What are your rwhp numbers and 0-60 times?

 

What nobody does 0-60?

 

I have with the Stillen S/C and the JWT TT kit........ .........Does that help?........

 

most people dont look at that as very meaningful for the following reasons:
1. there's no way to reliably measure it yourself.
2. if you were doing any kind of racing, you'd rarely stop at 60. getting to 100mph at least would be more meaningful
3. traction is a large issue. a stock evo for example would do very well 0-60, but the data is misleading- on the highway a g35 could be faster.

more people go by quarter mile times and speeds at the end of the quarter mile. in the same example from before, where an evo might do 13.8 @ 98mph and a G might do 14.2 @ 99 mph, the evo is decidedly quicker, but doesnt have the top end. this is something you can do by going to a track (unlike a 0-60 test which at best would depend on inertial measurements). Also, additional numbers such as 0-60 ft time, 1/8 mi time and speed help break down performance even more. you can find a lot of this info in the drag racing forums. you can get benchmarks from many places. roadandtrack has pdfs from their tests on their site too.

hope this helps.

 

You'd figure someone with a vortech and a G-Timer would've had some numbers for you...

I've got my OBD scanner hooked up to some s/w that measures all sorts of stuff, including generating dyno curves from runs. I rarely have room to get to 1/4 mile. So I use that 0-60 mark to tell me how my mods are helping. For example my average 0-60 before the MD 3/8 inch spacer w/ VDC off (5AT Coupe) was 6.7 secs (according to this program, 3 runs averaged). After the spacer its 6.2 secs (but it was also 20 degrees cooler outside temps).

Anyway, if I had a Vortech, I would've posted!

 

interesting read...BTW, my G-Tech said my car does it in 4.7sec...don't know how accurate it is...

Why 0-60 times don't really tell you how fast a car is

Let me set up a little scenario to illustrate how silly 0-60 times are
particularly when comparing two cars with different shift points.

Two cars.. CarA and CarB have identical acceleration in 1st, 2nd and 3rd
gears, but they're geared slightly differently.
CarA has to shift to 3rd gear at 59mph.
CarB has to shift to 3rd gear at 61mph.
Ok, they race..
Both bolt off the line and run door to door and 5.5 seconds later they're
both going 59mph.
CarA is now forced to shift, which takes .5 seconds
CarB continues to accelerate and reaches 60mph .1 seconds later.
CarA now continues to accelerate and also reaches 60mph .1 seconds later.
Total 0-60 times for each car.
CarA 5.5 + .5 + .1 = 6.1 seconds.
CarB 5.5 + .1 = 5.6 seconds.
Wow.. .5 seconds difference in 0-60 times.. CarA got totally trounced.. right?
Wrong. We've all raced door to door. What does a shift really cost in
distance? About a half a car length, sometimes less.
CarB got to 60mph a half second quicker, but it only gained 5 or 6 feet
of distances while CarA was shifting.

Ok.. let's continue the race.
.1 seconds after CarB reaches 60mph, it gets to 61mph, and
has to shift.. taking .5 seconds.
CarA continues to accelerate taking .1 seconds to get to 61mph itself.
Both cars are now going 61mph. What's the total time so far.
CarA 5.5 + .5 + .1 + .1 = 6.2 seconds
CarB 5.5 + .1 + .1 + .5 = 6.2 seconds.
Oh.. and while CarB was shifting, CarA made up the half a car length
it lost before. They're now running door to door again.

This is why 0-60 times are silly. It's a totally arbitrary time to speed
contest and each shift hurts the time badly, but means virtually nothing
in the real world. If the race is to 50mph they're even. If it's to 70mph
they're even.

Auto manufacturers have been building cars with overly *long* 1st and
2nd gears for many years simply for the purpose of pumping up
their 0-60 times, while actually sacrificing some real world
pull, they could have had if they'd chosen gear ratios
more suited to the powerband of the engine (so that you
don't fall out of the power after every shift).

 

the problem with OBD scanner based data is that it isnt very high in resolution. OBD2 data is usually red at a lot less than even 60hz. so not only do you deal with the inaccuracy of the sensors giving the data, but also the fact that the data isnt really given often enough to give an accurate indication of acceleration. it might give a general idea, but for something like 0-60, where tenths of seconds matter a lot, it isnt very good.

 

I guess why this is why european car magazines test 0-62mph because most cars are forced to shift the same amount.

 

I may be wrong, but I think it has to do with the metric system. They measure speed in km/hr(ie 0 - 100km/hr). I believe 62mph equals approx. 100km/hr. as round figures go.

 

Actually I believe the acquisition rate is 10 Hz - so if you're just measuring 1 parameter (speed) using OBD, then it should be good for + or - a tenth of a second. I have found the program to be pretty consistent. I have an auto, and I can get all data points to cluster together run after run. Turn off VDC and they all cluster at a slightly lower #. Put on the spacer and the # went lower. So it *seems* to be a precise tool (if not accurate). I use the s/w from www.myscantool.com. Hasn't been updated in a while...

Randy - thanks for the post - i see your point. But for comparing mods to a G (only G35 cars, stock vs vortech), it could be a reasonable data point to track.

 

Eurpean car magazines post 0-62mph times (instead of 0-60mph) because they are on the metric system and that is equivalent to 0-100Kmh times.

 

nice write up.

 

This is why the Viper and the Z06 never are still in 1st gear until after 60. No lost time due to shifting.

 

Well not "totally"
The 60 mph mark was set because it illustrates how long it
takes a car to reach the mile per minute mark.
It was also set MANY, MANY decades ago when cars weren't
able to go all that much faster and their acceleration dropped
significantly after 60 mph anyway.
On top of that, the posted speed limits of highways back then
were almost all 55 mph or under so there wasn't much of
a need to know how long it takes to go faster than 60 mph anyway.
Again, back in those days, cars couldn't go much faster and
people didn't drive much faster than that even if their cars could.

The problem is, like the EPA estimated gas mileage tests, the
0-60 test is outdated, but even more so.
Things don't change much.
The way to get it to stop being so important would be to convince
the car magazines to stop placing so much imporatance
on that test number and start concentrating more on the
1/4 mile or 0-100 mph times.

Another test I've been pushing for the magazines to test (and dozens of letter/emails sent by me to them) for 10 or more
years is "rolling acceleration" times.
It's FINALLY starting to show up in some mags as "passing" tests or such, but wish they'd test for more than just a 20 or so mph range.
A test of 40-100 mph starting in 2nd gear would be ideal.

 

This isn't always the best case though.
A car whose power is drastically dropping off from say 55-60 mph in
a particular gear, might benefit from having a shift take place in between
that range and have more of a surge in the next gear. This would be
the case for most turbocharged cars which lose steam and boost in
the high rpm range just before redline.