A-Team rides again

6-25-06 at US131 in Martin, MI

I took the van to the strip for the club challenge. Due to last minute notice I was the only td'er representing against a crowd of rice burners and the manditory f-body gm cars.

It was a good day for the van since nothing broke except for a couple intercooler hoses. For some reason they must have not liked the spike to 30psi. After that mishap i decided to turn the boost down to a more sane 16psi and double and triple clamped my vacuum lines to the 3 stage boost controller.

With some crappy street tires i was pulling some shameful 60ft times. Anywhere from 2.4-2.8. Even with those i was still getting 1/4 times from 14.7-15.4. I'm sure some of that had to do with the fact i just converted the van over to a 5speed and it was taking me a little bit to get used to launching it.

Now that i had a few runs under my belt i felt good about tossing on the slicks and really trying to break something on the van. Boost was still at the lower setting of 15-16 when i get my first good run. Sitting next to me in the staging lanes is a silver STI with 2 yuppie F.I.P.'s in the car blasting techno. They tossed ice on the intercooler and were doing some other tricks to eek out every last bit of power from the subie. Meanwhile i'm just moving along trying to answer all the questions every body is asking me about the van and dont get a chance to bump up the boost.

We line up and i heat the slicks a bit and get ready. Lights begin to drop and i'm off with a .5xx reaction time, look over and subie is behind me. I quick grab second and subie is still back there. Around 300 ft. he finally shows up and starts getting ahead of me. By the end of the 1/4 subie was only 2-3 car lenghts ahead of me. I grab my slip and see a 14.1x at 97.xx mph to his 13.3. Then looking at his reaction time i see he was sleeping at the tree 1.2

Granted he is almost a full second faster than me but the better reaction time made it a heck of alot closer that it should have been. When the both of us returned to the pits the guys car club started messing with the guy and making fun of him almost losing to my van. I also got lot of praise from the rice patty crowd and now none of them want to race me.

Next time up i'm lined up against a 4th gen firechicken. As we are waiting i'm trying to shoot the breeze with the guy and ask him if i have a chance. THe guy said "yeah you'd smoke me i've heard all about this van" come to find out his was a v6 with spray so i probably would have beaten him if the rain hadn't made it presence known.

It sucks cause i turned the boost back up to 20-21 and was really hoping for that elusive 13.99. Oh well next time. Here is a link to a pic of the van on the strips website.

http://www.us131motorsportspark.com/...d=15&pg_id=259

AWESOME! You are getting close to a 100 MPH trap. That beast will be in the 13s soon. You need to stop blowing up IC hoses though.

I sure hope i'm done cause i've replaced all the weak link ones now. worst case i'll splurge and get the kit from racing-solutions.

The A-Team van rocks!

I brought up the whole page of pictures and it looks so funny seeing that van down in the bottom left corner.. thats awesome!

Good job representing the TD community. That racing solutions kit is great. I got the 2.5" kit and even had a few left over.

Good stuff.