Anyone want to share some techniques/tips/pointers on the subject?

Essentially what I have been doing so far to get the car going out of the hole:
a) Left foot, clutch pedal down all the way. Hold.
b) Right foot, square on the throttle, rev up to 2800-3200rpm. Hold.
c) Begin to raise clutch pedal.
d) When clutch reaches engagement point and car just starts to move. Slip clutch pedal out faster while at the same time begin to feed the car throttle.
e) Ideally, if clutch comes out fast enough and throttle goes down quick enough in a single smooth movement. The car will slightly peel out while at the same time revs do not drop much if at all below the point they were held @ in step a.

Best improvement so far for me has been in the gearing and also raising the revs up. With stock gearing and 2200-2800rpm launches the car never got better than a 2.2 with TC enabled, 2.3 without. Gearing and a higher rev launch has resulted in about 2 tenths on average faster launches.

I have been reading some articles (google) about launching manual cars and a couple of them had me scratching my head. Some people are using their parking brakes while reving up and getting the clutch right to the point of engagement. They then mash the gas and slip the clutch out the rest of the way, while releasing the brake, when they launch. This doesn't seem to be very common from what I've read around here so far but I thought I would mention it.

Yes I realize that better launches go hand in hand with better tires and the technique to get the car going on drag tires, while similar, has some key differences over trying to get going with street tires.

Thoughts/comments/opinions? I'm also interested in hearing what people are doing with drag tires on the car and what has worked best for them there as well.



PS: Again mods sorry if this should've been under bench. It seemed like a tossup to me so I put it here first. Move if appropriate. Please.

 

Sounds like you have good technique to me.

 

"Best improvement so far for me has been in the gearing and also raising the revs up. With stock gearing and 2200-2800rpm launches the car never got better than a 2.2 with TC enabled, 2.3 without. Gearing and a higher rev launch has resulted in about 2 tenths on average faster launches."

Are you talking about 60ft? you should aim for a 2.0, I've hit a couple of 1.9 and I know a couple of people on here that hit 1.89 60ft with a bone stock S197 GT. I rev up anywhere between 23-3200 rpm and I let go of the clutch fast intill it catches(where the car starts to move), once that happens, I "feather" the clutch. My idea of feathering is the following

* Release the clutch and then hold the clutch for a second @ the catching point(where the car starts to move)

* Longer I hold the clutch at its catching point, more I'm "feathering" and burning it up a little

* I don't hold/feather for to long, It really is only a split second then I release the clutch competently and floor it!

Side Notes:
* 65,000 on my stock clutch
* track prep can make a difference with traction
* 4.10 gears + eaton posi= easy 1.9 60ft on my street tires

 

My technique:
Rev to 2300-2500, drop the clutch and floor it. Worked pretty well for me.

 

5000-5500rpms clutch right about the half way mark up right before it starts grabbing, pretty much drop the clutch, just releasing it about as fast as you can, but a bit slower, not exactly side stepping the clutch, mashing the throttle at the same time.


this is a video of me doing just this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IshKIvwDD_s



of course without the right drag radials and suspension mods, your just going to create smoke and not go anywhere.

 

You actually found a way to weasel that video into another thread.

 

lol, hey, its a good way to SHOW how its done instead of text.

its relative. XD

 

I get the best launches when I do it just like the OP does it. My best ever though was a 1.9X in my LT1 though, on DR's. But, that was with the stock gears, and loooooooong first gear.

 

does that still apply for a car that runs in the 14s? we put down quite a bit less power up here with a 4500-6500 DA. (3800' elevation)

 

I do the parking brake thing too. You can hear it ding near the beginning of the vid I posted. I kind of have to use it though. My car starts to roll if I don't. Your technique looks solid, but I would raise the RPMs up considerably. I leave at 4500 to 5k RPM. Here's my vid of the results, skip to about 35-45 seconds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Sz83-msC6M