On Friday a bunch of friends went to run our cars at the drag strip. There were a wide variety of cars from big-turbo'd Mazdaspeed 3's, to Mustangs (5.0 n/a and supercharged) and some purpose-built strip machines.

The temperature was a very-humid 85* by the time we started running at 8:30 pm, and slowly cooled, but it was still very warm. The track is Lonestar Raceway in Sealy Texas, and it literally shares a driveway with Hennessey Motorsports right next door.

I only was able to do 4 runs before I had to head home, so I don't feel I got the most out of the car though I was (on the final run) able to figure out how to best launch the car by the last run. Considering the heat, my inexperience with launching this car, and the fact that I was running with 3/4 tank of gas I think these numbers are decent. With some practice and doing my runs with less gas in the tank, I'm certain I can get the number down to the low 12's.

 

Not bad! Yeah I bet you can definitely drop that 60' down and it will make a big difference. What did you find was the best method for launching? I have seen a few posts here on it but I am curious what got your best results.

 

Curious about launching myself. Any info would be greatly appreciated.

And your numbers look very good for a warm night with little experience. Any mods?

 

Nice numbers!

 

Best launch I've found:
DSC OFF completely (Apparently Jaguar is a fan of Spinal Tap because you have to hold the DSC button for 11 seconds to completely disable DSC... not 10 seconds... 11!)
Sport Mode Automatic (surprisingly, I found I got faster times letting the ECU do the shifting)
Stage to the 2nd light
Left foot hard on brake
Apply 1/3 throttle as other car stages 2nd light to lock up to torque converter
Wait for the tree
Release brake on the last yellow light and apply firm progressive throttle in 1st gear (to about 3/4 WOT) to avoid wheelspin. Don't floor it yet. If I matted the throttle I just got wheelspin and slower times, so smooth application to 3/4 throttle through 1st seemed about right.
As car shifts into 2nd, your foot should be flat on the floor.
Enjoy the blur of scenery for the next ~12 seconds.
Laugh at your humiliated opponent, but feel somewhat empty because of how easy it was.

 

Just the K&N Drop in so far.

 

I've got a pulley and tune as well. Will get to the strip some time this summer and see what it will really do. Hoping for very low 12's at 118-120 bit I hear that Fontana runs slow because of a slight upslope.

I messed around against my buddy's 08 GT500 with an intake and tune (532rwhp/516rwtq) and he couldn't pull on me out to a half mile. It was the same feeling...soooo easy for how fast it is. Then I drove his car and the road was a bit bumpy and it scared the crap out of me past 115-120. Got back in mine and did 140 because it was so smooth in comparison.

 

I ran my friend's 2012 Mustang 5.0, he has an intake, throttle body, intake manifold, headers, exhaust, and a tune on 93, he Dynoed at 473 WHP (I think) on a DynoJet (not a loaded dyno) and ran a 12.4 the same night as me, but just hit the sweet spot on everything to get it. Usually he's running 12.5's... the same as I ran half-asleep. I want to put mine on a dyno to get a baseline. I'm afraid to use my friend's dyno though... it's a heartbreaker Dyno Dynamics dyno. They're more conservative than a Mustang dyno. Great for load-based tuning... bad for measuring your *****.

Next time as you pull on him yell out the window, "Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?" Added points if you have Vivaldi on the stereo.

 

I'll go with Handel since he's English! As far as dyno runs go, use your buddy's dyno. All that a dyno run is good for is measuring YOUR gains from your car at that location. My number is from a Dynojet and what I wanted is to know is how much the mods gained me. I might redo my dyno at some point though. The day I got my final dyno run, with the tune and pulley, the car was hot from driving to the dyno. I've recently learned that my supercharger coolant pump is not working properly which might explain my power gain wasn't what I was expecting. I noticed my AFR was much richer with the pulley and tune than just the tune and the power gain really wasn't there. With the reduced cooling on a warm engine, it finally makes sense why the AFR changed and power didn't...fuel dump.

 

I presume these are tuned pig-rich from the factory and that a good safe tune on 93 would free up a lot of usable power. I'm coming out of the import tuner scene where most manufacturers (Mazda, Subaru, Mitsubishi) assume that Americans are idiots and can't tell the difference between 87 and 93 octane and tune them very rich to prevent knock.

Who did your tune? There is a local Houston shop (Eurocharged.com) that does a pulley/tune package that I'm considering.

 

I went with a company local to me called Jailbreak Tuning. They do a lot of Porsche and BMW tunes. Mine was a completely custom dyno tune. If you do a search for "Jailbreak Tuning" you should find my post. If not, let me know.

Put up all dyno graphs and power charts for viewing. If you review them you'll notice the AFR was best with the tune and no pulley. Couldn't figure out for the life of me why it went back to stock with the tune and pulley. After I realized the supercharger cooler wasn't working it finally made sense. Would hear some pinging when it got hot but it wasn't consistent and no codes were ever thrown. I had mine done with 91 octane in mind (CA) and a good safety margin. They did the tune run before the car got heat soaked, so it looks really good compared to the tune and pulley run.

I thought about Eurocharged and almost pulled the trigger (had it ordered and canceled before it shipped). Saw some things from them that didn't inspire confidence, so I looked for something that did. Others have been fine with Eurocharged, but I know how much an engine is for one of these and didn't want to suffer that fate. Jailbreak came highly rated from a number of nationally known Porsche and BMW shops, so I knew I'd be ok.

 

Hi Guys
thanks for posting this. I have been meaning to post some of my times for a while now but just haven't grabbed the time slips out of the glove box! I have an '11 XF SC that is a blast to take to the track. Guys here in MD think I'm nuts for bringing it until they see the times.
Anyway you can see my best time was a 12.63 @ 111MPH.
Conditions were truly optimal that day though -- it was a nice sunny day w/ a little overcast. 70 degrees and low humidity. So I think that is why I got such good times.
Launch:
First run of the day was the 12.66. Literally went thru tech and rolled up to the line put it in Dynamic and Sport Mode. Had Trac DSC on. Staged at about 2500 RPM and mashed the gas! Traction control did it's thing and you see the results! As the day went on and it got a little hotter, I had to come out a little slower as I had a ton of wheel hop. Like aliensporez suggested -- 3/4 throttle till it hooked. That's the 12.75 posted

Looking at the #'s the SC seems to loose to the R's after the 1/8th mile mark.

 

When racing my buddy's 11 XF SC, we would stay pretty even until the top of second and then I'd pull away. Part of the problem is traction/traction control. Now that I have more power with pulley and tune, the DSC light comes in a lot more (and I'm in Trac-DSC) and the power gets limited a lot more until the top of second. Then I just haul *** :-)