Friday was the "Club Challenge" day, where the local clubs race for points. It was the final club race of the season, with the winner being decided in various groups. So I had to find a club that would let me race with them. Most are willing to do that, since if I win any races, I earn them valuable points. The guy with the newer E320 was in a club that had a member not show up so they let me join them. Anyway, that said, here's the lodown:



Pre-Strip Vehicle Prep:
My previous week's runs were all poor, IMO, and I had suspected the RENNtech chip. So I swapped to the stock 1992 chip. Then, while going over the car before the race, I noticed the intake air temp (IAT) sensor was disconnected. I just about fainted. It's possible that I did ALL my runs the previous weekend with the IAT off! I do not know for sure... it's also possible I pulled the wire while re-installing the marker light at the end of last week's runs. I just can't remember. (Yeah, this will trigger the CEL, but I didn't know how to clear that before, so the CEL had been on the whole time - d'oh. Now I know better.) I figured I better run the RT chip with the IAT connected, just to make sure that wasn't the problem. So, I then re-installed the RT chip. I also wanted to make sure that I wasn't losing power due to oxygenated fuel, or lower octane than the car wanted. So I ran 76-brand "Competition 100" blue race fuel, non-oxygenated, 100 octane. I put in 2.5 gallons, and probably had 0.5-1.0 gallons of 94 octane in the tank from last time. I also removed the rear seat back (34lbs), rear seat console & pockets (6lbs for all 3), and the stock sound pad (3.5lbs) for an additional 44-pound weight savings. All was going swimmingly until I started up the car and the ASR light came on. I started a separate thread about that problem - here's the link:
http://500ecstasy.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1075

On a side note: While leaving my house, with the engine temp at around 50C, I turned off the ASR and nailed the gas from a stop. The car easily lit up both tires and laid a good 50 foot twin black stripe. Wow, that was cool. 5 minutes later with the engine at 80C, I tried again, and this time got barely a chirp. So I'm pretty sure my power "problem" is still present, unless all 500's lose power at normal operating temps of 85-90C?? It ain't spark retardation, though, with race gas in the tank for this test!



Time Trials (Practice Runs):
My first two runs were also unimpressive. They were slightly better than last week, but it was also a little cooler out. For the first run there was no wind, either. I decided to swap EPROM chips at the track, and re-install the stock 1992 chip. The car INSTANTLY picked up almost TWO FULL TENTHS! (More details on that are here. ) The next three runs were 14.02-14.04. Damn- that's amazing. My third run of the day was also my last trial run, and was the day's best at 14.022 @ 99.45. I had to hope for the best with a 14.00 dial-in... if I dialed 13.99 or quicker, they'd make me wear a helmet, which I forgot to bring - ooops. It was windy again - that damned 10-15mph direct headwind was back. It did have the magical cooling effect on the engine though. I was able to keep engine temps down without running the heater off the battery while parked, other than 5 minutes or so between each run.



Bracket Racing!
A wicked looking storm was moving in and we thought things might get cancelled due to rain. Luckily it stayed dry, but it was very windy, and not all that cold... 70-75F ambients. I was expecting to lose my first race, like last time, and go home. I got lucky and my first race was won out of the box as the other guy red-lighted with a -0.005 RT (wow). He also broke out of his dial-in, so I would have won anyway, woo-hoo! Next race was a solid win, a good close race, the margin of victory (MOV) was 0.0697. Their RT was better but they were too far off their dial in. A LOT of people were breaking out of their dial-in times, even with the headwind. Might have been cooler/denser air or something - I dunno. Third race was against a Viper! He red-lighted, got mad, and putt-putted down the track - another win for me. BUT, on that run, the E500 did NOT feel right. Almost like a hesitation down the track, which I thought was wind gusts. But on the return road I felt it again. My time was crappy, I slowed down 2 tenths for no reason. In the pits, I revved to 2500rpm at idle and there was a big burp/misfire every 5 seconds or so, enough to see the tach needle drop 1/8 inch! Great - now what? I started freaking out about being too low on fuel and running out of gas or something. I had barely gotten settled down when my bracket was called again. (As eliminations proceed, you have less & less time between runs, as the number of people keeps getting cut in half.) It was less than 20 minutes since my last run, d'oh. I had no time to cool the engine and just ran the heater on max as much as I could, but by the time I staged it was up to ~75C already, oh well. On this race, my RT went to hell (after six incredible - for me anyway - RT's in a row!). And that cost me the race. Even if I had run my dial, my RT was too poor. Had my RT been even close to my next-worst (0.115), I would have won. And had I won that race, I would have scored a trophy as runner-up, and moved on to the semi-finals (or was it finals? I forget.) D'OH! But, as they say, "that's racin!". The car seemed OK on the last run but was still a tenth slower than the 3 good runs in a row. Very odd. I had NO tration problems all night, I don't think the tires spun at all at launch. I wonder if they treated the surface or something. I had sub-6-second 330' times for all the 'fast' runs. Oh, and I got a number of comments and raised eyebrows when people saw my dial-in time on the window... heh-heh.



The Times:
Less than three hundredths away from the 13's, but sadly I'm still no closer to the 100mph mark than I was before:

14.214 98.61 (RENNtech chip)
14.211 98.50 (RENNtech chip)
14.022 99.45 (Stock chip for last 5 runs)
14.041 99.20
14.026 99.45
14.215 98.64 (Engine hiccuped this run)
14.113 99.28


Next day will be Saturday the 25th, for more bracket racing... time trials start at about 10am so I have to hope for cool weather in the morning.

Excel spreadsheet with all data is here:
http://www.meimann.com/docs/dragstrip/E500_Dragstrip.xls