I made it even after I thought I wouldnt be able to last Wed. Sorry about not giving anyone any notice, but it was a last minute decision to go (I didn't even wash my truck!) . I ran into a couple of guys racing GMC Sonomas (mid 16's) that asked if I knew Mike Sypes or Jeff Ostrowski, small world huh? Too bad you couldn't make it.
The two fastest trucks there were my truck and the Blue R/T I raced. We stomped all the GM and Ford offerings. No DML members made it, but there were about 5 Dakotas there including: 2 stock R/T cc, 1 V-6 cc, 1 R/T rc (w/slicks), and me, 99 5.2L Sport.
I learned a few interesting things that day.
1) Don't lower tire pressure on stock radials (especially if you can't add air after you do).
2) Layers of rubber make for poor traction with radials at the starting line.
3) The people that think they are cool driving through the water box and doing a burnout with stock tires are really just idiots that leave puddles on the starting line.
4) Street slick really help! (I didn't have any, the R/T did!)
5) I noticed that the rev limiter in the stock computer cut in rather low at 5000 rpm's in first gear and about 5300 rpm's in the rest of the gears. Has anyone ever experienced this before?
I was able to run a traction limited best of 15.08 at 92.00mph, next week I'm bringing Drag Radials. My times were consistantly near those.
I did run against a stock R/T (?no air cond?) with drag radials that ran a 14.99 at 89.54 mph. I could have beat him if I had a better reaction time, .544 versus 1.024, he clobbered me fair and square at the line.
One reason that might have kept my times back was the fact that I ran my tires down to 20 lbs after the first 3 runs after some urging from by buddy, my 60 ft times increased from 2.1 to 2.3 range after that. I did notice after the burnout that only the edges of the tires were making good contact.
I also had removed my MSD 6-A and Blaster coil because of a damp start problem a few weeks ago but I did not re-gap the plugs. I also removed the ram-air system since the last runs I made. I am hoping for mid 14's in a couple of weeks.
What else is in my future? Probably Drag Radials, short belt, ram-air, new plugs, MSD and coil.
I will be back with my buddy and his V-6 Dakota in a week or two, I hope to see you there.
Mark Kuzia
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