Acceleration:

Jon completed a pair of acceleration runs on his ES300. Since the runs were clean and gave clear power curves, and the fact that Jon is only slightly more likely to modify his engine than the Pope is likely to turn to Buddhism, we figured the two runs were enough. :)

Jon's first run was pretty relaxed, with a 17.2 second quarter-mile at 81mph. He attempted a brake-torque launch but crept a bit so it wasn't a very fast launch. His second run was faster, with a 16.8 second quarter-mile at 84mph. This is a solid run since the published times on his year ES300 is usually around a 16.6 second quarter mile, and obviously that was when the cars were new!

However, my butt dyno clearly felt Jon lift the throttle on both acceleration runs! I asked him, "Do you have it floored?" His response was something along the lines of: "Yeah. Well, most of the time." The second throttle lift was similarly detected, questioned, and corrected with less of an impact. Still, you have to give Jon credit for hanging in there since he plans to keep his Lexus until it hits the magic 200,000 mile mark.

Power:

The ES300's rated power is 188bhp @ 5200rpm, and 203lb-ft of torque at 4400rpm. As you can see from the ES300's power graphs, the second run gave a maximum power of 126bhp @ 5000-5100rpm (the second run's power figure is low due to Jon's throttle lift), which given a 15bhp aero drag and 20-25% driveline losses for an auto tranny, calculate to 170-176bhp @ 5100rpm. Not bad for a motor with 120,000 miles on it!

The best torque figures from the runs are 138lb-ft @ 4400rpm, which calculate given the same aero drag and driveline losses to 188-195lb-ft of torque @ 4400rpm. Again, quite a good effort from a higher-mileage engine. I hope by G35 hangs in there as well!

Technique:

Normally, we discuss the main technique changes that will benefit the acceleration runs in this section. In this case the best technique would be to take a large brick and strap it to Jon's shoe to stop him from lifting! :) Just kidding, Jon. Aside from his understandable caution about his car, his second launch was right on, and he'd already set his auto tranny to performance shifts and disabled overdrive. When the throttle was flat on the floor the Lexus wound out to 6000rpm and dropped to about 3500rpm, the best compromise of power vs. torque the transmission could deliver.

What is very interesting is the two launches: in the first launch Jon tried a brake-torque launch but didn't have the brake down hard enough, which confused the G-Tech a bit and didn't give the best launch. The second launch Jon performed the procedure very nicely, and actually recorded a faint bit of ES300 wheelspin! Now even though I'm a fan of rubber smoke on the lunch hour, in this case the bit of squawk and spin had another very beneficial effect: by getting the engine closer to its torque peak, the second launch's acceleration was significantly stronger for the first half-second or so. This dropped the 0-60mph time by a tenth of a second and added a bit of drama to the proceedings!

In theory, if Jon could brake-torque for longer and get the RPMs up closer to the torque peak (4400rpm), he will get a faster launch. The published times for the ES300 were about 8.2-8.5 seconds 0-60mph. I'd best that if he could get the RPMs up to near 3000 the launch would drop a half-second or more. I doubt that Jon is interested in doing so, however. :)

More Info:

Congratulations to Jon for getting such good results from a well-seasoned car. Having me along for the ride obviously just made the job harder. So, some adjustments made to the run data include:

• After removing my weight from the run, my calculations show the revised quarter mile would be 16.5 seconds at 86mph. This should drop the 0-60mph time to close to 9.0-9.1 seconds as well.
• WIth a bit more brake torquing and a bit less throttle lifting, and the run could improve by another couple tenths in the quarter mile, and perhaps another half-second 0-60mph.