Hitting the corner entrance just right, and late braking, and or trail braking at the end of the straight come in to play, so there's a lot more to it than drag racing. You'd be surprised how little difference there is on the straights, even at a track like Willow Springs between say, a 930, and a well prepped CRX with 1/3 the horsepower.

That's the first thing that surprised me at my first track event. It was extremely difficult to pass stock Civics on the straights with my C2, until I figured out how to hit the corners before the straights. That's why a good driver makes a huge difference, and it's why my '72 with a 2.4 can spank a lot of vipers, Z06's etc. at Willow (a horsepower track, no less) with it's better handling.

Hmmm.....
 

OK, list of things to do as suggested by this post:
1) Balance a frog on my nose.
2) Smoke crack.
3) Use nitrous like a toy, ha ha ha ha ha sniff, HA HA HA!! Ha ha ha- sniff again Ha Ha! Ha hahaha ha.......
4) Install a TV in my 911's visor.
5) Install clear tail light lenses.
6) Convince my neighbor to lend me his Viper so I can hot-rod it on city streets.
7) Keep going to autocrosses and do some DE's and eventually get the most out of my car. Prehaps to the point where I can take it into a long sweeping curve on the track at 130mph with all four tires screaming for mercy under acceleration while passing a Z06.

Hmmm, choices, choices.....

tyson,

this is a genuine (so please dont take offense) question, but have you won races or built race winning cars? i honestly dont know so i gotta ask.

i agree that racing is very much about corner speed. i learnt that karting with a guy with lots of experience. he was very smooth and very quick.

but i still say if he wants it - its up to him. and you gotta have balls to do those outrageous qtr mile times - never mind $$$.

AvGas or Toluene would be used in the stand-alone NOS fuel system. This is in addition to the existing fuel system. The purpose is to add octane points when needed.

Rarly - I must admit I haven’t heard about the octane gains from Toluene before. Learn something new every day as they say, but from what I can recall from working with Toluene in an industrial atmosphere it was pretty mean stuff health wise. AvGas has always been the tried and true classic. Laity I’ve been hearing nothing but good things about propane. Blown propane engines can still maintain high compression and supper high compression diesels use propane addition with the same results as Nos.

Yes, and yes.

Tyson built my car. And I've got a bunch of trophies as a result of both his car-building skill and also -- for the once-a year-event he and I co-drive -- his abilities behind the wheel.

(Click on the "See it Go" link in my signature to see how a low-horsepower car does on the straights, as the result of the cornering speed that leads to the straight. It's Tyson driving.)

I'd like to See It Go, but when I click, all I see is a tiny little stamp thingie in the upper left corner of a white screen.

I've been going to AX events since I bought my car 4.5 years ago. I thought I was a good driver before, but I now understand how very much I still had to learn. Also, I thought I understood my car and what it was going to do in certain threshold situations. Again, the difference between what I thought and what I now know as the truth is striking. I can see that some of you lack actual track experience. And although you're probably not listening to others with far greater wisdom and experience than I, here goes:

All the performance parts in the world take a distant back seat to driver skill and experience. What Tyson says is true. There is not that much difference in the straights between a ferocious race-built Turbo or V8, versus a bone stock Dodge Colt. Sure, there's a difference, but the reason I use this specific example is that a friend here, a perennial SCCA regional champion with many decades of track and instructing experience, campaigned a bone stock Dodge Colt (with roll cage, of course) here for years recently, and some very powerful cars were humiliated by him.

Seat time and instruction. When you high-horsepower hotrodders finally get to the track, keep your eyes on your rear view mirrors.

jack,

i knew you tracked alot but had no idea.....

i can't play the link, what format is it in?

