anesthes

iTrader: (12)

Anyone race at New England Dragway? So can street vehicles no longer run antifreeze ? Water only?

-- Joe

AlkyIROC

That's the rule at a majority of tracks. Only way to know for sure is to contact the track. Some may allow antifreeze on street legal nights but not during race events.

Antifreeze is harder to clean up if there's a spill.

PurelyPMD

iTrader: (3)

slick as hell too!

anesthes

iTrader: (12)

I emailed them, but it's bouncing back.

So what do you do when the night time low is 28 degrees at the beginning and end of racing season? I can't always store the car in a heated garage. Kinda renders the enclosed trailer useless.

-- Joe

anesthes

iTrader: (12)

Called them.

They prefer water for competition vehicles on points days, however street vehicles on street nights can run antifreeze. If you spill you are out.

Since my car has tags, and I'm not racing for points I guess I'm good this year.

-- Joe

83 Crossfire TA

iTrader: (2)

That's been the rule at every track I've ever been at, but they usually don't enforce it on street cars because it would mean failing every streetcar in tech.

AlkyIROC

So basically exactly what I suspected. Street cars on points days (Sportsman or street class) may need to run water but on the street legal nights forcing the cars to run water in the rad will greatly lower the car counts so antifreeze is allowed.

I run distilled water in my engine with Water Wetter and an anti corrosion additive like Barsleak. My entire cooling system only holds about 5-6 liters. Car is also parked in a heated garage so it never sees cold weather.

anesthes

iTrader: (12)

Yup, you are 100% correct. I'd like race points next year, so I'll need a solution. I wanna leave the car in the enclosed trailer though. They don't an antifreeze that's not a mess to clean up? I'd assume some alcohol based nhra approved crap would be available by now.

-- Joe

AlkyIROC

To my knowledge, straight water. I've heard of people using RV storage antifreeze but I don't know how good it is in a cooling system.

83 Crossfire TA

iTrader: (2)

It's just not realistic to expect streetcars to swap out antifreeze every time they go to the track, for them it's a much bigger deal than you getting around the problems.

The thing with that is that I'd bet it's MUCH more likely for the streetcars to wet down the track (I wouldn't be surprised if it was 5 or 10x as likely on TnT nights), I'm not sure I see the gain in just enforcing the rules on the serious race cars. Off the top of my head, the only thought I really have is that when the race cars have a failure it's more likely to be catastrophic leaving a bigger mess to clean up?

I'm sure that with some careful thought there is something that could be used as a coolant that would prevent freezing, wet down the walls better, cool well (you don't really need the boiling protection as much as you would on the street), and not cause the cleanup problems of antifreeze, but that would still technically be illegal, I'd bet that if you came down to it even the water wetter that most run is against the rules.

anesthes

iTrader: (12)

On street nights, most of the cars are running between 9 and 10 seconds, so I'd think the expectation of failure is similar.

It's not like in the 90s when most of the street cars were running 15s.

-- Joe

83 Crossfire TA

iTrader: (2)

Most cars are running 9-10s??? Really? I'd bet that around here most are still in the 15's, at least at something like a Friday TnT (probably the most consistent street car night). Who knows what the cars are capable of, I know 3rd gen f-body guy that is thrilled that he just got his camaro into the 14.9's (which I swear has '90% of the parts on it for me to get it into the 12's) and just got a "new" to him C6 GS that he ran... 15's in

I wasn't trying to say that the race cars were a bigger problem, just the opposite, I believe the streetcars are, just that when the race cars do blow up it tends to make a bigger mess.