Acceleration:

Well, the acceleration runs were rather entertaining. It's April and 43 degrees, the tires on the G are worn down to the harder shoulders, and Test Site North is in the worst shape ever. This adds up to an incredible amount of wheelspin. Crazy, stupid amounts. How stupid? The first run was a sluggish 15.3 second run (unadjusted), because the tires lit up and Rick backed off the throttle to try (and failed) to hook up. After another three or four runs, he had knocked off nearly a full second off that time. However, to do so Rick basically dropped the clutch at about 2500-3000rpm and hung on. On the last, fastest run the G35 spun its tires all the way through first gear, and then bounced off the limiter because Rick couldn't shift fast enough. Holy crap! It felt like Chad's Monte again, but quieter.

What did all this wheelspin, IRS tramp, and smoke net? Well, after the impression of a Top Fuel Dragster resulted in a 14.4 second, 101 mph quarter mile (unadjusted). That is slightly better than what Rick managed back at GLD, in spite of their excellent track surface resulting a massive difference in the 0-60' times (GLD: 2.1 seconds, Test Site North: 2.4 seconds). The disparity between the ET and the trap speed shows that traction sucked, but the G35 seems to be putting forth some reasonable power. And speaking of...

Power:

The highest power output for the fastest two runs was 216-217bhp @ 6200rpm, but unusually the G-Tech saw the max power in third gear (at about 83 mph). This means the aero drag was much higher, making the measured power lower. Of course, the cold temperature meant the car made about 4% more power, but after atmospheric and drag corrections, the reverse-calculations estimate about 270-275bhp "at the crank." My car stock was rated at 260bhp, and in theory the intake and exhaust changes netted about 15 bhp. So getting this value sits perfectly on the theoretical crank power is both shocking and incredibly gratifying, especially at 77,000 miles. Take this with a few grains of salt, but the plot thickens...

Technique:

HA! Technique. HA HA! First, Rick tried a normal launch. That put the G either sideways or sitting and spinning. Lifting slightly or launching slower resulted in insultingly slow times. So what's a guy to do? Drop the clutch, put the throttle at about 80%, and let the wheels spin through first gear. FTW? More like WTF! If you look at the launch RPM comparison you can see each of the above points illustrated in living color. From there, check out how the launches resulted in large differences in acceleration (Gs). Finally, to get a feel for how much problems Rick was having with wheelspin, check out the RPM comparison between the runs.

So, how can he improve for next time? (1) Pick a different damn venue. (2) Try when it's warmer. (3) Try with the new, sticky tires. It's still surprising that the G35 got going as well as it did.

Corrections and Other Factors:

And we're down to the correction factors. Since Rick was alone in the G, there was no weight correction. The weather correction knocked off some of the extra power, so the quarter mile time suffered. From the correction spreadsheet my unjusted ET dropped to a 14.6 second quarter mile, not superb. Given the horrible road condition and temperatures, I'm okay with that. More importantly, the trap speed after adjustment was 100 mph, which is noticeably higher than any other times recently (remember, GLD was about 97 mph unadjusted.)

	Recorded Data	Corrected Data
Best Run	0-1/4 mile in 14.4 seconds @ 101 mph	0-1/4 mile in 14.6 seconds @ 100 mph

So, what's the verdict? From the results here, the G35 showed a marked improvement in multiple power measurements. Given how dialed in the G-Tech is for the G35, it would seem that while the intake helped things out, I suspect finding the oil leak that (eventually) caused a misfire may well have reversed a large part of the power deficit. And that makes me very happy. :)