kevinvan6000
Well-Known Member
Good luck today!
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Thanks! If everything goes well, I’ll try and make at least one hit on nitrous.Good luck!!
In for results! Hope to see a couple of nitrous passes!
Do they still have the 1/8 mile track in St. Pete’s by the airport?
The most important thing you did, was taking it to the track! That can be the most difficult first step to any kind of racing!! And you succeeded!Okay folks, I’m back from the track and let me be the first to say, that it was exactly the opposite of what I had hoped for. There were several things that went wrong. Let me try and go in chronological order here, while being completely transparent.
Run #1 - The car hooked and the force on my body caused me to inadvertently pull the gear shift lever out of 1st gear and into neutral. Needless to say, the run was botched.
Run #2 - Launching issue (my error). I did not press the trigger button for my Hitmaster 1st stage launch, as the indicator light on the dash was illuminating when I pressed the clutch in. I was thinking this was a good thing, as I wouldn’t have to hold the trigger button and shift knob at the same time (one less thing to do). This resulted in a sloppy 12.50 pass at 115 mph. I returned to the pits and began analyzing things. I looked under the driver’s seat at the two digital timers for the Hitmaster and noticed that only the shift timer was counting down and triggering the indicator light on the dash. It was at that moment that I realized, I needed revert back to pressing the 1st stage trigger button and releasing it and the clutch at the same time. It was also during this time, that my buddy asked me what rpm I was launching at and I told him 7400 (I wasn’t looking at the tach, but rather going off of what I though I had set the 2 step launch rpm at on the WOT Box a month or so prior). Well, a quick test of the 2 step revealed that it was set at 5K rpm and not 7400.
Run #3 - Not captured on video, but it was a 12.40 pass at 111 mph.
Run #4 - I adjusted the Hitmaster 1st stage valve and launched. It felt pretty good (a very smooth launch with some spin, but nothing too crazy) and then I miraculously went from 1st to 4th gear and the run was botched. I decided to call it a night after that.
Here is the checklist that I created and mostly adhered to for all but one pass.
Prelaunch checklist
Here is a demo video of steps 6 & 7. You can only see my right hand pressing/releasing the Hitmaster trigger switch, but I am also releasing clutch pedal at the same time.
- Turn off TC and Adv. Trac
- Pull into water box
- Dump clutch and dust off tires (stopping short of staging beams)
- Arm Hitmaster
- Pre-stage, wait for opponent and stage
- Grab and press 1st stage trigger button with right hand
- Depress clutch, put car on 2 step and release clutch and trigger button
- Successful launch (provided all the above went well)
The moral of the story is, I F’d up and didn’t do some things right and it showed. I’ll take some time to carefully go over the WOT Box programming with my laptop and make sure everything is set right before the next outing. Lastly, while this was not what I had hoped for, there were several lessons learned and therefore, I don’t consider tonight’s track visit a failure. It’s just going to take some time, but I’ll improve with time.
Time slips
Thank you. Yes, the WOT Box thst I have on the car does allow No Lift Shifting. I had that portion programmed to the default setting of 350 ms. You can hear the long interruption between shifts in run #2. I am going to reprogram that to a lower kill time for the next outing.While watching your videos, it occurred to me, you have a lot going on in the driver's seat! Staging by itself is difficult... Yet, you have to deal with a button and gear shift, I think you did great!
Does your electronics allow for flat foot shifting?