Got a phone call this morning at 7.am from a friend inviting me to go to the local 1/8th mile drag track (owner of it was running in his rail flat head supercharged methanol V8!). Could not resists so I quickly hooked up my new car trailer and loaded the Mazda on and went there.
Got a chance to run my car down there and practice some launching techniques, the thing is unreal
1st gear taking off simply requires a bit of clutch slip to preserve the gearbox and differential, letting the thing fully engage at 3500rpm or so it got such a great spread of power that it just spins the tires all the way through first, second gear grips up and third it was pulling near 8000rpm at the end of the 200m (100mph or so). Took max revs to 8500rpm and the hard work on improving the mixture at the higher revs did help, my passenger commented that it just keeps on making power and theorized it should be able to pull to 9k rpm hahaha (I informed him that was not recommended or needed). He was totally amazed that a road car with full legal catalytic exhaust and moderate noise level on ~17psi boost accelerated so well.
Riding in passenger seat he said in 3rd gear in last half of the track it feels as fast as his 6.7 second drag only 6cy turbo car, it was very hot today (maybe 30 deg C in the sun) on board power meter was showing
281rwkw @ 7700rpm. I took him for 3 runs back to back then did 3 or so on my own and it performed faultlessly. We have a drag event there on the 4th of April and am confident to show up and not make an arse of myself with a car that is too slow
*I have VBOX tested his drag car, 36psi boost, methanol, 3300cc straight 6, tripple SU carb draw through turbo set up 1008kg car, making measured ~250rwkw 6.75 seconds @ 106mph in 200m test.*
Will have to implement the launch control system and also use staged boost in the hope of trying to get some better take off's........ though its not really made for that kind of activity at the end of the day it was allot of fun regardless. Will have time to instrument the car before that event and will get the VBOX data of 0-100kmh times and other performance measures also. The traction control was too invasive on initial take off and since I had not configured the launch control yet I turned it off totally on today's tests, the one thing I did learn is the fitment of the new Ohlins suspension full cured the cars tendency to wheel hop on take off wheel spin, it just sits flat and you can modulate the throttle and wheel spin with zero wheel hoping which means reduced drive line stress.