Bracketracer

I'll leave the majority of the weekends events to John Stahmann's article which should be out later on this week. So, I'll just fill everybody in on a few of my activities.

First and foremost, I was not able to break into the 130MPH club. This is a standing-start, one mile speed measurement. The best that I could muster was 123.776. There were a HUGE number of things working against me in my quest. One was aerodynamics. I'll post a few pics of how I tried to alleviate this as much as I could. Two.....traction on the starting line. You really have to balance hard acceleration with trying to keep the drive wheels from spinning because once that happens, you'll never break the 130 mark. Three....gearing. I would shift out of 4th at about 110 mph according to my GPS. My 5th gear was just way too deep for any meaningful acceleration. According to my split-times, I would only pick up about 9 mph in the last 1/2 mile. I tried to get around this as well with tire changes. Between my friend Mike's and my car, we had a total of 7 different pairs of wheel/tire combinations. On the last day, I swapped my rear tires from a tall/skinny set(215/75-15 studded snows) to a very short set(185/65-15) to try and overcome my lack of accel. in 5th gear. It did seem to help on my 1/2 to 1 mile split times since I was now picking up 14mph, but it was impossible to accelerate off the line without spinning, so I would have to short-shift the 1st 3 gears at around 3000-3500 RPM. My best speed with this setup was only 119mph.

Anyway, I would imagine that a lot of you folks out there are probably thinking that running 130mph after a full mile is easy........trust me, it isn't at all.

One other factor working against me was self-inflicted. The guy that we went out there with has the Rainbow Hotel/casino as his major sponsor. Naturally that is where we all stayed and it is a hell of a place. Looking back now, I would say that from Thursday through right now, I've had a grand total of about 8 hours sleep. This is not conducive to brain storming at 8 in the morning, trying to figure out how to pick up 6.3 mph. My pictures following my give an indication of my state of mind.

Again, this is a MUST DO for those of youout there that are TRUE motorheads. There's just no way to explain accurately how cool this whole event is.

Bracketracer

<center><img src="http://pictureposter.audiworld.com/AudiWorldPics/2000/tapejob1.jpg"></center><p>Searching for more airflow.......

Bracketracer

<center><img src="http://pictureposter.audiworld.com/AudiWorldPics/2000/tapejob4.jpg"></center><p>Trying to balance aerodynamics with ram-air.

Bracketracer

<center><img src="http://pictureposter.audiworld.com/AudiWorldPics/2000/tapejob6.jpg"></center><p>Now we get creative. In the middle of the day, I sent my friend Joel after some clothes dryer ducting because I had the Next Great Idea! This is the result.........I extended my air intake piping all the way out to the headlamp bucket and then ended up with this phallic montrosity.

Lone Starr (Ivan)

It seems evil enough to work! Did it?

Bracketracer

<center><img src="http://pictureposter.audiworld.com/AudiWorldPics/2000/tapejob5.jpg"></center><p>The side mirrors were the next victims of my obsession.

Bracketracer

But wait! There's more:-)))

Lloyd of the Rings

And what were you doing in the hotel? Enquiring minds want to know! :-)

Lloyd of the Rings

your open hood must have caused enormous wind resistance! :-)

NexxTT

Bud, you must've gotten hold of some REAL beer!!! ;-)