Wednesday Night at the Drag Races

Well, I had a little fun today, I took my stock Jeep out to the Wednesday night drags here at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, CA. For $25 bucks you can race any street legal vehicle. They have brackets for High School kids, Sport Street (my class) for 4 and 6 cylinder engines, Street for the V8's and muscle cars, and, of course, the pro-comps, bikes and the like. I wanted to get a baseline for this Jeep of mine prior to beefing up the HP. So here's how it went down. My first trial run (first time ever), I ran 18.016 seconds with a top speed of 73.07 MPH. The air temp was 84 degrees and I was bucking a headwind. The second trial run was 17.906 and 73.78 MPH, the temp had dropped about 10 degrees to 74.

So now I had to set my dial-in ET. If you don't know about drag racing, your dial-in number is what you think your best ET will be. If you can hit you dial-in combined with a quick reaction time (launch) you can expect to be side-by-side at the finish even if the other guy is quicker, as long as you don't go faster than you dial-in you win if you hit the finish line first.

With the temperature continuing to fall, I went with what I thought would be a conservative 17.85 secs. What I found out is just how much effect air temperature has on an engine. By the time my first heat came, the air temp had fallen another 8 degrees, down to 66. Needless to say, I broke-out at 17.696 (74.53 MPH). To breakout means you ran faster than your dial-in and you lose, unless both cars breakout, then the one closest to his/her dial-in wins.

My first experience at drag racing was fun and I learned a few things to boot!

I now have my run slips for my scrap/log book and, along with some baseline dyno pulls, can really begin to concentrate on the SDS install:)