Ok.............I'm a little pissed off right now.........I just did a few more runs at the track and only got between a 15.1 and 15.3...........errrrrrrrr..........a month ago before I got my cold air intake I ran a 15 flat but the weather was a lot colder. My car shouldn't need a full tune up until it reaches 120,000 miles...it has 88,000 on it now. So the spark plugs are only 28,000 miles old. Ok this is what pisses me off....everyone is saying that my 95 sc4 is supposed to be running a 15.0-15.3 stock....well I have an exhaust upgrade...cold air intake...ecu upgrade....very sticky tires....and i'm getting stock times?????????? WTFFFFFFFFFFFFF? Excuse my language and attitude here but I'm not a happy camper. I should have just gotten a real sports car in the first place(like a supra)...........later.........Adam

 

Yeah, if I was going to do some dragging, this is NOT the car I'd choose. My old Supra turbo was a much better car for that. I'd choose a lot of cars over this luxo-cruiser! It's not made for racing!

You could have a lot of things affecting your run. The cold can be a huge factor. Cold air = hp. It's worth a lot! With all your changes, are you sure your air/fuel curves are optimized? Is the timing optimized? Did the ECU upgrade require any fine tuning? I'm just throwing some things out there. Losing 0.3 off your 1/4 time after mods kinda sucks. I'm guessing your launches were consistent?

 

Adam, can you post the timeslips so I can compare them? If not, what was the 60ft time on the old and new runs? More importantly, what was the mph?

 

60ft times were all between 2.2 and 2.3

 

alright adam ... lemme teach you something

when someone says that your stock time is supposed to be something thats BS cause thats a professional driver...he can do that....... and plus... when he got that time....it was seven years ago.... your engine does suffer somethings.....

next if someone does say that their car is faster than yours cause of what it says in a damn magazine... tell them to get their @$$ out there and race you cause you know for a fact they are professional grade....

also you do need to take in configuration of the weather and all that other nonsense that goes along with running at the track.
hell .... the time of night could have made a difference

plus as much as i dont wanna tell you this... but its true.... 18'' wheels as opposed to 16'' wheels will slow you down a bit
you have a larger centrifical force to move... so that will also slow you down...... i mean ... do you ever see drag cars on the strip with 18'' wheels......or do u usually see 16'' or smaller at that

finally ... you are probably hoping too much for what you spent your money on .. your thinking that all that stuff could have dropped seconds when its actually .25 of seconds....
also with the fact that you dont launch the same way everytime... sometimes you launch perfect... then other times you might not launch as perfect.... even though its an automatic.....
its not a breeze

oh yea...... dont listen to daniel poe....
he just thinks he knows what hes talking about just cause he goes to the track every friday night with no life.... just cause hes out there racing doesnt mean he knows how to race......
so

A: stop listening to stupid people that say you should be getting these time. cause they dont drive an SC 400. they know absolutly *****.

B: dont get ur hopes up as much for smaller times cause your not going to get huge drops in times until you make forced induction


im jsut trying to help you not get as pissed cause someone talks crap about something they know nothing about

 

Hey Adam:
One thing I noticed when reading the gent's website over in Australia with the Soarer, is that when he did his runs, he was just about always running out of gas after the run....

Translated.... His is running with perhaps 1 gallon or less in his tank. Boucoups less weight.

When I did my Gtech runs, I got alot of variance with 1/8 tank and full tank. Almost one second. Also, when my son was in the car his additional 160 pounds added to the overall time.

If I remember you have one of those new Weapon R intake systems eh?

 

I've been running high 14's in stopwatch quarters at the illegals.. none too precise though. Still waiting for Wed. night drags to come back...

 

Adam, what was the mph on the old run, and the mph on the new run?

 

hello everyone,

abutler696, are you sure your engine tuning is good? I mean, you say that you race it a couple of times, straining the engine beyond a *normal* engine service. If you'd like to try, you can go to this site to check out the modifications he's done on his Soarer. How long did your times slip?? I mean, if you had the ECU fitted, did it affect the car's performance in a positive or a negative way?

Also just remember, even though it's not the fastest car out on the street, it has to be one of the nicest!! That should've been the reason you bought the car in the first place

Or you could always supercharge it...

