I have one too. It's sitting in my garage under a cover and I wipe it daily with diaper. It will be worth THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS in 50 years.

 

I have to agree with you on everything you said. When I run at the strip, I'm there to run a best and you can be damn sure I'm do most everything I can to "prep" the car. I do the following:

1) Remove all weather floor mats and trunk mats (20lbs)
2) Remove the spare (25lbs)
3) Run with a 1/4 tank of fuel
4) Remove my tools, softball/volleyball gear, fire extinguisher, etc (40lbs)
5) Most importantly, I run when the conditions are favorable (sub 1,500' DAs)

I've made tons of passes down the strip over the years and when I first started out with my Z28, my times were pretty dismal and I was convinced the problem with the track I was running at. It's at 1,000', situated in a valley with a river so the humidity is sky high at night, and there's usually a constant cross wind. Surely the problem wasn't my driving because I'm a great driver, so I thought. My car solidly .4 to .5 seconds and 3mph off where it should have been in terms of good ET/MPH. I kept trying and trying and experimenting. Then I learned how to launch and that changed everything. I'm not talking just 60', I'm talking that first 100'-150'. Once I got that figured out, the car started shedding tenths and my MPH started to go up with no modification changes to the car. Then I got the Maxima and I had to relearn everything because it was FWD and was a lower torque, but higher revving motor. It took a lot of practice, but again I improved dramatically. When I first started out, the car was solidly in the 15.1@93mph range. With no changes and just an improved launch technique and shift points, I got it into the 14.6s@96mph range. That took nearly 1.5 years, 20 visits to the strip, and well over 100 passes to make that sort of progress.

If you don't go to the strip often, then it's easy to blame things that appear to be out of your control. I understand that some of the CA tracks are slow, but they're all not slow. Sacramento Raceway can be downright fast and if I lived in LA, I'd be taking the 5 hour trip up there if I was only racing two or three times a year. I've driven over 5 hours to get to strips before. You live in beautiful CA for God sakes. I'd give my left nut to drive in some of the areas you guys have access to

 

what part of the post you replied to mentioned anything about CA tracks????? My post solely mentioned running street ready at the track.

If I was really concerned about getting the fastest time possible I'd build a drag race muscle car. A G35 sedan is a joke if you are extremely serious about drag racing.

I like to know what the car will do on the track as driven on the street but I can’t go 100mph on the street so I do it at the track.

I do agree with your statement that little things to be done to get ETs lower, but again, for me they are all things that I could run on the street with. If I wanted a track car that run @ss kickin ETs it would not be a G.

Now, in reference to you being tiered of reading about west coast tracks - I'm just as tired of reading about comparing ET and dyno numbers from different tracks and machines - it makes absolutely no sense.

 

Sorry, although I quote a single post, you have referenced the ET discrepancies experienced by west coasters earlier in the thread.

Agreed that the g is not a drag racer. And I'm not "serious" about drag racing, but it is an interest, and a pass time. And I would love to build a dedicated car, but I can't, and the g is what I have, so that's what I race. As a matter of fact, I had no interest to going to the track for the longest time. I had never been to the track. Even though I was born and raised in Alabama, white trash, rednecks, and good ol' boys offend me, and I always considered drag racing to be a redneck pass time.

After we got the g's, we met up with other g/z guys locally. We attended various meets catering to general interests in motorsports. One week we autocrossed. The next week we went to the drag strip. Then I was hooked.

But like I said, my g is what I got. So that's what I race.

That's my whole point. I don't do it on the street. So any racing I do is kept to the track. By extension, any improvements that I hope to make are limited to the track. Therefore, when considering options for improvements in performance, one must consider things that don't necessarily bolt-on to the car. This includes weight removal where possible, running different gas, disconnecting sway bars, etc.

Now, I've never disconnected sway bars, and as I posted previously, my weight removal is limited to the trunk mat, spare, and occasionally my floor mats. With that said, I'm somewhat close to the 12's, so if I ever give it a serious shot, then I might remove the passenger seat.

Is the car with a missing passenger seat at the track any faster than another car on the street? Absolutely not.

I try not to compare absolute numbers, but limit discussions to relative gains. And I'm not as a stickler concerning varying dynos as I used to be. My car has been on 4 different dynojets. 3 of them were within 2 or 3hp of one another. The fourth was lower by maybe 12hp.

That discrepancy is too large to effectively measure gains before/after a mod, so I stick with one dyno where that is concerned. But let's be real: is 2 or 3 hp really that big of a difference? Absolutely not. So when some dude comes in and claims to make 275whp on a dynojet, I instinctively compare that to my high of 266whp. Difference of 9hp. That's within the variance that I've experienced between two different dynojets with the exact same mods. So that means that the dude with 275 dynojet whp may be putting down the same peak numbers as myself, or maybe 20hp more. But it really doesn't matter.

However, I will agree that comparing dynos of different types is pretty silly.** Generally. For example, I've seen enough dynos from Church that I would be confident in *estimating* what my car would put down on that dyno.