OK this is basic, basic stuff. If you already know anything about drag racing it isn’t going to help. Well, until the second post…
Dragracing, drag racing, the digs, the quarter mile (or the eighth mile), the 1320, the strip, the track – all of these describe the basic drag race where two vehicles line up side by side at a dead stop and race 1320 feet (1/4 mile), first one to get there wins.
The National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) is the most popular dragracing association in the US. Here’s their page on what dragracing is:
http://www.nhra.com/basics/basics.html
If you click on the left of that link (on the page that opens) there are some other basic descriptions on what this is all about.
Some tracks are only 1/8 of a mile long and others are 1000 feet long. It just depends on where and when the track was built.
Street racing is basically the same thing only it is illegal and there is no guarantee you are running a prescribed distance. In some street racing, it is done “from a roll”, meaning that the two contesting vehicles are already moving at some speed. Where the Christmas tree is used at the track, for street racing it can be someone waving a hand, flashing a light, or when from a roll, three honks of a horn – going on the last honk. Or it could be just about anything. Street races can be either more or less distance than what is on a sanctioned track. Usually it is less when one vehicle is really pulling away from the other and sometimes longer if it is a close race and the competitors are ‘neck and neck’. But a street race can be just about anything as long as it’s two vehicles trying to go as fast as they can, the one in front wins.
There are a lot of tips, tricks, and rumors in the dragracing world and some work, some don’t. And what works on one vehicle may not work for the other. Usually it is a combination of modifications (mods) that makes the faster vehicle.
The thing to remember about acceleration is that equation we all saw in high school. F=ma F is force, m is mass (weight), and a is acceleration. We want to accelerate faster than the guy/gal next to us in a dragrace so the equation then becomes a = F/m. This is important. So we can get more acceleration if we add more force (horsepower) or we subtract mass (lower the weight). This is just a basic deal. There are other factors such as traction and gearing that fit into this and we’ll deal with that later on.
So enough of that, let’s get to our trucks. I really doubt anyone here bought their Titan to race. However, we all pretty much realized that the truck is pretty fast (for a truck) and those of us that like to compete with machinery have found our way to the track or punching it next to that car or truck next to us trying to go faster. Whatever the reason, in the grand scheme of dragracing we need some help if we expect to beat anything worth beating. Of course, that is all up to personal perception…
As trucks, we don’t have it all that bad. By now everyone knows that the Titan is putting out about 330hp at the crank and not the advertised 305hp as claimed by Nissan. We have a 5 speed transmission that definitely helps with overall gearing. By overall gearing, this is the multiplication of the transmission gear ratio (in whatever gear you are at the time) and the rear differential ratio. The gear ratio is simply a torque multiplication. Whatever torque the engine is putting out is multiplied by the overall gear ratio and that is the force exerted to the wheels. We also don’t weigh a whole lot compared apples-to-apples against the other trucks out there. And from our equation this is a good thing since less mass is better acceleration.
The mainstay of mods that people tend to do is add power. In our case, this is the cat-back exhaust of your choice, maybe the resonator replacement with high flow mufflers or straight pipes, and a cold air induction (CAI) airbox and high flow air filter. Results have varied truck to truck with these mods.
But let’s get to the root of the matter here with Tim the Titan owner who just racked up 3000 miles on his 2 wheel drive crew cab. He gets the challenge from Ricky Racer and his 1990 Mustang GT complete with a 5.0 and automatic transmission. Ricky swears he is “The Man” and can take any rice truck that ever rolled a wheel on this planet. What do we do?
Well the mustang happens to be mostly stock. We figure he’s putting out about 235hp. No match for the 330hp the Titan has but the mustang only weighs about 3300 pounds and to Tim’s dismay, his truck weighs in right at 5000 pounds. An old rule of thumb is that 10 horsepower = 0.1 second gain in the ¼. And that roughly 100 pounds also = 0.1 second gain in the ¼. The titan has about 100hp on the mustang for about a 1 second advantage, but the weight difference is 1700 pounds for a 1.7 second advantage going to the mustang. So what does Tim do? Naturally he logs onto TT and gets educated.
