2000 Special Edition #2441

[lifebyevan]

March 10th, 2021

I went to my local drag strip and ran my car for the first time. There was a lot of learning involved as it was my first time as a driver on the drag strip. Going into it, my research showed that a stock NB1 can do approximately a 16.0 second quarter-mile, at best a 15.9. My goal was to run a mid to high 14 second quarter-mile. The car makes 150whp and 130tq according to the dyno sheet from Jackson Racing when they installed the supercharger in 2003. The M45 supercharger should be generating about 4-5psi with the stock pulley. The weather was pretty ideal for Florida that night with it being a bit colder (~60°F) and clear skies.

The first run I had was pretty good overall. It was particularly exciting because I got to race my friend in his relatively stock NB2 that was on a Haltech standalone ECU. It made for a pretty good race since he had launch control and flat foot shifting enabled with his ECU, whereas I was on a stock ECU but with the supercharger. My tires spun off the line a bit more than I would have liked but the car hooked up nicely once I was in second gear. My friend in the NB2 was pretty much right there with me until the very end but he could not manage to make up the ground he lost at the beginning of the race. I was able to manage a 60' time of 2.276 and a quarter-mile time of 15.536 at 90.12mph.



The next two runs I did not do as well because the car fell on its face off the line which I knew was bound to happen. This is mainly because with the throttle body being relocated before the supercharger, the car experiences what is known as “lean tip-in”. The best way to describe what lean tip-in feels like is that there is a hesitation or delay from the time you hit the gas to when the car actually registers it and starts to move. This is due to the increased intake air volume between the engine and the throttle body, the car initially does not have enough fuel and goes lean temporarily. The Jackson Racing boost/timing controller is able to compensate for this since I am on stock ECU still, but at times (mainly when launching the car) it just is not quick enough. I was not helping the situation between those two runs because I was not launching at a high enough RPM and was not even getting the tires to spin a little bit. On my worst run, my 60’ time was 2.604, which shows I'm struggling off the line. My quarter-mile time for that same run was 16.002 at 88.71mph (yikes).

To give myself the best chance for my last run of the night, I decided I was going to forget about reaction time and take my time getting a good launch. I was launching the car slightly higher at around 3500-4000RPM. Slipping the clutch is too foreign to me at the moment so I’m just sending it like I’m about to give a local riced out Honda Civic the beans at a red light on my way to the thrift store. On the launch, I spun the tires just enough and the car gripped up amazingly halfway through first gear. It felt like I hit one of those boost pads in Mario Kart, it was awesome. There was no lean tip-in off the line and nothing but clean shifting all the way until the end. I dropped my 60’ time down to 2.229 and ran a quarter-mile time of 15.229 at 90.91mph.

I scanned and compiled all my time slips from that night so you can see my progression with the car. I am car # 81 on all the time slips.



I really feel like the 15.229 was a close to ideal run with my current setup. I went back to the drag strip another night shortly after this and I had a hard time trying to break my previous personal best. I even tried lowering my tire pressure quite a bit and it did not yield any better results. There is for sure some improvement that can be made on my end as a driver but for now, I am happy with my personal best of a 15.229 quarter-mile time. My main takeaway from this is that a standalone ECU would greatly help my times as it would give me the ability to make adjustments for the lean tip-in as well as add features like launch control and flat foot shifting to help with consistency. I am also contemplating doing a dual throttle mod around the same time, which involves adding a second throttle body so that there is one before the intake manifold and one before the supercharger. This apparently would help combat the lean tip-in issue but also help any idle-related issues, which I have my fair share of (more on that later).