well im not normally into racing my sunfire as its my daily driver but i am a big j body enthusest. well my 96 sunfire is a 2.2 auto car and i put a pacesetter header, stock cat, and custom made 2 1/4" catback with a dynomax super turbo muff on it, rk sport upper and lower motor mounts, accel wires and platnum plugs, and a cold air intake. i also pulled all my extra crap out of the car and my spare tire and jack. well i went to the track last night hoping to get a couple runs in but i only managed one before they closed. here is what i got. im not real happy with the results i wanted to see a higher 10.

Reaction .2396
60ft 2.5167
330ft 7.3320
1/8 11.3520
1/8 mph 60.93

what can i do to improve my performance more? i was going to get a rk sport underdrive crank pulley. im not gonna go hog wild on this though i still wanna retain a/c and all my creature comforts because its my daily driver.


1996 Pontiac Sunfire 2 door 2.2 Automatic. 83,000 miles
Custom cold air intake, RK sport upper and lower motor mounts, Accel 300+ thundersport wires, AC rapid fire plugs, Pacesetter header, Factory cat, Custom 2 1/4" catback with cherrybomb turbo muffler..... more mods to come

nobody has any imput?

Judging by you 60ft times, either you are spinning real bad or your not loading up your torque converter.

Are you spinning off the line? If so, what tires are you running and at what pressure? The stock Goodyears are crap for performance(good for mpg and wear resistance, due to hard compound). A softer compound tire, one with a higher traction rating, will help here. With any tire, if your running stock pressure, you will spin easily. Try airing you tires down to about 25psi, see if that helps. Depending upon the tire you could go lower, but as with any street radial tire, too low of a pressure and the tire will cup in the center, causing the tire to loose contact patch area(the amount of tire making contact with the track surface). Tire pressure will need to be adjusted to get the best traction.

Are you bringing the rpms up before launching or just taking your foot off the brake and stepping on the gas? You should be holding your left foot on the brake very firmly, while using your right foot on the gas to bring the rpms up to launch (this is known as brake torquing). Bring the rpms up to the point where just before the car wants to move or the engine will no longer pick up any ,more rpms.If you have a tachometer and a stock torque converter, this should be about 2375-2400 rpm. When the last yellow light comes on, release the brake , by sliding your foot off the peddle quickly and apply more gas, to the point you car accacceleratesithout spinning the tires.

The launch is the most difficult thing to learn, You want to use as much power as possible to launch as quickly as possible, but you don't want to over power your tires and spin them. It takes alot of practice to get the launch just right, the more you can practice, the better your feel for the car and tires, the better you'll launch.

A side note: don't allow thew car to get into wheel hop. This is when the tires grab and release in rapid succession. Stock J-Body suspension is very susceptible to this, due to the stock geometry and soft suspension bushings. It will feel like a rapid and fairly violent shake in the steering wheel and/or the front end suspension and sound like a choppy tire squeal.

lol i wish the car had enough power to spin them off the line. but i did brake torque it to 2000rpm at the line. i tryed to go a bit higher to near 2500rpm but the engine began to bog so i let back up till 2000rpm. i have motegi rt5 17x7's on there with a 215-45-17 bfg g force sport which is a real sticky street tire. i did have them at 40 psi though. theres no over powering these tires though. ive tryed on the street and the car just dont have enough low end power. im gonna go again next thur and try again. i did have quite a delay on my 2nd to 3rd gear shift. i let the trany do it itself and i kinda had to let off slightly because it wont shift at wot.

Take off your 17s and put on some 15s your times will drop

in the same night my old Z24 speed went 15.57 on 17s, and 15.11 on my 15's

The 17" rim is hurting you here. The rim is considerably heavier than the stockers. Try going with the stock steelies if you still have them. If you have (or get) the 15"s try a 205/50-R15, it's about 2" shorter than the stock tire, but will give you an equivalent to the next lower(numerically higher) gear ratio and will be considerably lighter. You should get out of the hole alot quicker, in fact , you'll probably be traction challenged.

BTW, do you have the 3 speed (TH125C/3T40) or the 4 speed (4T40E)?

i have the th125 3 speed auto. i was actually just at the junkyard today and i seen a couple cavaliers with the 14" steelies on them. i was considering getting a set and putting the regular 195-70-14's on them for the track. i also just seen the yank makes a 3000rpm stall converter for our cars. i seen it on the mantapart.com website

With the 14" steelies try a 205/60R-14. This would give you a shorter tire for an equivalent lower gear ratio (stock is usually 3.18:1, equivalent would be 3.34:1, a modest improvement). For more info on the TH125C, read Stock Torque Converters, 3 Speed Gears and more and 3 speed auto, finally done and finally installed (this last one the pics are no longer available, but the info is still good). As for the TC, PM me for more info (better than Mantapuke).

well im kinda running out of time to do stuff before track time this week, but tommorow i am going to the junkyard and get 4 14" steelies and im going to run a 185/65/14 tire which is a 23.3" tall tire about 1" shorter than my current 215/45/17 tires. hopefully that and just a couple more passes will get me a 11.1-11.2 in the 1/8 does that seem like a reasonable gain?