Another thing that could be hurting you is if your on street tires such as regular old kumho ecsta's etc, do not do a big smokey burnout. all that will do is make the tires greasy. Do a quick spin of the tires to get any rocks or pebbles off them but thats it. nothing more than a quick high rpm dump of the clutch.

Hope this helps man, its kinda hard without being there to teach ya.

i ran into a kid not too long ago at moroso here in west palm with an SR20 B14, he was running 12.9-13.2 all night, I told him exactly what i just told you and by the end of the night he was running 11.9-12.3 consistantly.

Phil

However, with a turbo set-up I could definately see the benefit of slipping of the clutch......

Though, my buddy with a box stock 1st gen stock Eclipse with regular street tires pulled a 1.9 second 60 foot with dumping the clutch.

SURE he should be on a drag radial or even a slick. But dumping the clutch not only causes tire spin, but drivetrain shock, which breaks things. And a 2.1 60 foot is absolutely PATHETIC!, i can do a 1.8 all day long on street tires with my technicque. it works perfectly.

I dont care what your buddy pulled dumping the clutch, his car is either probably AWD, or he got lucky. Dumping the clutch is only your gateway to broken parts... even if your stock

Using your technique can fry a clutch for the unexperienced driver. I have made 100s of runs using my technique and nothing has broken ever! Sure with more hp it could break things, but these are sub-170 hp cars we are talking about! A 2.1 60 foot with a stock front wheel drive (open diff with factory tires) Sentra (140hp) is extremely good. There is no way you could break 2.0 with your technique or any technique with that car..... You can not compare your rwd 300+hp car to a car with not even half the power!

Furthermore, my friend's eclipse was fwd and yes he did get lucky.....basically he heated the tires up off boost and when the boost kicked in it stuck.

Modified by justjuiceit4 at 4:45 PM 3/17/2008

I've only been to the drag strip a couple times. My last car was a 200hp front wheel drive car with a racing clutch and my best time was a 14.1 at 103 mph.

I thought for sure I would be able to smoke that time with my stock Z. So I decided to go to the track to give it a shot. I got to the line and dumped the clutch at about 6K rpm since that is what I did with my last car and it seemed to work ok. This time it didn't work out so well......I thought the tires were spinning and as I went through the gears I realized I was burning up my clutch.... It smelled horrible. Very disappointing.

I didn't want to run again since I thought my clutch was toast and I wanted to test it out on the street. I left the track and on the street it didn't seem to have any problems although I'm sure I didn't help it's life at all. I think I'm going to go back and try it again but now I'm wondering what is the best way to launch this car. I think the advice from Mean Green sounds like it would work the best but I'm really not sure. Has anyone else had this problem or have any suggestions?

go throught he staging process and bring it up to the lights, dont focus on getting a good reaction time right away, ive got hundreds of passes before i even started worrying about that.

First thing first, get to the line making sure both top lights are lit, bump the clutch till you just barely feel the car want to move (do not let it move though). bring the rpm's up to 3000 to start and bring them up more if needed or down more if needed. when the light turns, or you feel ready give it more gas and slowly let out on the clutch at the same time. dont dump it, feather it out, it will allow just enough slippage to allow the car to keep power without bogging and allow you to get a good 60' which is the KEY to a good clean 1/4 mile pass.

do not expect perfect results your first time out. its going to take many many MANY tries. my best advice to you, is practice on a side street which has no houses or traffic, preferably a dead end of some sort. it will be different from street to track so be prepared for that, but it will at least get you in the "swing of things" so to speak and give you an idea of what to do and how to adjust for different conditions.

This is a rookie question and I should probably know this but does the reaction time count against the 1/4 mile time? If I sit on the line for 2 sec, run a 14sec do I get a 16 sec time?

Here is the link to the video of this last time at the track against an '07 Jaguar XK

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOQjiL6Q9j4

Does anyone know what's the difference between stages in racing clutches? Say between Stage 5 or Stage 3?

Nelson, Thanks man, That is the second one of those events I went too. Good times. I'm sure I'll make it to some next year too. Definitely say hi.