Read on and we’ll cut to the chase.
Dragracing, drag racing, the digs, the quarter mile (or the eighth mile), the 1320, the strip, the track – all of these describe the basic drag race where two vehicles line up side by side at a dead stop and race 1320 feet (1/4 mile), first one to get there wins.
The National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) is the most popular dragracing association in the US. Here’s their page on what dragracing is:
http://www.nhra.com/basics/basics.html
If you click on the left of that link (on the page that opens) there are some other basic descriptions on what this is all about.
Some tracks are only 1/8 of a mile long and others are 1000 feet long. It just depends on where and when the track was built.
Street racing is basically the same thing only it is illegal and there is no guarantee you are running a prescribed distance. In some street racing, it is done “from a roll”, meaning that the two contesting vehicles are already moving at some speed. Where the Christmas tree is used at the track, for street racing it can be someone waving a hand, flashing a light, or when from a roll, three honks of a horn – going on the last honk. Or it could be just about anything. Street races can be either more or less distance than what is on a sanctioned track. Usually it is less when one vehicle is really pulling away from the other and sometimes longer if it is a close race and the competitors are ‘neck and neck’. But a street race can be just about anything as long as it’s two vehicles trying to go as fast as they can, the one in front wins.
There are a lot of tips, tricks, and rumors in the dragracing world and some work, some don’t. And what works on one vehicle may not work for the other. Usually it is a combination of modifications (mods) that makes the faster vehicle.
The thing to remember about acceleration is that equation we all saw in high school. F=ma F is force, m is mass (weight), and a is acceleration. We want to accelerate faster than the guy/gal next to us in a dragrace so the equation then becomes a = F/m. This is important. So we can get more acceleration if we add more force (horsepower) or we subtract mass (lower the weight). This is just a basic deal. There are other factors such as traction and gearing that fit into this and we’ll deal with that later on.
So enough of that, let’s get to our trucks. I really doubt anyone here bought their Titan to race. However, we all pretty much realized that the truck is pretty fast (for a truck) and those of us that like to compete with machinery have found our way to the track or punching it next to that car or truck next to us trying to go faster. Whatever the reason, in the grand scheme of dragracing we need some help if we expect to beat anything worth beating. Of course, that is all up to personal perception…
As trucks, we don’t have it all that bad. By now everyone knows that the Titan is putting out about 330hp at the crank and not the advertised 305hp as claimed by Nissan. We have a 5 speed transmission that definitely helps with overall gearing. By overall gearing, this is the multiplication of the transmission gear ratio (in whatever gear you are at the time) and the rear differential ratio. The gear ratio is simply a torque multiplication. Whatever torque the engine is putting out is multiplied by the overall gear ratio and that is the force exerted to the wheels. We also don’t weigh a whole lot compared apples-to-apples against the other trucks out there. And from our equation this is a good thing since less mass is better acceleration.
The mainstay of mods that people tend to do is add power. In our case, this is the cat-back exhaust of your choice, maybe the resonator replacement with high flow mufflers or straight pipes, and a cold air induction (CAI) airbox and high flow air filter. Results have varied truck to truck with these mods.
But let’s get to the root of the matter here with Tim the Titan owner who just racked up 3000 miles on his 2 wheel drive crew cab. He gets the challenge from Ricky Racer and his 1990 Mustang GT complete with a 5.0 and automatic transmission. Ricky swears he is “The Man” and can take any rice truck that ever rolled a wheel on this planet. What do we do?
Well the mustang happens to be mostly stock. We figure he’s putting out about 235hp. No match for the 330hp the Titan has but the mustang only weighs about 3300 pounds and to Tim’s dismay, his truck weighs in right at 5000 pounds. An old rule of thumb is that 10 horsepower = 0.1 second gain in the ¼. And that roughly 100 pounds also = 0.1 second gain in the ¼. The titan has about 100hp on the mustang for about a 1 second advantage, but the weight difference is 1700 pounds for a 1.7 second advantage going to the mustang. So what does Tim do? Naturally he logs onto TT and gets educated.
Read on and we’ll cut to the chase.