Roman

I dont see how it's any more likely to happen than before though? I'm still using the clutch, just not letting off the gas. I dont think I've ever accidentally shifted into 1st going for 3rd. I think the absolutely chooched synchros wouldnt allow that anyway haha. Ahh well, good thing that motors are cheap

Yes correct, the trigger for downsift needs foot on brake and clutch at the same time. (And throttle less than 20%, but I'm imagining its hard to have 20% throttle with no foot on it) So yeah I got this all setup this morning for flat shift (havent configured the blip yet) So the clutch engagement point is at about 30% of travel (from the floor) But doing some testing I need the engagement point for the fuel/ignition cut to be more like 70% to stop the motor from either bogging or revving too soon. However its absolutely savage when it's setup right! Previously the 2nd>3rd shift was about 450ms to get back to full throttle from first lift. Now it's more like 210ms. With flat shift: 1st to 2nd takes around 310ms, 2nd to 3rd is around 210ms, 3rd to 4th is around 190ms All fairly consistently around those times. RIP shift forks hahaha.

Rear suspension. I removed the Ohlins rear shocks, which both seemed stuffed. So I thought I may as well pull one apart and see what's going on. I found that the spring steel shims on the pistons, which need to flex out of the way to let oil through to control rate of dampening. These were just snapped off. Hence not doing anything! Some of the seals were a bit so-so, but the broken shim stack was definitely the main issue. It's supposed to have a circular shim that covers that big oil port thing. So I've been doing some investigation and it looks like the seals and shims are all orderable, if I measure them up. However... A friend of mine (Thanks Adam!) bought a fairly modified Vitz RS for some gravel autocross stuff, and the low suspension it came with wasnt helpful. So I swapped him some factory suspension and the Vitz RS front bumper I previously hoarded, in exchange for the rear of the HKS setup. These have an adjustable platform and what looks like a stiffer spring. Total weight difference is about 1kg extra per side. Not too bad seeing how I can now set the rear height to suit better for drags (whatever that means for a FWD...) I gave it all a cleanup and made sure the threads were clear then fitted it all up. Looks a bit better with the rear lower now, and no rake. In other news, I figure it might be handy to setup flat shifting for the drags. In order to do this you need a clutch switch. This means I can have throttle blip on downshift with e-throttle as well. Cool! I had a clutch switch fitted to the endstop of the pedal in my Carina, but it was pretty useless. As you need to have the switch exactly on the clutch biting point, not the at end of travel which is where I had it mounted. Since it was fairly useless I never played around with the related features all that much. So this time around, different plan. I've got an accelerator pedal sensor from a 350Z. These have a little lever thing on them, so its fairly easy to retrofit to something else. It looks like the easiest spot to try fit it, will be pushing against the clutch fork rather than the pedal in the cabin. So this will obviously output a variable voltage based on clutch position, rather than being an on/off switch. This idea has some pros and cons compared to a simple switch. The main problem is that my ECU can recognize a clutch - only as a switch. So I need to get a bit creative to get it to turn it into an on/off signal. Basically I need to wire an ECU output directly to an ECU input which is a bit silly. So it's a bit of a bodge to work around an older ECU. Luckily I've got lots of IO to spare so it's not a problem. The main benefit of this setup is that I can adjust the switch point in software, rather than having to mechanically adjust the physical position of a switch. It also means that I can potentially set multiple conditions for turning the switch on or off. I can make it so a really light touch of the clutch will disengage cruise control, but then you need to reach the bite point for flat shifting or downshift throttle blip. It'll take a bit of experimenting to get it working right. But it should be fun. Throttle blip downshift will be pretty cool, and a bit of assistance for my absolutely flogged out synchros in this box haha. It looks like the weather might be a bit sketchy by this weekend, but if it's looking fine I'll head to Nightspeed again this coming Friday. Hopefully with flat shift working nicely by then, and see if having functional rear suspension helps the launches at all.

With a margin of error of +- 500 pages Speaking of barrying, The full results from nightspeed came out. So although I got eliminated in the first round by some poor tactical judgement (lining up against the fast wagon straight away) I was third fastest in class so that's cool. There were 163 cars in total, and my car is the median haha. There were 81 cars faster than mine, and 81 slower. Looking at Trap speeds vs quarter mile times and you can see what's needed to achieve a particular quarter mile time. My trap speed is very low for the time that I'm doing, compared to other cars doing the same time. Which suggests I'm getting off the line quite well and I'm likely pretty close to max potential. The only car faster than mine that did a sub 100mph Trap speed was an A45 AMG Mercedes, which ran a 12.927. Must have had an epic launch! Or maybe hit the brakes early. But no 60ft data included so not sure. However you can see that there are cars hovering just under/over the 100mph mark which are doing way slower quarter mile times. So they'd have heaps more potential with better suspension/tyres rather than more power. The slowest car with a 100+ mph trap speed was a Mirage that ran 103mph over the line, but ran a 15.3 Must have had a really horrible launch! It's got the trap speed to easily do a low 13 or a high 12 instead. EDIT: I just noticed the other sub 100mph dot. This is funny, you're not allowed to run quicker than 11.0 at Nightspeed without getting in trouble. This was a GTR skyline that ran a 10.961, with a trap speed of 97mph hahaha. So obviously absolutely hauling arse off the line, then probably hitting the picks half way down the track to avoid doing faster than an 11.

Awesome result! Well done.

