I made $ drag racing my stock 3 cylinder Geo! Long!
 

They held Import Day at Edgewater drag strip near Cincinnati Sunday and unlike the vast majority of tracks that allow domestic compacts in they stick to a imports only rule. Sooooo I drove the 96 Geo Metro 1 liter down there. I was worried that it would not run quick enough since nearly all tracks have a 19.99 second rule for your time in competition. I had a tach put in Tuesday to help for this day and found that on the street when I thought I was winding it tight I was in reality shifting at only 4000 rpm! I drove it down there with the gas that was already in the tank so I would not be carring extra wt of uneeded fuel. I weighed the car after every pass too. When full of gas it is 1730 lbs (I have taken 70 lbs out of it)....but Sunday I also took out the baby seat, his toys, his bag, the spare and jack for a car wt of only 1660 lbs! The gas gauge read a bit over the red mark so I still had enough gas for the mission. I put 11 practice passes on it and 4 more rounds of eliminations....the car did not use but 5 lbs of fuel during the event and the 80 miles of in town driving with another 115 miles of interstate and a total of 15 full out passes on the track gave me my worst FE ever of only 37.1 mpg.

The 1st pass I side stepped the clutch at @ 2000 rpm like I do on the street (at 1500) and shifted at 5000 rpm....my slowest pass of the day...a not good enough 20.23 at a mind bending 64.71 mph:mad: and once into 3rd gear before half track it seemed so far and slow to the end! The 18th mile was a 12.809 at 53.65 mph. From there on I experimented with different ways to launch and shift points. The 2nd pass while shifting at 5500 found this thing a blur at 19.838 and 67.51 mph while also launching at 2500 rpm and getting a bit of tire spin!!! I found that only with some tire spin and shifting at 5500 rpm could I stay in the 19s. The best pass was a 19.687 at 68.00 mph while not shifting into 4th and crossing the finish line at 5700 rpm. The 4th gear shift was alway at the mph recording light, 90 ft from the finish line.

I found that the car ran the most consistant times when leaving with some tire spin and shifting at 5500 on all shifts but the 4th gear one I was now doing at 5250, a few feet before the mph timer lights. Driving this way on my last 7 practice passes and 4 rounds of eliminations it ran between 19.842 and 19.995.....I dialed a 19.90 for the race. My 12 second SRT4 varies by only .14 pass to pass so this was quite acceptable while the 17 second Horizon I race varies by .06 at the most.

My average reaction time in practice was a .061 (.000 is perfect) while my best was a great .013 (I try for a .020-.040) and in eliminations they averaged a .066....not too great, but compared to my competition, darn good. In practice my opponents had a best of .101 and the worst of .727 then in the 1st three rounds of eliinations they had easy to beat .287, .303, and a .320. In the 4th round I beat myself by running .051 too fast against a plain jane 4 door accord that ran a 17.358 on a 17.35 dial and his RT was a .041 to my .061...I was on the brakes barely at the end and I beat him across the line by only .031.....I was okay with that because it is hard to judge finish line margins when there is a big mph difference.....in this case he was flying by me at 79.8 mph....the slowest car there but for me. Then I found out that he races there for pts every weekend with that car and his Super Pro car.

The quickest car I ran went 10.948 at 130+ while most ran 12.20s - 14.60s.

Oh yeah, the $250 did not hurt either...now I know I have a capable spare if my 12 second car is down!:thumbup:

That's awesome.

I should have tried to bracket race at some point. The car I would take had a spread of like 8 thousandths of a second over 3 different trips to the strip!

Hahaha... did you bring a thermos so you could sip some tea between shifts? Nicely done, bringing home the money in the slowest car I could possibly think of.

There is not much time for the1-2 shift at the 60' mark (@ 2.8 seconds) a little more for 2-3 shift at the 330' mark (@ 8.1 seconds) but tons for the 3-4at the 1230' (@ 19.8 seconds).

One of the spectators drove in with a new Smart car and was bragging about his better than EPA FE of 45 mpg.....I showed him my log book that had only 2 long trips of under 50 mpg and he kind of turned real quiet and pale while he just spent nearly $20K on something that got worse FE than a 12 year old, $3000 car that has room for 2 kids too.

That's great, ATaylor! It reminds me when I lived in Indianapolis (~5yrs ago) and was attending Lincoln Tech. We had a field trip to Raceway park and all the guys wanted me to run my Metro down the strip for fun. I was thinking seriously about it, but decided not to, since I couldn't afford to break anything at that stage in my life. Knowing what I know now, I wouldn't hesitate!

LOL I love that story. I bet it killed the 10 sec car waiting at the line for 10 seconds till his light came.

I had a 93 ford lightning that was an awesome bracket racer. Foot to the floor, no tirespin, auto tranny, consistant within 3 to 5 hundreths. It was fun. And got 14 mpg no matter how you drove it. LOL.

I ran my festy a few weeks back, best was 17.95 at 76.1mph. Bone stock.... well minus the cat...

A lady that flew in with her husband for the Shelby/Dodge Natls had NEVER drag raced in her life. They rented a 3.5 V6 Chrysler 300 (BIG) and she won the entire event! The car never varried over .01 and her husband taught her well on the launch! That was in 2007.

Yep, if you never red light you are pretty much golden. As long as your reaction time does not look like this --> :turtle:

That's a great story Angelo!

Forget leaving on the third one, you practically need to leave on the first yellow with a car that slow! haha

The import only events in Sacramento and Bakersfield used to be pretty easy pickins because none of the street racer Honda guys could cut lights (combination of inexperience and fwd with wheel spin on a bald starting line... ) Most of those kids who stuck with it have gotten a lot more savvy on the tree these days.

