Drag raced the SL today

[Pete Geither]

At a benefit fun run today at a local drag strip, for $10 you could try out your car on the strip. They shortened it to 1/8 mile, for safety reasons I suppose, and all in all I was very happy with the performance of the SL. Beat every GT Mustang and a Cobra. A Northstar Caddy was NO problem and could even run even with a G.N Buick. With the way this thing is geared the Benz did just fine. Had a great day.

I bet more than a couple of jaws where dropping.

Not bad for a 8 year old Luxo Convertable that is heavy to begin with!

[slsmag]

It certainly does make me wonder why a Buick Grand National (which does 0-60 in 3.9 secs) was beat out by a 4,000 lb SL that does 0-60 in 6.3 secs.

Sounds like you had fun! I have to admit that these days I like using the rubber on my rear tires for more mundane driving... but I'm not so old that I don't remember the days when any excuse to make a fast car, well, go fast, was all I needed!

As an aside, if you want to point out to friends and foes the virtues of how well the 5.0 liter engine is used in the SL you can point to the Porsche 928 S4 - in 1987 it set two world land speed records (for production cars) at Bonneville. The S4 with automatic transmission does 0 - 60 in the same 6.3 that the SL500 does - but the 928 weighs over 500 pounds LESS.

Mercedes manages to get far more torque to the rear wheels in the R129 5.0 Liter than Porsche did with the 5.0 liter 928 (347 lbs/ft v. 317 lbs/ft)

(The 928 S4 has a top speed of around 163 - about the same as the R129 SL500 - but the SL is 'limited' I believe, to 155 MPH)

- michael
www.928TrackCars.com

[Pete Geither]

Not being a stranger to the drag strip I will admit my reaction times were a shade better than most of the street racers there. The GN was probably spinning when I was hooking up. Turning the traction control off and building against the brake made for some pretty impressive launches. I would have liked to see how I would have done in the 1/4 mile, as the SL is just really starting to run at the end of the 1/8th.

[Dan Smith]

Good job, what was the 1/8 mile time?

[Pete Geither]

Best time for 1/8th was 9.53. Was pretty hot and did nothing to the car to try to optimize the times.

[Dan Smith]

Thats a great time for the 1/8. Very similar to the E500. Is it the same motor as the E500? Do you have ASR, did you disable it? Tires, the right tires would really help. Cool the plenum with ice, good for 1/10 to 2/10s. Did you shift yourself or let the automatic do it? Synthetic oils help. Lower ther SL weight by the amount of fuel load. I can't believe I've found a drag SL fellow. Keep it up.

[Pete Geither]

I disabled the ASR and built up revs against the brake. It launched pretty darn good without hardly any wheelspin. I like to shift it myself, just to make sure it goes into low gear at the start. I used to race a tricked out Olds W-31 in 69 and turned low 9's and occasionally high 8's on a cool night, so for a completely stock SL to run like this is very impressive to me. The W-31 had 4.33 gears from the factory, with an automatic.