Nah that's way too much effort. Like I could replace 200 bolts, or do one thing like remove the ABS pump for same amount of weight haha. Ultimately though I still want to go do some trackdays in this, and keep it road going. Not super specialize as a drag car. But there will probably be another 40 pages worth of barrying going on.

End of month. Exhaust. Gonna happen!

True, good point haha.

This has a 4kg flywheel so its not bad. Yeah at full rpm full steam, this shifts quite well, I think the rpm drops quite quick so the synchros dont get too much of a hard time. At low load/rpm driving though this gearbox is absolutely chooched haha. Will replace the synchros one day. Flat shift just helps minimize the variables involved in upshifting I guess. And yes, unfortunately I do need that last shift over the line.... Hmmm maybe I could have strung it out for another 100rpm or so though and held it in third though. Still getting used to that shift light setup, my LED bars stopped working for some reason and I couldnt find the spares. Having the LED bars that approach the center was incredible for getting shift times accurate. Much better than the light. So I'll set that back up.

Yeah if I add a clutch switch then i can setup flat shifting. So ignition cut and no foot off the gas either. just an ignition cut to kill torque momentarily. Some of the guys there were saying this is beneficial on an itb setup to keep the airspeed up by keeping throttles open. But is that actually a real thing, or do they just have a shitty tune at part throttle/transient? Surely airspeed resumes almost instantly when youre at high rpm.

What an idiot, he could have probably made it that light just by swapping a 1NZ in

It's interesting to see the difference it makes, being less of a weiner with launch rpm. On my fastest run, launched at 7500 and then rpm dropped to about 6300 at minimum. (pink line) The last time I was launching at 4500ish, and engine speed dropped to 2300 haha. This probably wasnt my fastest last run, but yeah really need to keep that rpm up and allow for that it's going to bog a bit. These tyres are more happy to just keep spinning for a bit than bogging.

Mate I am only too happy to post extra graphs in this thread

Yeah but I cant even take a photo of it, because the printing on it is super shit Type it out for you though. In brackets next to it, is my PB from last time R/T: .531 (.411) 60: 2.096 (2.182) 330': 5.689 (blank) 1/8: 8.682 (8.928) MPH: 81.12 (80.17) 1000': 11.276 (11.583) 1/4: 13.496 (13.832) MPH: 99.51 (99.65) I thought my 60ft was heaps better being "2.0" but 2.096 is pretty damn close to a 2.1 haha Only 0.086 seconds better! So maybe it is/was actually a power improvement, or the smaller tyre diameter helping out rather than an epic launch. It looks like most of the gains were actually in the 1/8th mile region

Yeah they are a separate shock and spring, I believe they are rebuildable shocks. Some people have fitted just regular coilover springs in the back of echo/vitz and it seats well enough both ends. So I might try find one at the right height with a stiff rate.

Still getting lots of wheel spin off the line, so a lower launch rpm might be beneficial. However it's amazing compared to street tyres how these just hook up and go anyway!

Yeah it is. They're pretty shot.

Ahh not really necessary for an NA motor. I've been watching one of the videos of the launch, and I can see my rear suspension is punishing me a bit. The rear shocks are completely flogged, if I push the car down it bounces about 3 times before coming still. So it's squatting heaps and unloading the front. So maybe some 60ft improvements with some stiffer / solid rear

Yeah smaller tyres. Ive been thinking maybe drill a hole in the casing and remote mount the capacitor. So keep it away from vibrations and also make it easier to swap haha. Dunno yet

Nah its still standard. So go a bit quicker yet maybe.

Last night was wild! I've had this on my mind all week but made sure everything was going to be 100% and didnt forget anything etc. So I leave super early so I could get through scruitineering early, and get some runs early. I stop in at morrinsville on the way to get some food. Start the car back up - and my electric waterpump isnt working! Fucks sake! So I checked over everything and nothing obvious causing the issue. Was pretty disheartened and so I messaged @MopedNZ and @GuyWithAviators to say that I probably wont be able to make it. As they were coming from Tauranga to see it. They insisted that at the least they'd meet me where I was. The previous times the pump has failed, it's been that it just wont hot restart. Because the big starter capacitor cracks or something. So sure enough, once it cooled down enough it started again. This gave me the confidence to take a gamble on that it'll be the same issue, and I'll be able to get there and back home so long as I just let it cool if needed. So, yeah! Second run of the night. 13.49 @ 99.5mph and 2.09 60ft. It was awesome! I experimented with some other launch settings and tyre pressures, my "bad" runs were generally around 13.7. Hard not to be happy with that. I was eliminated on the first racing round by a real quick rotary, but I was real happy to get 4 runs in. This time there were heeeaaaappppsss of people coming over to see what's in the engine bay, or yarns about it. One young lady asked me if I'd sell it to her. Was lots of fun, and a real cool atmosphere at nightspeed again. I rounded out the evening by cruise control smug facing back home in luxury. A++ would drag race an Echo again Big thanks to Andrew and Cullam for coming along and helping / support

They all spin the same direction.

Easy to sort anyway, just chopped a bit off a VSV or something from the 4AGE manifold. Wont be super great from just a single runner, but good enough for the moment

Yeah it's not that hard to get a vac signal, the last setup just had a line coming off two of the throttles. It didnt feel quite as good as what you get from a plenum though. For the drags it doesnt matter there's heaps of area to slow down when you're only reaching 100mph or so.