As a new Lightning owner, I have been reading through this message board and it seems like the only thing on the road (stock) that can take an L 0-60 are Vettes, Syclones, GN's and some high $$$ exotics. Anything else I should be watching out for???

 

Blue Lights

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Red 99

 

Red Lights

The trucks will run with alot and overpower even more vechiles out there. Its hard to find them but there are ALOT out there just choose your race wisely, smarter yet keep it at the track!

 

No one on this board seems to like them very much, but a lot of rice rockets, especially turbo'd ones will give us fits, 0-60, 1/4 mile, top end and especially in the twisties.

I know there are a lot of sticker weenies on the road, but also a lot of good serious tuners/racers who have put together some really quick machinery on a fairly low budget. An early '90s Honda or Toyota coupe can be had pretty cheap and upgraded without spending a fortune. The Mitsu turbos are also extremely quick when upgraded properly.

In other words, don't rule them out and don't judge the book by it's cover. Might get spanked by a ricer.

Sorry as all get out, I just re-read your post and you said stock. So, you have to disregard part of what I said. On the other hand, ain't too many stock Bolts out there either!
Bill

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99.5 Lightning
Build #247
PSP Chip/Filter
Bassani full system
White/normal options
Tamiya 1/10 scale Bolt
Several old trucks/cars
Thunder & Lightning
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E-mail MOSTOYSINC@AOL.com
Kennesaw, Ga. (Atlanta)

[This message has been edited by Bill Murray (edited 07-30-2000).]

 

iv'e smoked all c5s street or strip so far with just a chip and filter. on street from light 3 to 4 lenghts in 8th.stock vettes with average drivers can't compete with L 0 to 60. ran in to stock typhoon complete with pee on ford sticker and i could not get him to race he knew i was not stock. also beat z28 and ss both ls1 motors at strip. so even a stock L should hold it's own on the street from a stop.the z28 kill was at cyberbrawl with plenty of observers from all around u.s.[for any skeptics out there]later.

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00 black team swanson

[This message has been edited by ib fast (edited 07-30-2000).]

[This message has been edited by ib fast (edited 07-30-2000).]

 

ib fast, i guess you just scared the pee out of that twister. You should have told him that little sticker has got to be worth a couple of tenths!!

 

Dont know about the rest of the country... but over here on the left coast the local tracks are FULL of 11 and 12 second Supra's, RX-7's, etc. which look 100% stock.

BTW, the more stickers they have, the slower they are... its the ones that look totally stock that you need to worry about :-)

-Dreamin
'00 L

 

alphadoggy and others:

I agree street racing is not a good idea, but with the nearest strip a 120 mile round trip, I admit I fall prey to my basest desires once in a while. Even then, I pick a time/place/space where no-one is really endangered. At age 60, I not only want to continue to live myself but don't want to endanger anyone else. Been there done that but with no casualties other than some untidy underwear some 40 years ago.

As to the Rice Rockets, it is kind of interesting to me as they are or were essentially designed as economical, environmentally correct vehicles. That they had to provide some performance in certain variants for marketing reasons is understandable, but it goes beyond that. Almost any of their vehicles, and I exclude the obvious Turbo and other out and out performance variants, can be tuned to do a heck of a lot with not a whole lot of cash outlay.

As a very loyal Lightning owner, I have the utmost respect for Ford for putting such a vehicle on the road, especially as a truck.

On the other hand, I wonder what we could have ended up with if engineers from Honda/Subaru/Mitsubishi and a few others had taken a hand in developing the Lightning motor.

As a side note to this observation, I leased a 96 Taurus SHO with the Yamaha top end/Ford bottom end sedan (V8 with auto) and was truly impressed. I did not know at the time anything about chips/filters and the like. Had I had that info, I would probably still have the car as the only things I did not like about it were the same things we bitch about with the Lightning such as soft shifts, ignition/fuel retard, rpm limiters and so forth.

Thanks to this board, I have resolved all of those problems on my Bolt.

Still, I wonder what an SHO Bolt might have been like as opposed to an SVT Bolt.

Please be kind!!!!

