Neighbor's Cars

[CJFusco]

I share a two-bay garage with my upstairs neighbor (split-level house), and it would be a slight dis-service to state that he has "cars of interest"

His "daily driver" is a 350Z with a 80-shot (I think) bottle of nitrous.







His other car is a Miata that he and his cousin built (they own an imports race shop) for the express purpose of drag-racing others for money. They make a lot of money. Apparently this car will run high-9s in the quarter mile. He wouldn't let me take pics of the engine, but I can tell you that the turbocharger is as big as your head. The build quality is near-factory.

Like I said, no engine pics, but these pipes might give you some clue to the potential.

[Jims5543]

I love when people will not let you take a pic of their engine. All the worlds secrets are under the hood. My mechanic is the same way really paranoind about everyone stealing his ideas.

I have a hard time believing that Miata, as it sits in that picture runs 9's. My reason purely traction related. To run 9's he would need some serious rubber in the back.

Do they street race for money? I worked with a guy that did this and yes, lots of money can be made. He is building up a twin turbo Vette with his winnings. 90% of making money in a street race is negotiating and suckering the other guy. The guy I worked with had a well hidden 250 shot of N2O in his Camaro. The bottle was hidden in the front bumper. The car looked stock except for the huge Mickey Thompson drag radials on the back, I think he ran 12" wide tires.

I drove a 340RWHP Supercharged Miata at an Autocross one time and it was insanely fast and had lots of traction issues even with sticky Hoosiers on the back.

I bet that Miata is a scary ride.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

How is he addressing boost lag issues, or did he even discuss that?

A problem with a large turbocharger on a relatively small engine (like the Miata) is that it'll pull like a sonofa***** once it gets spooled, but it takes a looooooooooooong time to get there.

Kind of like running a k28/10 on a 951. You'll make crazy power at the high end, but nothing down low. On such a setup where you're relying on high revs to make power other issues come into play like valve float, head flow, port matching, header length, etc.

Just wondering. . . Looks like a cool setup though.

[Jeff Higgins]

Can he show time slips? As an old drag racer, I'm pretty familiar with what it takes to get a car into the 9's. Horsepower to weight is only half the battle. This Miata clearly does not have the other half. He might get some impressive trap speeds where the horsepower takes over, but times are made out of the hole and in the first couple hundred feet. This car simply does not have what it would take to hook up well enough there.

[VINMAN]

Gotta go with Jeff on this one. Ive been around muscle cars a long time an have drag raced too. 9 sec 1/4's are pretty hard to attain. That car wouldnt have near enough low end tourqe. also as Jim said, you would need serious rubber to get that car to hook up even if it did. I doubt that his gearing is set up for 1/4's either.
Not saying the cars not fast but 9s? I doubt it

[mattdavis11]

He's already roped you in. The 951 isn't fast enough. Just messing with you CJ.

[CJFusco]

I asked him some questions today for clarification.

He has never actually run high-9s, but he runs low 10s on street tires, so he thinks he can run high-9s on slicks. He showed me a video of his car running 10.3 at the strip a few weeks ago, with a near-140mph trap speed. So perhaps the car might not actually get into the 9s, but it would come close.

Apparently lag IS an issue. He says it takes forever to hit boost, but once the turbo spools it is like hell breaking loose.

Here's another shot of our shared stable, with a very impressive early-October sunset.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

There is a way to get large turbos to spool quickly but it's absolute hell on them - ideal only if you're willing to trade turbo life for rapid spool. A situation where he's using it for a drag car and to make big $$$ in street races might be one such suitable application. It goes like this:

Deliberate fuel mapping to be rich "at idle" (which is set high, like maybe 3,500 RPM), then run a spark or glow plug in the exhaust header collector upstream of the turbo. The "lit off" unburned fuel causes a huge input of energy and heat into the exhaust gasses driving the hot-side turbine and forces it to spool a lot quicker. Like I said, complete hell on your components, but possibly suitable for an application like his.

There are also a myriad of games one can play with wastegates and so on, but if you want to spool a big turbo fast, you better have a way of getting a LOT of energy into it quickly. Tough to do with a small-displacement engine.

[Jims5543]

What kind of computer is he running?

I had an RX-7 with a Haltech in it. It was a drag car with a huge turbo the engine's sweet spot was in the 6,500 to 8,500 RPM range, it was a dog up to 5K RPM and sanpped to life at 6K. It was like a switch turned on.

The Haltech had a launch control that retarded to timing 20° when you flipped a switch and held the clutch to the floor and floored the gas. What this did was make the engine "huff" really deep and spool up the turbo but make no power. When you let the clutch go...... Holy poop!! Instant 20° of timing back and full fuel the car felt like it left the ground. I was supposidly a low 10 second car. My goal was to turn it into a dedicated road course car but the hurricanes of 2004 changed my priorities and it was sold after only 3 months of ownership.

It put down 499RWHP and weighed about 2400 lbs. It would loose traction in 3rd gear at 80 MPH on the street as the turbo hit. I could floor that car at 50 MPH in 3rd gear at 4,500 RPM and when that magic 6,500RPM hit the car would snap sideways!! You had to stay in it and countersteer it, if you lifted, well, I knew better to, I would imagine it would not be pretty.

Another option is to take the 80 shot our of the 350 and put it in the Miata. Lots of rae teams use N2O to help spool up the turbo and deal with the lag.

[CJFusco]

He's running Tek3