I once used a friends all stock '79 VW convertible as a 'back up' when my race car broke... I was dialing 19.50ish as I recall :turtle:

I had no tach in that car so I used some strips of blue tape on the speedometer so I could at least shift at a consistant mph. Like you said, I found it real hard to race the top end with such a big difference in speeds.

one serious question; Where did you find a tach that reads 3 pulses per 2 rpm (3 cylinder)? My 3cyl. Metro needs one

That's funny, I was thinking the same thing the other day. I know Autometer tachs can read 8,6, and 4 cylinders (you cut certain wires for each combination).

Perhaps lift a tach off a three cylinder tractor? :lol:

Or, use one for a four cylinder and plan on it reading 25% fast? Of course, then you could make everyone think the 3 cyl can turn some rpms. :lol:

I actually just staged and launched like I do the other cars that I race. Never had too bad a RT at that race. The combination of 1660 lbs and small diameter tires with enough power to spin, but not smoke the right front garnered decent RTs without planning for them. In fact I was chirping the rt ft tire on all the 1-2 shifts since I do not lift off the gas when I shift!

As far as a tach, I had purchased a Equus from O'Reilly Auto. You can set it up for 1-12 cylinders. When you buy it you MUST open it up and look at the directions first and make sure that the model you are getting has a set up to read off of a induction wire clamped to a plug wire. The web site shows all of them like that but at the store the cheaper ones did not do it. When first hiooked up it was not reading correctly at all so we moved the induction calmp on wire from #1 to the coil wire and every thing worked great!

LOL! Love it! :cool:

At a special drag day this summer at the strip close to here they did a "29.5" single run elimination during a break in the action. You were supposed to run as close to 29.5 seconds as possible without breaking out - one pass only. Only a couple of cars ran slow enough. One guy crept along in first gear and ran like 39 seconds, and another was in the 30s somewhere.

The coolest part of the whole event was when some guy pulled up in an old rusted-out Model A (T??) pickup! Had his grandkids with him: one holding a stopwatch, ;) and one with a balloon and sucking on a tootsie pop. There they go down the strip, waving at folks. I had a grin almost as big as an EV grin :D and was giggling like an idiot. I soooo wanted them to win, but they broke out... :p ...but not by much!

I could have won the event easy. Tried to get my son to run in the GMC, but couldn't talk him into it. All he would have had to do was run up to 30 mph real quick, and then hold it there! :p (30 mph = mile in 2 minutes = quarter mile in 30 seconds...) If the cruise would engage at 30 you could have used it, which is somehow so very funny for strategy at a drag strip... :eek:

Equus... Good to know

Directions??? what is this activity you speak of ??? Should I also put the toilet seat down when I'm finished? :p j/k



Seriously though, great information Angelo. Do you have an Equus part number you could share?

I can't be the only 2nd generation Metro owner who wants to instal a 3 cylinder tach in his car. 1st gen owners could find a convertable and salvage the cluster, but they don't fit the later years. Every wrecking yard 2nd gen metro that came with a factory tach (that I've looked at least) is a 4 cylinder, which would read low if used on my 3 cylinder.

Nearly every year at the Shelby/Dodge Nat'ls they have a turtle race where everyone trys to run a 19.99....maybe I should bring the Geo for that! It's hilarious to watch guys that are running 10 seconds in their FWD Mopars at 140 mph try to slow down to a 19 second pass. I usually win by launching as I normally would tio get a great reaction time, then shift into high gear (full manual valve body) at 3000 rpm and not exceed 60 mph. The 1st time I tried this was by leaving in high gear (easy to do with efi and a 4000 stahl convertor)....flat out it would then the 19.9 somethinng but the reaction time would suck.

I really did not know that Geos had that much power or could withstand that much punishment! Now that I know, I will not be afraid at all to run mine hard when needed. Thanks for the great story, I will be sure to tell it to all my friends who also have Geo Metros!

When I had a tach put in the car I had always thought that when I ran it hard on the street I was shifting at 5000 rpm, but the new tach showed I was only shifting at 4000. At the drag strip you have to run at least a 19.99 to be able to bracket race. To do this I had to launch hard enough to get a little spin off the right front tire and also had to shift at 5500 rpm. On the street I never shift passed 5000 rpm which was only good enough for 20.23 seconds.

Using my drag strip at the tire hp formula I found that a best time of 19.84 seconds showed 50.8 hp at the tires....during eliminations my best time of 19.9 equalled 47.8 hp while my worst run in eliminations of a 19.99 showed only about 47.2 hp. I am sure that if the motor did not have 160,000 miles on it and/or had a valve job it would be quicker. A new fast time of 18.99 should be obtained if the car had 55 hp at the tires, but it is hard for a car to have as much hp at the tires as the motor is rated at due to drivetrain losses.

The thing I was afraid of the most was tranny breakage...I had to launch at about 3000 rpm to get a bit of tire spin or else the take off would slightly bog the motor down. I would certainly be warry of this thing lasting an entire season being raced like this. I have no idea if the trannys in these are the same as or as tough as the ones in the turbo Suzukis GTI models.

Bracket racing requires a good reaction time to the strarting light and a consistant car....fast does not win the race unless it includes these two items. The car I USUALLY race is a high 16 second 84 Horizon that barely hits 80 in the 1/4. I used it to win the VAST majority of my 34 NHRA/IHRA championships. My 12 second SRT4 Neon has not won a championship yet, but I did manage a runner-up finish at the Stick Shift Nationals in November.

All that and an average over 37mpg. That made my eyebrows go up, funny stuff.

Hey, nice racing. I like the "Run what you brung" bracket races best, that's a real driver's test, not a battle of the checkbooks.