The 24 Hours of Lemons Forums → Our Crappy Race → Stafford top speeds
What was the top speed that anyone was seeing before the first turn?
It felt like we were cookin pretty good when we got there, but our speedo was broken and pegged at 120 as soon as we got up to 5mph. the odometer said the track was like 13 miles long
Ours is a little off in the Lincoln, but we were getting near 80 mph at the end of the straight, where our car was strongest. Of course, that meant panic braking and hairy sliding through turns 1-2.
Ours is a little off in the Lincoln, but we were getting near 80 mph at the end of the straight, where our car was strongest. Of course, that meant panic braking and hairy sliding through turns 1-2.
our car (#80 firebird) was about even w/ yours. i battled you guys for like 20 laps on sunday and we were about dead even. i think i had to pass you 3 times before i finally made it stick.
seemed faster than 80mph though
I'd say about 4,400 in third gear 
Sorry, I learned a long time ago (the hard way) not to look at the speedo. Come to think of it, our speedo must have been off by 30%, since our tires were about 3 inches smaller in diameter than stock. Boy, did that help pulling out of corners!
My tach is broken, and the speedo is off, but it was registering almost 100 mph. I know the 3.73's are throwing it off, and I don't know what came out of it, but I think they were 3.08's. It WAS a good battle with you guys, but you definately had better handling/power with that Firebird. I held you off as long as I could on Sunday...
The speedo in the Fox said 100, I have serious doubts about its correctness....
A few of the faster cars probably were around the C-mark. Most probably were in the 80s-90s. Speeds off the banked turn were probably 70-ish, so I can imagine some getting close to 100.
I never looked at the speedometer once, but I was usually around 4500 RPM in 3rd gear in the middle of the banked turn, and about 5000 RPM coming off the turn onto the straight. This thread piqued my curiosity, so I ran these numbers through a calculator and given our gear ratios and tire size, that puts us about 60 MPH in the middle of the turn, and 70 MPH at the beginning of the straight.
Since this is a Volvo 240, 70 MPH at the start of the straight extrapolates to about 71 MPH at the end of the straight.
No, actually, I'll say about 80 at the braking point for T1, and we were about in the middle of the pack as far as speed.
I was at the upper end of the tach in 3rd gear at the braking point for turn 1. 6000rpm calculates to about 76mph in the Red Baron Fokker triplane. The few times I looked at the speedo, I found a wildly oscillating needle bouncing between 0 and 50ish mph.
The few times I looked at the speedo, I found a wildly oscillating needle bouncing between 0 and 50ish mph.
Sounds like me looking at the trip odometer.
I went out first, with it at 0. I figured I'd use it as a gauge for how long I'd been out there. Drove for a while, looked down, saw 12. I though I'd been out there longer than that, but convinced myself 12 was possible.
Drove some more, looked down, saw 15. Gotta keep racking up laps. I'll go until it says 20. This proves that my mind wasn't thinking things through. 
Drove some more, looked down, saw 17. Too worn out to get to 20, so I pulled in.
Turns out I was out there for ~150 laps or ~120 miles.
The front straight didn't seem that fast to me...
6000rpm calculates to about 76mph in the Red Baron Fokker triplane.
Well, you guys were WAY faster than us, so I'll go back to my original estimate of 71 MPH in the Volvo Cow.
In the Martini VW, I think we were close to 80 at the end of the straight. Could have been anything from 70-80 but I never looked. Brother said he saw 75 at one point or another but who knows how accurate that thing is.
It said we put in 360 miles though. That seems right to the amount of laps we ended up with.
you definately had better handling/power with that Firebird
power was decent and handling was good on the banked corner so thats where we did all our passing. the infield sections and up on the bank the handling was horrible. no shocks left in the thing and we were hopping all the time. that definitely contributed to our blown rear end
TeamDFL wrote:6000rpm calculates to about 76mph in the Red Baron Fokker triplane.
Well, you guys were WAY faster than us, so I'll go back to my original estimate of 71 MPH in the Volvo Cow.
That speed was rarely achieved. To do that, I had to be on the gas from the middle of the back chicane all the way onto the front straight. There was almost always traffic and our little 4 banger didn't have enough snot to pull itself out of its own way unless it was on cam above 4500rpm.
with only third gear for almost all of Sunday because i spun the car over cones and ripped off the slave cylinder line, we were taching near 4800 rpm near the start finish line, with 275/40-17s and 2.73 gears i calculated we were running somewhere around 90 mph before stomping the brakes and hoping 3400 pounds of amurican steel stopped...
The 24 Hours of Lemons Forums → Our Crappy Race → Stafford top speeds