S40 T4 goes back to 1/4 mile at full strenght finally

[Ross9]

Hi guys.

Well, with a weekend off coming up, a non mag day on at Crail, and MTE having mapped the car just 2 weeks ago after it's latest round of mods, it seemed wrong not to venture to Fife and have a wee bash on the drag strip.

Car hasn't been RR for 2 years, last one was 388.5 bhp (355 @ the front wheels) at 5800rpm, since then it's now mapped right out to 7000, the slipping clutch is gone, has had a tear in the external wastegate diaphragm fixed and the crappy log manifold the turbo came with changed for a custom tubular manifold and screamer pipe removed so it's plumbed back into the main system, in short, if its current power doesn't start with a 4, I may kill myself....

anyway, yesterday was glorious, we were out in the garden, few drinks, lapping up the sun etc, car washed, oil and water checked, tyre pressures checked, emergency toolkit stuffed in the boot along with the other crap etc, tank filled up.

7am alarm goes off and we can hear the rain bouncing off of the car's/bins outside, alarm off, back to sleep, got up at 9am, still wet, checked forecast in hope as crail is 90 mins drive away, it's wet too, decided to be stubborn and optimistic and go anyway...got there at half 11, ****ing down lol.

By half 12/1 I wanted to go get a sunday lunch, couple of pints and Jacq drive us back home, Jacq was stubborn, so we stayed, and stayed...and it stopped raining, and the sun came out, then went away again, then came out, then went away, but the rain stayed off.

Track still had puddles on it (it's not like Pod/Avon, we've raced in 400 metres of standing water at Crail before lol) and I decided if we were staying, we were racing, signed on.

So off we go, line up, 1st run, some sort of 1.6 hot hatch fiesta in the right hand lane doing a big burnout to heat his tyres.. in a puddle...amateurs..they're awesome...

Ok, so it's wet, the car wont grip, traction contol off (useless even in the dry for racing, we have a quaiffe LSD) , 2000rpm, lift clutch and try and just jump it into motion gently as the light goes green, the revs climb to about 4000 and the car shimmy's to the left, and goes nowhere...dammit. The fiesta has wheelspun its way to nd and in 2nd gear flat to the floor it grips with its paltry 100 or so bhp and its off.

SO... off the pedal, tryes rip, 1st gear 1000rpm, speed up to 4000 and it starts to boost, change up, 2nd gear, 5000rpm wee bit of boost wheels slip, change up, into 3rd and it's just about 3500 IIRC, wheels slip enough to get it to 4k and the turbo up to song, and it hooks up....now were talking, fiesta is abotu 4 car lenghts out at this point and past the half way stage, we're just about there, get to about 5500/6000 and the wheels start to slip but the diff gets most of it down to the ground, change up into 4th around 6500 and leave it there, pass the fiesta pretty much on the change up, and beat it by 4 car lenghts by the line with a time of 14.8 @ 112.2mph off of a shocking 2.95 60ft time(was stillwheelspinning after the 60ft line...)

2nd run much the same story with teh same fiesta 14.7 @ 111.4mph our time.

pulled off and got the times, decided to do 2 more runs as the terminals shows the car was putting out good power, just couldn't grip on the wet strip.

Next run agains't a Subaru Impreza with standard HUGE cannon etc on the back and 4wd obviously. track was still wet but a bit better, got off the line cleaner by being used to the surface now and feeding it in better, 2.66 60ft, subaru wasn't the best off the lien either, think he spun it up then backed right off and bogged down, he had about 1 car lenght on me as I changed to 3rd half way up, said out loud at the time "your done mate" lol, and stormed past him to take the win by a couple of lenghts.

Round again and same subaru, this time he was on his game, he shot off the line and reactted quicker than me, poor show by me, he got a good lead, scrabbled about a bit for grip in 2 gears then got 3rd and hunted him down, he won by a foot as I ran out of runway to catch him in.

jacq then said, look, the track is pretty much damp now, nearly dry but a bit cold and greasy, go again with the scooby, best of 3, I agreed lol. So, this was the first run i felt myself go into my old mindset of when I used to rae every 2 weeks in my rover turbo, staged him in 1st and then followed, settled, focused, wasn't getting the jump on me this time, green lights and off we go, 1st gear, I fettled the throttle and held the revs at 4500 as the speed caught up with the spinning wheels, into 2nd and the wheels spun up, off the pedal a smidge and they half hooked upbasically ended up sitting for second or so at 6500rpm with the revs bouncing around and the wheels slipping but getting 80-90% of the power down, reckon I held both gears a fraction too long though, could have done better, into 3rd, scooby was about a car lenght in front, knew he was done, and off we went again to our best time of the day at 13.82 @ 110.3mph off of a 2.51 60ft.

A good fwd 60ft is 2.3, 2.2 is better, anything under that is awesome for a runway, road legal tyres and not a proper strip, best I ever hit in my old rover was 2.21 when I got the scottish fwd record in 2005 (long smashed now unfortunately) of 12.8 @ 114mph

Dunno if Jacq's car has a twelve in it, but it definately has a low 13 in it with a proper run on a dry track, the terminal speeds show a huge amount of power, they spread from 110.3-112.2 over the 5 runs done today from a standing start to 400metres, considering the car was only at 100% throttle and full boost for 2 gears out of 4 for every run, that's impressive, I look forward to a full on loads of grip dry strip run.

Out of interest, the 0-100 times, if worked out linearly from the terminal speeds and times..

on teh fastest run and 2.51 60ft, it works out linearly as 0-100 in 12.5, it doesn't really work linearly though, as a car will always accelerate to say 60 at a faster rate than 100, etc so more like around the 11.0-11.5 mark which considering it was from a stainding start in the damp is pretty good going.

anyway, home now and chilling out, very pleased with the car, loads of folk to thank as always but will stick to the main companies who make the car what it is.

THE GARAGE - www.the-garage.co.uk (they built, maintain and do 99% of work on the car)
MTE - You all know them, they map the car and always have (custom on road maps they come to do here in Scotland for us), outstandign results, knowledge, customer service and expertise. Arranged through Don Norchi at kalmar Union and big thanks to Pyaap also who also sorts us out lots with arranging these mapping sessions (next time we need to make it down in London though as I'm missing his fiance's cakes)
MEERCAT - www.meercatexhausts.co.uk (the done the full exhaust/manifold/external wastegate system, very talented)

Ross

[Kerry_T-5R]

Really good write up, good to hear the T4 is still going strong! Any updates coming to the project thread?

[Ross9]

Hi, I dare say I could make an addition on the projects thread just to keep it up to date yes, without all the waffling I did on this one lol.

Ross.

[RT Mechanics]

Hi Ross

Nice write up looks like you have been having fun i cannot wait a go at the 1/4 mile

Russ

[John_C]

Great writeup, thanks Ross, feel almost like I was there!!

[Ross9]

lol, glad you liked it guys, I do like to try and paint a picture, there are only really a few people on here who take an interest in 1/4 miling etc I find, most are happy just to remap the cars with an exhaust fitted and see what the rollers say then go around overtaking people on motorways. This is a bit of a scathing generalisation obviously but anyway I reckon that's why I waffle on as much to set the scene of how the day went, track days are more fun than straight lines but it's cheaper and easy day out to go 1/4 miling, that and the fact that reading it back and looking at the state of my typing/grammar I was obviously a few shandies down after having had the good day out lol.

Ross

[foggyjames]

I like a good trip to the strip Shame I've got nothing fast to go in!

cheers

James