I got the second fastest time I have recorded at my track, 18.021

At the track on Friday night, we had these conditions:

59F air temperature
29.90 air pressure
67% humidity

My previous best time in the 1/4 mile at our 7,411 foot elevation track in Tlalnepantla, just north of Mexico City, was 17.931 set on January 20th of this year. On that night, air temperature was 57F air pressure was 30.29 (though measured at a nearby location) with 33% humdiity. That record came the week after I installed the URD lightweight crankshaft pulley, https://www.clublexus.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=196042

Tonight, here was the race sequence:

1st run
ET: 18.229
KM/H: 122.39 (record is 123.69)
60 foot: 2.760 (record is 2.964)
Reaction: .620 (record is .500 scored 3 times)

2nd run
ET: 18.204
KM/H: 122.14
60 foot: 2.767
Reaction: .576

3rd run:
ET: 18.102
KM/H: 123.05
60 foot: 2.737
Reaction: .589

4th run:
ET: 18.021 (this is slightly less than a car length off my record time)
KM/H: 123.21
60 foot: 2.704 (this is moving)
Reaction: .521

5th run
ET: 18.083
KM/H: 123.30
60 foot: 2.723
Reaction: .679

One thing I should mention. Last Saturday, I disabled the DRL lights and I don't drive with any lights on anyway at the track, so this technically does add power albeit miniscule.

On Saturday, I want to do a modification to the air intake system. Assuming I don't have work tomorrow, I plan to do that and then race again Saturday night. Hoping for another cool one.

 

Congrats!

I assume you take off the spare.

What fuel do you use?

Salim

 

Ah...you just brought up a good point, my second point.

First, correct no spare.

Second, I would say for a good month and half, though officially October 1st here in Mexico, all premium (92 octane, which is the highest) fuel used to have sulfur levels that in fairness were as low as about 220 ppm. Other fuel such as the Regular Magna and diesel had 300 ppm to 500 ppm though lower in the Mexico City metro area (for obvious reasons).

Pemex officially announced that one October 1st, all Premium gas would now have levels between 30 ppm and 80 ppm, which Magna and diesel to be phased in over the coming years. As I understand it, U.S. levels, at their highest, go about 40 ppm or so.

This is good to know if you take your Lexus south of theborder.

The air temperature was probably the biggest thing, but I cannot rule out the gas (even though it has been for more than a month) and the DRL mod.

Today, it looks I will be able to do the air mod I was thinkig about and should we get it to work right, will of course post photos and see if any difference in the the times.

 

One other thing on last night, I was running on a 1/4 tank of gas. Imagine if it was an 1/8th like when I ran my record in January.

First of all, I did go to the track on Saturday night, but no record. We had similar air conditions, 59F, 29.87 air pressure and 52% humidity, BUT when I got there just before 9 p.m., we did not have too many cars, but boy oh boy did we have a lot of people. I have never seen so many people in the stands before 9:30 a.m. That sucked the oxygen right out. Fastest was an 18.230, but some of my solo runs had 123.3x km/h, not too shabby.

Second, I did do an air intake modification, in fact two of them, but in the end, I chose the one that was a slight modification of my original.

Anyway, let me show some pics of what I tried to do starting with this one, the one I did not choose.

 

So, what was I trying to do here?

Originally, my cousin Carlos and I had planned to try to squeeze a plastic piece between the battery and the fusebox, so that it could be extended to cover the area of light shown in this picture and outlined in blue. This is the same way that air starts its flow toward the engine in stock/OEM RX300s.

 

Well, a few things went wrong. We could not squeeze the piece of PVC between the battery and the fusebox. It would have been a very, very, very oval piece squished in between. So we had to go over part of the battery and then see if we could extended a long piece of PVC toward the area shown above. Could not do that either.

So we proceeded with this first step here.

 

Then we added the next piece to curl around.

The idea was to get cooler air...thus more oxygen...translating to more power in the combustion process. Since the area where it is directed to is cooler.

 

We started it up and it chirped and choked and the about 20 seconds later, RPMS went up...no issue. We then took it out for a trip around the block, but when you stepped on the gas, just was not going. The air was too slow to get into the engine. Actually, when we started it up the second time (just before we left to test it), I got a P0171 error, reset that with my scanner, but felt bad in the end.

However, as I have tried so many times with my air mods...sometimes I succeed sometimes I don't.

In the process though, we discovered something about the current modification (the one I have been using for several months now).

 

This is the piece I have been using, but without that cooking pot heat shield.

Where the blue arrows are indicated areas where either metal meets PVC or a PVC joint piece meets another PVC piece.

When I was using heat shield, I would not seal these areas up. Turns out, it was leaking air. My cousin Carlos noticed this as we could hear it when we started it up...a slight hiss (but obviously a little more difficult to detect with a heat shield over the area).

So we duct tape it up for now and I plan to put a rubber piece over it to give a more aesthetic look next time I get a chance. (Yes, I am thoroughly aware that PVC in and of itself is a little cheezy, too, but it makes testing modifications a lot easier).

 

So what is the moral of this day of modification?

Let the motor breathe!

That is exactly what this piece does. Air comes in through the bullhorn mod while some air from the engine comes through this lower part of the PVC piece.

Now, when I do take this down to sea level, I do plan to figure out a way to attach an air filter into this air intake. A good many friends of mine don't use one given the high altitude and they have seen no issues. A few of them have been doing this for well over 20 years.

However, I would still highly recommend everyone else use one. In other words, don't try this part of the modification at home.