Project GRM Challenge E30: Day 2 Drags

So after a long 1st day, we got up early for the drag portion of the event. We drove out to the track, and unpacked all our stuff. We removed the autox tires from the front, and unfortunately did not have drag slicks for the rear so we ran the autox tires at 20psi. We ran into trouble early. The car would not start at 8:30Am. We began to check and double check all of out connections and sensors. 20 minutes turned into 1 hour. We checked for spark, we had it, we checked for fuel, we had it, we checked the injectors, we swapped ECUs, we were running out of options. 1 hour turned into 3 hours. We had a lot of help from some friendly challengers and spectators. It turns out that after trying to start the car so many times, we had fouled the plugs. The girls went out to pick up a new set and when they returned we installed them and the car fired right up! ....it only took about 5 hours!

So we were ready! We only had a couple of hours left to get our runs in for the day, so I jumped in the car and drove it straight to the drag strip. My first run was a 14.2 at 104mph. I was not to happy, but i know the car had more in it. I was spinning the tires all through 1st and 2nd gear. It even got squirly in the beginning of 3rd.

We did 2 more runs, but the car began to act up again, and was popping and sputtering in higher rpms. After the 3rd run it cut off, and wouldn't start again. I had to push it back to the pits. Fortunately Jimmy and another challenger in a miata was nice enough to come give me a hand and tow me to the pits.

It turns out we had blown off the rubber hose connecting to the throttle body. After re-attaching it, we were back in business!

9 runs later, we had two 14 second passes with a highest trap speed of 107 mph. With more traction i I think this car can definitely run low 13's. One of the 14 second passes was run starting in second gear with a trap speed of 104 mph! I want to give Bucky Thomas props for porting the intake manifold, and really creating a monster out of this car. The throttle response is amazing! Without the high airflow I doubt we'd have such a high trap speed.