I was driving with 4 people in the car and I nailed it in first and the car was soooo slow. Can people being in the car really make that much of a difference when you have two 12 year olds and a 16 year old? I was very disappointed, but I guess that is some weight.

 

An old rule of thumb is that every 100 lbs added to a vehicle you lose a tenth of a second on your et's.

If you have 4 people weighing 100 lbs you loose 4 tenths of a second. I would imagine if you are used to driving solo and picked up some passengers, you would easily feel the difference. And yes, it is very disappointing

 

I had three friends in my car once and tried to burn out....about 700 pounds of extra weight not even including me....broke the transmission mount it did burn out though lol

 

You're not hooking up with 12 yr olds right

 

Haha nah, I was just taking them for a ride because for some reason they thought the car was cool lol.

 

..... i'm sure their parents would love that.

 

Well I have known them forever lol so I dont think they would care. It dont matter anyway cause its too slow to hurt anyone lol.

 

I raced and beat an Eclipse with 6 people in mine.

 

If ever I'm in Texas, I'm not racing any chevy vans I'm not sure I could live with getting blown away with all those people watchin' from the back window

 

You would never see inside from the rear anyhow. They would be watching you and you couldn't see them. Really Dark tinted rear windows.

Its fun to play with all the imports around here. With the new exhaust system they don't know what hit them.

Your 350 Vortec/6spd would surely walk away from my modest 15.5 @ 88.7 1/4 mile time.

 

Not unless I get this tuning thing down...

I learned to drive on an old '87 full size chevy cargo van... I kinda miss being bigger than everyone else on the road.

 

It's a good feeling isn't it. They are not exactly SLOW when stock. Mine did a 18.5 @ 73.2 with nothing more than a distributer recurve and a tune-up. That is with the stock 1,600 stall, 3.08 gears, factory pellet style cat, stock air cleaner assembly, stock LEAN carb settings, etc.

 

I had a friend that was over 300lbs. When he got in my car there were issues. I datalogged and noticed some knock.
The conclusion was that the added weight slowed down my acceleration everywhere and loaded up the engine ever so slightly more. This was enough to heat up the combustion chamber enough (while in closed loop and open loop) to cause some detonation. The fix was simple. I had to remove some timing when he got in the car.
Don't believe me, well go look at the L05 timing tables in a suburban then look at them in the caprice. Slightly different cams but other than that, same engine yet a lot less timing in the heavy suburban .
Another solution is to limit the knock retard so it doesn't take out as much timing or have it bring it in a little faster, or both. You can also lower the TPS requirement for PE to cool down the combustion chamber to prevent detonation... lots of solutions, just pick one. My favorite is to just keep from driving more than 1 other person around. Remove the back seats and belts!

 

If ever I'm in Texas........................I hope it's for The Big Bend Open Road Race

DM