First time at the strip

I was pretty pleased with how things went. I ran a 14.9 on my first run, and dropped it down to 14.7 for the next two, including a 14.767@96.64, my best trap speed of the night.

After about 10 runs in a row, I could feel my clutch having trouble grabbing during the 2-3 and 3-4 shifts and I couldn't do any better than 14.9-15.0 even though my launches were better, so I let the car cool for a while.

I went back and laid down a nightly-best of 14.6@94.46 that I was pretty excited about. My other favorite race was when I was up against a 99-04 Mustang GT with drag radials. My better reaction time let me beat a car that was actually .2 seconds faster than I.

My best reaction time of the night was a .174 (where .000 is perfect) and my best 60' time was a 2.206. Pictured are the slips from my best 1/4 time (right), trap speed (left), and win (center) - I'm car 577.

I meant to take some video, but I realized when I arrived that my camera's battery was dead. Oops.



'99 SVT
'01 Taurus 3.0
Oval port intakes
eBay intake w/ K&N filter
MSDS headers and y-pipe, Magnaflow resonator
dyno'd at 188whp before K&N and resonator
Quaife
SPEC Stage 1
94A filled rear roll resistor
Stock E1 rims with some old all season tires

pretty solid numbers for a dieing clutch and your first trip to the track!!

I hope my clutch isn't dying! It was brand new in February when my 3.0 was installed. It's just that after doing 10 runs right in a row (there was pretty much no line) it was definitely getting hot, and letting it cool down led to my best run of the night.

I'm in Missouri for two more weeks, so I might go one more time once I get a couple engine mods done that I'm waiting on parts to do, and if I can get a friend to go with I might take my new rims/tires to see if the better traction from good tires can offset the increased weight of the bigger rims.

PurpleMystique said:

My best reaction time of the night was a .174 (where .000 is perfect)

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Definitely nice numbers for your first trip to the strip, but for future reference, a perfect reaction time is actually .500 for a full tree. The tree counts down at half-second intervals and the reaction timer starts ticking when the last amber light illuminates. So a reaction time under .500 means that you left the line BEFORE the green light. Don't get too caught up in reaction times unless you're competing though. The ET clock doesn't start ticking until the staging lights go out, indicating that you've left the line. So your reaction time has no bearing at all on your ET.

SicSE said:

Definitely nice numbers for your first trip to the strip, but for future reference, a perfect reaction time is actually .500 for a full tree. The tree counts down at half-second intervals and the reaction timer starts ticking when the last amber light illuminates. So a reaction time under .500 means that you left the line BEFORE the green light. Don't get too caught up in reaction times unless you're competing though. The ET clock doesn't start ticking until the staging lights go out, indicating that you've left the line. So your reaction time has no bearing at all on your ET.

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I'm well aware of this. Some strips count .500 as perfect and some count .000 as perfect. This strip had a .000 as a perfect reaction time. I only red-lighted once, and my RT was listed as -.004. All of the rest of my reaction times were between .174 and .5ish. And I realize it doesn't affect my ET, but in the case of the Mustang, it got me a win.