World of Speed - Bonneville Salt Flats 2007
Last year I had the opportunity to race out on the salt flats with my neighbor Ernie Gross. He has a Ford Probe SHO that's a contender for breaking a record in his category. While he ran on the big track, I ran on the 130 club track. It was a very hot week, which is great for the salt surface. Driving on the salt is a lot like driving on hard packed snow, not like asphalt at all.
The basic goal of the 130 club track is to run two consecutive runs at 130mph or slightly greater. It sounds simple, but it's not. Most production cars just aren't set up to go that fast. There's typically a speed limit set in the modern computers, typically because the tires aren't rated for more than 120mph. Some of the more powerful sports cars can hit that speed, but even then only after modifying the ECU. There was a fairly new Mustang GT that just barely squeeked by, and then only after removing every bit of weight they could dump out. It was really quite interesting to see how little the fuel injection did under these conditions. It really hurt more than helped. Apparently I have some more tuning to do there as well.
Here are my track times:
As you can see, I could only get it up to about 122mph. I was able to get it to that point well before the end of the track, but the analog computer was limiting the rpm. I could see it dropping 500-1000 rpm repeatedly to limit the speed/rpm. My next project is going to be to replace the old analog ECU with something a little more modern that I can program.
If you plan on coming out, I hope to see you there. It's a lot of fun and a great challenge.
Here are some pics
Here is a pic of my neighbor's car:
We went camping the day after the race.
