow the XS GT-R. Surprisingly the Aramada towed the 30 ft. trailer with heavy ass GT-R with ease. The stereo was bumpin with A/C and all. It even has factory air bags in the rear. I love the Armada.