Heffner Car

[Wing King]

I would like to re-direct the focus of this thread just a bit if you guys will indulge me.

First, it's way too bad that the rains came before we could "settle" things near the end. Kinda ended up like kissing your sister!

On the other hand, let's be happy for having MOST of the day for play. We could have been those poor Vette guys with THEIR event scheduled for the next day..... while WE were sloshing our way through the parade.

Second, I can assure you we will be doing this again in the future, and I'm going to try to even get Dodge to bring out their best.... to race with us "heads up" in their factory cars, on a much more intense level than the "fun running" they did at Bowling Green. Hey, if they can spend 10 minutes at the banquets talking about all their great autocrossing competition against the VCA, and take the Comp Coupe out to go racing at Viper Days....... then they better get ready to face off competitively with us on the drag strip next time! I'm going to be laying down a little challenge to Jim Julow, John Fernandez, Herb Helbig and Charlie Brown in the near future. They gave us the best support ever for our drag event, so we owe them a lot of thanks, and our invitation to come back next time...... and let's get it ON!

Third, I didn't want this thread to go away without giving Jamie Furman his due congratulations. Forget the machinery for just a moment. Let's remember that he rolled out the perfect .500 light during the day! Nice driving! Jamie, you can look forward to a nice package arriving on your doorstep in the near future as we go about distributing the awards possible under the circumstances.

Thanks for everyone's participation. What a rush to finally see all those supercharged cars going up against the traditional all-motor and nitrous guys. It's only going to get better the next time. Please make sure you thank Prashant Patel for working his tail off that day. There were some major problems with the computerized scoring capabilites that came as a big surprise to everyone, and he waded through it as best he could with a bunch of volunteers working by hand in the tower, along with our guest track announcer, Bobby Likis, of the Car Clinic Radio and TV Network.

Rain, rain..... go away....... and don't come back any OTHER drag racing day!

 

[Tom and Vipers]

When I think about comparing tuner cars, I think of 1/4 mile mph only.

This seperates the weight/hp from the drag suspensions/tires.

...or something like how many G's of acceleration can your car produce at 100 mph?

Of course, with 700-800 HP becomming common place, gross traction problems in the 1/4 can affect mph.

I remember Don Garlits saying that he wished top fuel wins were based on mph. If that were true, he said you would see the cars smoke their tires the entire length of the strip.

Frankly, I never really understood the physics of that statement...

Tom

 

[Jason Heffner]

George, I am currently developing a water to air intercooler as well as an air to air system. You saw Gary's car run at VOI, it's easy to see that his car is good for at least 10.40s with some good tires. The water to air system will offer ******** drag racers like yourself the option to run ice water through the intercooler, allowing the coolest aircharge possible. The air to air system would be more for the street cars and the road course guys. You know as well as I do that a car with a good 750 rwhp could dip into the 9s regularly. The biggest limitation that pertains to most cars is the driver. Your car ran 10.20s at VOI, I would say that the majority of people would have a hard time running within 3 to 5 tenths of that. To answer your question about how fast can a car go with which packages, we'll just have to wait until the next race to find out.

 

[Tom and Vipers]

"...the majority of people would have a hard time running within 3 to 5 tenths of that."

How close would mphs be in your opinion?

 

[Jason Heffner]

It's hard to say. The mph doesn't get effected as much with the car being on slicks but with a bad enough driver I'd say it could be off by 3 or 4 mph. I've seen the same car with two differenr drivers run 3 to 5 tenths different and the mph be within 1. A good example would be Dan Blacks car. With Doug driving, the car went 134 or 135, I don't know what it ran with Dan driving but it would be informative to find out.

 

[jamie furman]

Kingman thanks for the kudo's and hope to be bringing my own car the next time.It was a great time, and enjoyed meeting you and all the viper guys in person and am looking forward to the next big viper event.

 

[jamie furman]

Tom I disagree with your analogy that mph says it all, because that is not the case. On many of my pass's when I put et streets on my car it picked up 4 or 5 mph because radials would not harness the horsepower, so I think more important than mph is the combination of the total package as a whole.If you want to do good at the drag strip et is what counts not mph, if you want to roll it up on the street mph would be the most important to you.No matter what tuners power adder you use, I think most if not all viper owners who's cars are driven on the street on a regular basis want a user friendly package, with reliability at an affordable price. I think you would have to agree once you go past a certain level of performance the reliability is out the window.I want to give you a senario and you tell me which car is the fastest. Mikes car runs 10.7 at 132 on radials like he drives it on the street everyday with 570 advertised rwhp and Bill has a car that runs 11.0 at 135 on radials in street trim with 650 rwhp.Who is the fastest? One more thing Bill's mods cost 30k and Mikes cost 10k who has the best car? My point being there are so many subjective things that have to be considered when comparing different packages I don't think you can narrow it down to 1 thing like trap speed, way too many varibles.