What kind of top speeds are people seeing on the track? (Page 2 of 3)

Check the website below and run the numbers on your gearing with the shortest final drive available.   You'll likely find that your max speed will never be reached except maybe at Road America.
We ran a 2.73 rear end in the Bobcat last year and after running the numbers through the calculator, with the new T5 we acquired, our theoretical top speed was 179mph.  Needless to say, we are putting in a 3:55 and will still never hit top speed.

http://www.f-body.org/gears/

For most of us - the speedo is an option that hasn't worked in years.  Besides, who wants their rookie driver staring at the speedo so they can tell their friends - instead of staing at the corner workers watching for yellows. 

I put together a quick spreadsheet to calculate speed.  if I made a mistake - please no flaming - just let me know and I'll correct. 

We have a Sentra SE-R and luckily SE-R.net has all of the ratios. 

We hit 6,600 in 4th gear at the end of the back straight at MSR Houston. 

Engine Speed    6600    RPMs
Gear Ratio (4th)    0.975    :1
Final Drive    4.176    :1
Wheel Size    15    in
Width    205    cm
Aspect Ratio    50    %
Tire Diameter    23.0    in
Tire Cirumf    72.4    in
Tire Rotation    1621    RPMs
Tire Speed    117327    In/Min
Car Speed    111.1    MPH

To do the same for your car, create the following spreadsheet in Excel (or Lotus 1-2-3):

Engine Speed    ?    RPMs
Gear Ratio (4th)    ?    :1
Final Drive    ?    :1
Wheel Size    ?    in
Width    ?    cm
Aspect Ratio    ?    %
Tire Diameter    =B5*0.5*2/25.5+B4    in
Tire Cirumf.    =B7*3.14159265359    in
Tire Rotation    =B1/B2/B3    RPMs
Tire Speed    =B8*B9    In/Min
Car Speed    =B10/(5280*12)*60    MPH

Enter the values for your car in the ? fields. 

Viola! 

Top speed of your Lemons special. 

Grover

you must've put nitrous on the car after practice while i was working on the talon cuz it wasn't doing it then

nonsense.  everyone knows that the best chance of winning on laps comes from stuffing as much power as possible into that 25 year old chassis.

Having seen radar-gun results from cars at Nelson that were going "at least 135" (the gun said 95), I think we can assume that Lemons cars don't have accurate speedometers.

I'm going to guess that real-world Lemons Crown Vics and E30s have the power and gearing to get to 130, given a nice open track (which never happens). Given that 95-horsepower Civics have taken the win on laps, I'd say that top speed is about 0.05% as important as reliability.

case in point; the smokey, terrible, utterly bad Plymouth Fury from this weekend's Southern Discomfort got IOE while the totally kick-ass lookin' and much faster Galaxie/Parnelli Jones Nascar knock-off sat on the jackstands and had it's original purchase-price worth of parts-store replacement parts runs while the flag was green. Even the maddeningly slow and unwieldy Stanza wagonthing did better!

So, keep it on the track fellas. it may not be as glamorous as doing a buck-twenty past the flagstand but it pays better dividends!

what is that lonely dot at the 0 MPH?
must be my Integra

We don't have a speedometer, and it will be disappointing if we ever find out how slow we really are...

We got 13th/87 with 55HP and probably rarely got over 70... Whatever 6K RPM in 3rd gear is in a manual 1996 Geo Metro 1.0L car

I don't buy it.  I'd be more convinced if the data was from a single track.  Perhaps other tracks are different, but at CMP the top cars are typically in the top 10% on lap times.  A quick car is not a guarantee of a podium finish, but it is a prerequisite for an overall win at CMP.

I agree it's matured, but that actually makes the field a bit tighter.  I just looked at the data for the last CMP race that someone posted and it's less compelling than the earlier races where there was far more of a spread in lap times.

Of course we're also assuming that fast lap time = fast car, which we all know isn't necessarily true.