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.....something's wrong........
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Waves hand frantically, I KNOW this one, call on me!!!
Drag strip calculators make several assumptions which generally only apply to a seriously drag race prepped car. Weight transfer, drag slicks (warmed up), excellent traction on all accounts, perfect shifts, perfect weather, perfect driver.
For starters, Cobra's got no weight transfer to speak off, even with drag radials "we" are seriously traction limited. 500 or so horse in a light weight car isn't going to put that horse power down until somewhere around 80 to 90 mph, in third gear. This just throws a big old monkey wrench into the drag calculator numbers!
The real world numbers, like we see here on Club Cobra on occasion, I find rather interesting. You typically see the big blocks with a higher trap speed than a small block, even when the ET is almost the same. I can almost tell you, from the trap speed alone, if it's a big block or a small block. Both of which may in fact be running similiar horse power and even similiar ET's.
Where the numbers start to get fuzzy is with something like a 351W punched out to 427 cubes. Big or small block at that point? Another thing I like to see is the 60 ft time, that is a STRONG indicator of available traction and how the car was launched.
If you look at the numbers for the original Cobras, they both ran in the 12 second range, STOCK. But the 427 had a considerably higher trap speed, and a better ET by some degree, than the 289 cars. Bear in mind there were few, IF ANY, cars off the show room floor that could get into the 14 second range in 1965-1966. Making the Cobra mind blowingly quick at the time.
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