At The Track
As stated in Part I of our shootout from Virginia Motorsports Park, it was a hot one, temperature-wise, with 95 degrees recorded, but the barometer was a promising 30.05 hg. Nevertheless, our intrepid participants posted solid performances, and one ran his best-ever e.t.
Shelly Brown
Shelly did plenty of tuning at the strip and made a total of nine passes on the day. After spinning on the first run, he mounted a set of M/T ET drag radials and began to dial them in. Working the tire pressure down from 20 to 18 psi rear and from 45 to 38 psi front, by the fifth pass, with the front suspension loosened up, the Bird responded with its lowest 60-foot of the day at 1.81. The e.t. dropped to 12.84. Open headers were tried on the next pass, and the jets were changed, both of which increased mph, but e.t. held pretty steady. Then, on the final pass, it all came together and all came apart at the same time. Reducing timing to 33 degrees, the best e.t. and mph of the day was posted at 12.73 at 107.02 mph, all while the alternator belt snapped and the power steering belt was thrown. Shelly said that less heat would have been nice, but he described the track as "sticky" and said his Bird, "hooked well and went straight. All in all it was a great event with great people."
Al Dombrowski
Al said of the shootout, "I was happy to meet people with the same interests and exchange mechanical information." Regarding track conditions he said, "I had no traction problems; my GTO hooked well." He was dialing in a new motor at the shootout that was installed the Sunday before. Adjusting tire pressure, secondary metering rod size, timing, launch rpm, and shift points, he found nearly 2 mph, going from 114.61 on his second pass (first pass aborted) to 116.13 by the last pass. The e.t. also dropped from 12.10 on the second pass to 11.74 by the fifth pass, which contained his lowest 60-foot of the day at 1.74. Al says the Innovate LM-1 02 meter, "gets me in the ballpark for making A/F ratio adjustments and provides run-to-run info that is more accurate than using e.t. and mph alone." He also learned that his new combo with the aluminum heads prefers 31-32 degrees timing, and changes either way slow it down. Despite his tuning good fortune, Al was chasing a carb-bog problem and a Third-gear vibration the entire day. Since the shootout, he fixed the bog problem and replaced the defective driveshaft that caused the vibration. Currently, the GTO is running 11.30s.
Rodney "Hot Rod" Oke
"Killer fantastic" was how Rodney described the event overall. "The track was perfect," in his opinion, and his Trans Am, "did very well hooking up. It pulled both front tires on launch." Like our other participants, Rodney took full advantage of the opportunity to tune his T/A. Jets, plugs, tire pressure and launch rpm were all tinkered with during the shootout. His best 60-foot came on the second pass with a 1.50. The highest mph was seen on the fourth pass after timing was bumped up resulting in a 122.30 posting. But it was the last pass that revealed the lowest e.t. of the day--a 10.96. With all this tuning, the T/A was still pretty consistent in e.t. with the spread from slowest to quickest being an 11.05 to the 10.96.
Jeff Verdi
Jeff stated that it was a "great event. It was hot, but the track was working well early on. I hooked up on three runs and barely spun on the other two. But after 2 p.m. it was very hot, and the track was not as nearly as sticky as earlier in the day." Experimenting with timing changes, and launch and shift rpm to combat the changing weather and track conditions, Jeff was able to make his final and best pass of the day (9.778) within 0.009 second of his first pass (9.787). Mph differed by just 0.21. This is after increasing timing 6 degrees and launching 800 rpm higher and shifting 200 rpm higher. Seems like he knows how to get what he wants out of this combination.
Felton "Tommy" Thompson
"I had a great time with good Pontiac people," Tommy said. "Track conditions were good. I had no hooking problems after I put on a set of slicks." This day was an exercise in dialing-in timing, launch rpm, and shift points to make the most out of a pair of Goodyear radial slicks. After spinning on the first pass on drag radials, Tommy switched over to the slicks and was instantly rewarded with his best pass of the day, posting a 12.01 at 112.69. This e.t. was 0.05 better than his best ever up to that date. He continued to work with timing changes and rpm adjustments on subsequent runs, but his GTO was happiest on that second pass.
CONCLUSION
Another group of dedicated racers have put their reputations where their mouths are, to provide the readership of HPP with five potent 455 combinations that are strip tested. We hope you can use this information to your advantage for future projects, and we thank our participants for their efforts. Next issue, we will check out a few more Pontiacs from our VMP shootout series.
Special thanks To Jim Zeek, Jamie Zeek, and the VMP staff for their help in organizing and executing this event.