 

Adam,

Its very unusual for for a stock 400 to run low 15's. Mid to upper 15's is a little more realistic. Maybe the guy from the magazine could get those times, but he runs 1/4 mile tests for years as a living, and most likely he is probably a better driver than all of us combined. The environment and the gas you run play huge roles as well. Congrats if you ran an honest 15 flat on a stock car. But as for your questions:

I have seen nothing but decreases in power when people open up their intake on the 400. Don't know about your's, but I've seen three people drop nearly 800$ to ruduce their performance and make nothing more than a loud intake. This is just my experience. The dyno's showed a HUGE loss in the low end, and yet no noticable increase untill after 4800 rpm's. So the loss didn't constitute the gains. Yea, it made more power, but how much of it was actually useable? The loss of nearly 8 hp in the low end will not make up for the gain of 10 at the very top. Be careful of how you read a dyno report. Yes, the dyno showed an increase of nearly 10 hp with the intake.....but the car was slower. Becareful of the advertising. To each his own- I will never preach this, I usually just keep my opinions to myself; but since you asked for input , here it is. Again, from my experience, cat back systems do almost nothing to our cars except make them louder. When I first got my car several years ago, this forum had many people talking about intake/exhaust mods and several people did the ol' dyno befor/after. Result: unless your exhaust had failed and become clogged (sort of common actually), a cat back system was another $1000 to be wasted to get a louder car. The key to our exhaust is the front section; not the rear.

My guess, is that what was lost by the intake was gained back by the ECU. The I'll bet a couple of bucks, that driver technique had a lot to do with it as well. You're short times are a little high, so you could possibly break into the 14's by fixing your launch. Whats youe reaction time? That plays a role too.

The gains from the ECU probably won't improve your E.T.'s as much as you thought, so maybe you were expecting too much from your car. I'd say, just honestly, that your car shoud be running stock - 15.3-15.4. The intake probably slowed it to a 15.5. The ECU and exhaust probably allowed .3-.4 second gain (plausable). and brought you back to a very low almost 15 flat. Driver technique can usually drop 1-2 tenths off that as well. I'd say the best time you could run with those mods is a 14.8. So I wouldn't complain if you're not too far from that.

Give your car to one of those "Car and Driver" magazine guys and he could probably pull 14's easy with your car.

What ECU upgrade are you using?

Just curious. My advice is to grab 50$ and go to the dyno with some old parts you took off (intake, etc.) Make a run, then swap parts, make another run, etc. See if anything is slowing you down. That 50$ could save you a lot of $$$ in the long run. Also a TC will give nice, noticable gains too, so If you have't though of that, it might be an option.

Sorry you are dissapointed about the results. But you will have to do some research to find out the cause of your delima. It could be that you just have a bad plug or you were running bad gas. It could have been a very warm and humid day....the possibilities are endless. Or, you could be like me and run with the A/C on and wonder why the times are a little slow....DDOOOHHH!!

Good luck,
Keith

 

Adam:

A while back you started a thread here regarding issues with starting your SC400.

Has the cause of the hard starting been identified?

If not, then perhaps you have one or more issues that are contributing towards your performance question.

Also, as an aside, in reading Peter Scott's Austrailian Soarer site and his very good BFI information, not all intakes generated the expected power gain, and in fact, some generated an overall power loss.

 

Yeah,pretty much what Keith said,I noticed a decrease in spots of the lower revs with an opened up airbox,I made the change to accomodate the piggyback ecu's tuning,as well as to try and keep the dirt and crud from bombarding my air fliter in the spot right behind the intake snorkel.
The top end has more torque,but I feel like there must be some turbulence confusing the MAF at lower revs or something with the opened-up airbox.Now I just am more careful about how I crack the throttle.

 

Keth13B

What do you recomend to open up the " front section" of the exhaust?

Raj

 

would resettting my ECU help this? I can defintely feel the high end of the intake but it took a little away from my bottom end. I think it mainly just helps 1st to 2nd gear cause that' when it pushes really hard. The problem with my car starting up ended up being a bad battery which the dealer replaced free for me. Plus the track was very slippery this past weekend and my car spun out without me even brake torqueing which isn't normal along with my friends maxima which was running low 15's as well when a few weeks ago he got a 14.3. I'll go find my timeslips in a little bit and write them up here. I know I can get a 14.8 at a dry track. I had chevron premium gas in my car and I never let my car cool down for more than 3-5minutes at a time. I know I can get a 14.8. Wish me luck at the birmingham track this weekend. Later, Adam

 

Something that I noticed about intakes and exhaust is that they really didn't do a whole lot for the car. Maybe 6-7 hp... when I put in my bypass plug it is more powerful than stock, but the standard intake tube loses power when it's got a cone filter on it. There's probably some air flow engineering going on there, where they designed it to flow at such and such a speed through the tube with X resistance and all. I think I'm going to try to answer this question once and for all - going back to the dyno with all my old intake crap. I'll do some run arounds this weekend with my ecu bypass and old intake to see what happens on the butt-dyno too.