[murphster]

Yup, congratulations Pauly.

It had been over two years since I had a stock turbo in the clone. The car had been running well on the 44 so I figured it would do pretty well. As mentioned by Paul before, the stock turbo was put on it almost by chance since the 44 has a little wobble in it. I set the boost to 22 and really the only adjutments I made were to timing after pulling all the fuel out of my chip. A 12.29 on the first pass was pretty good with a 1.68 60ft. Unfortunately Paul made his first test and tune pass two cars in front of me and I saw his 12.14 and knew what it meant. All I needed was a 12.23 to beat him. My second pass yielded a 12.32 with a 1.67 60ft. In the third pass I went 12.42 after I went for broke on the launch. I spun like crazy but still got a 1.81. A decent 1.6x 60ft would have got me close. I was shooting for a low 1.6 or high 1.5 60ft. With the stock sway bars it may be pushing it. Slicks would probably help.

I guess the stock turbo challenge didn't generate the interest I was hoping for, but we did learn a few things. It doesn't seem like the heads or cam helped the ET much, if at all. The stock turbo doesn't need the high rpm or extra flow. Advantage from a big intercooler still remains to be seen. Paul didn't really push the boost high enough to see if it would help. He did run better than when he had the dutt neck on it, but that may be more to tune than the intercooler. A back to back comparison would probably show on a low 12 sec car if there is any advantage. An intercooler with a very low pressure drop would likely have the best shot.

Paul had a best of 109 mph and my best was 108 mph in the clone. My GN went 110 mph. All were at similar boosts with Pauls being the lightest car, the clone being the heaviest and the GN in the middle. All were within 200lbs of each other. The biggest contributor to mph may be the converter though. The mph directly parallels with the converter size. The GN had a 12" converter, Paul a 10.5", and the clone a 9.5".

Weight reduction is probably one of the bigger factors in obtaining a good ET with the stock turbo. My GN gained almost 4 tenths ET with 2psi boost and a 200lb weight reduction. I could probably get my clone down to high 5600s weight with a couple weigh reduction tricks and by being smart and running only a 1.2 tank of gas or so.

A good 60ft is definitely key to getting a good ET with the stock turbo. All of the good runs by everyone had at least a 1.6x 60ft. The main thing in common with all of the cars were Mickey Thompson drag radials. Pauls car had the most suspension work and managed a 1.64 60ft while my GN has the least suspension work and got a 1.58 60ft. There are some features in the chip the GN has in it that I will be testing in my clone soon to see if that is one of the reasons the GN 60ft'd so well. While keeping the stock front in rear sway bars in both the GN and my clone, another thing both had in common was that all of the bushings in the rear control arms were upgraded to Energy Suspension bushings. This included the lower and upper controls arms plus the ears on the rear end.

I'm not sure yet if Paul and I will continue to shoot for 11s on a stock turbo. With the cooler air coming up, it might be a good time to try. With a little less weight and a better 60ft my clone should be close.

I've now run good times on the stock turbo in all three of my cars:
White T:..12.31@107.5, 1.67 60ft
Clone:.....12.29@107.4, 1.68 60ft
GN:.........11.97@108.0, 1.58 60ft

Once again, congrats Paul and thanks for all of your help.