Bill

 

There are many vehicles out there that can eat your lunch. Check out http://popularmechanics.com/popmech/...07AUCTBM.html/ The L. is a truck, for cryin' out loud, and as such it gives away weight and aerodynamics to most competition. On the other hand, it has tons of low end grunt and seems to hook up real well without a lot of drama. With a few mods (chip, MAF, gears) you should be able to annihilate all but the quickest at the stop light G.P. But it is with great skepticism that I read some of these tales about Lightnings snuffing L1s, etc., in roll-ons from 80 mph, the aerodynamic disadvantage is too great. And as Bill points out you are not going to beat a Boxster S or S2000 on Hwy. 9. So choose your venue carefully, and you should do OK against all but a few. And I agree with burninout, its better to take it to the strip. You'll get more runs in a day than you would in a month of street racing and you don't have to worry about the blue lights.




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I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.

'84 Alan Record Carbonio, Aerospoke wheels, Campy brakes.
'00 SVT Lightning, silver, G-tech Pro, JBA headers, cam bolts, 4.10 gears
(soon, Swanson's chip and MAF, Cal-tracs)
2001 Kevlacat 2400, twin 115 Evinrude FICHT, Raytheon VHF, Radar, and Sounder/DGPS chartplotter

gmvye@pacbell.net

 

My friend has a '93 RX-7 R1 that'll take me if he drives it right. It runs 12.8's at the 1/4mi with the bit of work he did to it. Its not stock, but he's still paid less for then I my L. I can still burnout better then he can though.

I also almost one got toasted by some modded up VR6 VW...Corrado or GTI or something, dunno, all the logo's were removed. Thing moved quick.

Daniel

 

I agree with the other posts that "choice of venue" is key when you're talking about street racing. Fortunately, most street racing action I've found involves either the stoplight GP or a highway roll-on starting at some reasonable speed. We're blessed that the Lightning is a terror at either. On the other hand, I wouldn't want to get into a top-speed shootout or a roll-on at anything above 80 mph or so. The "school bus" aerodynamics make for some sluggish acceleration at those speeds. I ran it up to 125 mph about a month ago on a slight incline and it took forever to get from 105 to 125.

In the stoplight mode, I have to think that the Lightning is all but unbeatable. This Saturday night at Edgewater dragway in TERRIBLE air (85 degrees and 100% humidity) I was cutting low 2.1xx 60-foot times all night. I stomped everything I ran against out to the 330-foot mark except for a modded F-body that ran a tenth quicker at that point. This included some fierce hardware such as a modded Grand National and my brother-in-law's heavily built 1993 Cobra.

Beyond the eighth-mile mark, both the GN and the Cobra drove around me (Cobra 0.22 and the GN 0.15 sec quicker in the quarter). The F-body got me by almost 0.6 seconds, and the two 5.0 mustangs I ran were mere appetizers for the Lightning (by 0.45 and 0.67 seconds). The lesson here is that in longer races, some guys might get around you. Stoplight drags are usually pretty short, and as such you're going to be laying the smack down reliably.

My brother-in law later pointed out (correctly) that the GN was running on brand-new Wal-Mart WHITEWALL all-season radials, but that's another story. I stand by my original claim that I flogged him out to the 330 mark.

On the subject of "sleeper" ricers and such, there was a very plain, unassuming, slow-looking blue Plymouth laser (Talon/Eclipse) that was running mid 12's all night and a very ratty VW Scirocco that ran a single mid-13 pass, all on a night where not one in five F-bodies could break into the 13's.

Also appreciate that you are, for all practical purposes, the fastest auto-trannied vehicle on the road. This means that you can unload max-performance launches all day without so much as a whimper from the drivetrain. The VERY few vehicles that can take you in a stoplight situation are all manuals, and require exceptional driver skill and brutal clutch/gearbox abuse to put you away. They might get at the light once, but wait until the next block.

Advantage Lightning.

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Silver Y2K Lightning
Bone Stock w/ Duraliner, Ford Hitch Cover

Silver (matching) Y2K ML320 Benz
Burl (ML430) Shift ****

Beater 1992 Grand Prix
Commuter Mule

 

Silver:

Well thought out post. I agree too, that we tend to forget that we have the aerodynamics of the Empire State Building and an automatic to boot. The automatic is a plus in my opinion as well as yours as it lends consistency to the whole launch process with the amount of sheer torque we have at relatively low revs.

Even on F1's, if you practice enough, you can get a pretty decent launch although the 60' times may suffer a bit because you need to take it a little easy. The next 270 feet can be pretty nice if you avoid excess wheelspin too.

Thanks for the input.

Bill