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September 6, 2005
Back at the track with new tune and Falken RT-615 tires
Comptech had my Acura RSX for a couple of days so they could dynotune the Stage 2 supercharger Hondata K-Manager calibration for their modified Honda injectors. After I got the car back, there was a nasty noise on acceleration, and the tune didn't look too good. I brought the car back, feeling quite uneasy about the noise. Then again, the worst-case scenario was something wrong with the motor, and that would have given me an excuse to go for forged pistons and stronger rods. Fortunately, the problem was minor: the power steering line was touching the tie-rod, and that caused noisy vibrations. Billy at Comptech had managed to retune the fueling nicely and the car ran well, clocking in at 257.5 whp on Comptech's DynoDynamics chassis dynamometer.
In the meantime, my Falken RT-615s had arrived at Big-O Tires in Cameron Park. I had high hopes for them as their rubber compound is much stickier than the Kumho Exsta 712 tires I had before.
I went back to Sacramento Raceway to test that theory. Once again it was very hot, over 100 degrees. Though I got smoked by a turbocharged Civic in my first time trial, it was immediately obvious that the Falken tires provided much better grip. As before, I datalogged the 1/4-mile runs on my notebook. Whereas before I could hardly apply 30-40% throttle in first, now I could apply 80 and even 100%. I finally broke into the 13s and ran farly consistent 13.9s all night long. That is still pretty slow given my trap speed of over 103mph, so I will have to work on my launch technique. It was a fun evening and I made it all the way into the final trophy run in my class. I lost that when I spun the tires on the worse of the two lanes.
After a few trips to the drag strip, it's obvious that getting good times is a lot more difficult that many people think. And a drag strip is not this perfect, grippy, smooth piece of asphalt; it's an ever-changing patchwork where you never know if you'll get traction or not. Still, it's tons of fun, especially with being able to datalog all runs for post-race analysis.
Posted by conradb212 at September 6, 2005 2:02 PM