Here's some more info on Tyson and Jack tearing up the competition in the OTC.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/porsche-911-technical-forum/106471-building-better-black-beauty-11-otc-recap.html?highlight=otc

And here's this year's result. http://forums.pelicanparts.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=159928&highlight=OTC+re cap

I like this one better. Second place sucks! :)

l thought l was a pretty good driver(l am)until l went to Jim Russel for the Techniques of Racing classes.lt`s pretty humbling to be passed and then spin out trying to catch the guy who passed you,clearly a more skilled driver.One of by oldest friends is a nationally ranked motorcycle racer,we`ve been riding together since grade school.On the twisties he blows me away riding an XR350 enduro dike,me on a prepped Ninja.This same guy won his first autocross with FTD in a car he`d never driven before.Skill wins,everyone who`s ever lost knows that.But gearheads like speed and building fast cars is cool,even if you can`t drive like the hero with the small motor.And anyone who thinks competing and running near the top in drag racing is "easy" doesn`t have a clue,it`s no less difficult then any other form of motorsport.A lot of those drivers are all around excellent drivers also,just because they chose the quarter mile doesn`t mean they can`t drive.Those assumptions are ridiculous..by the way,how fast are your reflexes?

This pretty much sums it up: ;)

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1086290112.jpg

lt sums up the fact that they can drive,but it says squat about the challanges of adding NOS to an aircooled engine which is why l originally posted.l wish we could have gotten that out of the way and posted the win sheet on the first page.

That post is a reply to a direct question posted previously.

OK, what NOS question do you have that hasn't already been answered?

Here's a recap:
yes, you can run NOS on an air cooled engine as long as you run it rich to control the combustion temperatures and don't put so much in that you overcome the ability of the heads and pistons to transfer the heat fast enough to keep from melting things. If you screw up it wil lbe very expensive.
No one here is going to be able to tell you exactly where that fine line is. There are too many variables but the concensus is that you "should" be able to get away with a 75hp shot if done right, a 100hp shot would be pushing it.

Is there something else to add to that?
Seems like it is pretty well covered, the horse has been dead for a while now.

I would agree 100% with you, but I'm not talking about the 99% of the cars on this board. I'm talking about people who actually are racing their cars. Jack and Tyson are both very good drivers, But don't forget they won the touring class in OTC on thier third try with their second car. Say what you want, building BB2 was not cheap. although the motor was not upgraded, those suspension upgrades and parts would cost the average guy doing similiar alot of cash. I can guarentee you that the vipers and vettes that they beat, were not nearly as modified as BB2.

Past tense? nah they are still there, just a little smaller. Getting older and having kids kinda changes you;)

Hmmm, if HP is so irrelevant to road racing then why does that 72T have a 3.6 instead of the original engine? We constantly have threads on this board about increasing the power of our cars be it EFI, engine swaps, turbo conversions etc. Now someone asks a simple question about a tried and true power adder for other makes and it turns into "drag racer's can't drive"? The single most important thing most drivers forget to upgrade in any type of racing is themselves. Given equal cars I doubt I could hold a candle to those of you with a lot of roadcourse experience and likewise I'll smoke you down a dragstrip because I've learned a lot and have a lot of talent driving drag cars. I gained this ability the same whay a road racer would, by listening to and watching drivers who where better than me. Believe me there is nothing easy about driving a car to consistently run a given ET and it gets more difficult as the ET gets lower. Even Road and Track posts 0-60 and 1/4 mile times when they test a car, I suppose that's irrelevant if the car happens to be a sports car.

raceman, run nitrous if you like just be sure to follow the precautions that myself and others have mentioned. Make sure to keep a little in the bottle to fend of those pesky ricer's and other street racers who assume a 911 is fast.

A gotta agree with ya boom. If the question had of been I want bigger cams( didn't you put bigger cams in your car Super) or I'm thinking about adding a 3.6 it wouldn't be a big deal. Whether people admit it or not, we all still like to feel that shove in the seat when we press the gas.

As I say, engine power is one of the least important elements in road racing. Driver skill is one of the most important, as is vehicle weight. But perhaps in drag racing, driver skill does not head the list, and perhaps engine horsepower is indeed the key to victory. So, road race victors get to say "I was the top driver today," while drag race winners have to admit "My engine came out on top today." Now, before you blow a fuse, I'm only just pulling an "Island." Rattling your cages.