150+mph at Bonneville in a Neon on space saver Wheels

[Mitsuru]

yes the title is correct.

One of the chaps on the neons forum did it

http://forums.neons.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=412877

The wheels are not "steelies" they are in fact aluminum compact spare rim found in 15" size
hiding under PT cruisers. It was the lightest rim I could think of that can be had for beer money.
The tires are Hoosier drag skinnies 23x4.5/15 in the front and Firestone drag skinnies 24.5x4.5/15
in the back.

And there is something to think about, yes space saver wheels are no good on the roads for emergency
braking or cornering, but there are a few in the UK who get these wheels for their mini dune buggies!
And now they are being used on speed runs on the salt flats.
Do you think that we can get the people who fit over sized rims to their corsas and vw to go for standard
wheels with this info? or do you think that if stupid enough they could go for the space saver and wipe
themselves out on the back roads?

[TerryG]

as narrower wheels have less friction it requires easier to achieve higher speeds. however if you need to accelerate quickly, more rubber is better.
top speed racing is all well and good but 150mph isn't very impressive when you look at the speeds some of the cars there do. If you fitted a pair of turbo chargers to your v6 (after you get it running) I would be surprised if you couldn't top 150 in it. My daily driver can get to 140 in factory trim.

[Mitsuru]

The engine was a turbo 2.0L dohc but the factory ecu limits to 120mph so he went with mega-squirt.
I forgot to check what fuel he used but if it was the limp wristed 85 which they use, then what would
they be doing if they were using what we can get at the pumps?

When the v6 is running again, which if not for the fog would have been this week the damp was
penetrating and I was lucky if I could see the hedge from the window it has been that bad it will not be
turboed as there isn't the space for that kind of kit! You forget once running well on petrol the LPG can
be connected up.

As some people will mess with the wiki pages
if the usa uses 85 octane
and the UK uses 95, 97 petrol and LPG is 101 octane(apparently)
Are we using the same system/unit of measure or is there a difference and theirs is the same as ours?

[rich.]

how long did he take to reach 150 mph??

[tractorman]

More to the point - what towed it to get it up to that speed?

IIRC, 5th Gear did an experiment with space-saver wheels to see how the handling was affected. They ended up with four space savers fitted and the car was unsafe on roads at about 30MPH (certainly a very low speed compared to the speed warning on the wheels). Hmm, that could be an answer for the Corsa brigade - they'd do less damage when they lose control!

[TerryG]

They aren't really space savers. He has put decent tyres on them. I have 145 profiles on the mog which are the same as the space saver in both of my moderns. It is fine at 70 (if a bit noisy).
The long course at Bonneville is 7 miles. so I would assume it took 7 miles to get to that speed.
150 still isn't impressive. even with a 2 litre. Look what Mitsubishi or Subaru do with one. My daily is a 2.0 all be it turbo charged. if i fiddled with the tune i have no doubt i could get it to do the extra 10mph and i wouldn't have to cover the grill in duck tape to do it.
If he had managed over 200 then I would say well done but you can buy a 2nd hand bmw for less than he has spent mucking about with that which would be faster, more comfortable, safer, road legal, etc. More importantly it would do 150 every day and not explode.
Megasquirts can be fun, I know several people who have built them. When you know what you are doing they are easily on par with some much more expensive kit. In this case, the ECU is the most valuable part of the car with the tyres coming in 2nd.

[Mitsuru]

When Terry says the ECU and tyres are the most expensive part of the car he is right, but that
is because this was done on the cheap! And the fact that we are taking about the USA not and
the European Union and Britain means the cheap car and easy to obtain car parts make it a Neon.

Terry most people forget that driving on the salt flats are not like driving on the roads. With the
ground they way it is (yes it floods apparently) it bring the highest speed down a bit. If that same
car was to go onto the VW track which has that long straight then the speed obtained would be
far higher then the 150mph he reached! (top gear did mention it when they did their runs in off
the shelf sports cars)

But the thing that still nags me is the not knowing what fuel used and the comparison what fuel
we get over here, as that too would have a serious effect on the speed!

[JPB]

Paraffin should do the job just fine. Only trouble with that would be that the car could crash, roll several times and still not burst into flames in true USA fashion, which would be an anticlimax.

As an aside; I didn't realise they did a two door one of these, it looks quite nicely proportioned.

[TerryG]

That's true, getting traction on the salt is difficult. It is one of those motorsports where weight can help. If you were to have a look at the speed records set there (convenient list here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonneville_Speedway) he would have been out run by a 1950s Harley Davidson and as there are records there over 600mph, 150mph at a top speed event still isn't very impressive.

[Mitsuru]

91 pump gas was used. It is not really likely I will land speed race the car again- we kind of did it on a lark since it matched up with our endurance racing schedule. Next time I go to the salt I'll likely plan to bring a setup that has a real chance at a record. Still the Neon was good enough to get me past my first 3 licences.

If we really wanted to go faster I would run race gas, dial the boost up 7 lbs or so and put the car on the ground- all could be done in less than an hour's time. That being said I would need to improve the safety gear in the car to actually be allowed to run faster- my tech required me to keep it under 160mph so there was no point in putting more effort into the car out there. I ran into the 150 club and that was the goal.