Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Dyno and Drag These cars SUCK!!!!!

You are looking in the wrong place.

You are not losing more power in the warm weather because of heat soak...simply because of more heat where it should not be...as DemonSVT pointed out.

In other words, a heat shield could help lower heat soak, but it is not going to give you any improvement when the temp & humidity rise.

almost ALL cars lose power when it is hot out!!!!!

Thank you. No where in my original post did I say anything about wanting a drag car. I was just stating my frustration over how poorly I did. My intentions when I go to the track are simply to do better than I did the last time I was there. Whether it be reaction time, 1/8th mile, whatever. Not do worse. This reminds me of a thread I read on an NSX board where a guy gets flamed for wondering why he couldn't pull on an RSX Type-S. Simply ridiculous.

-R-

Well I've driven quite a few cars and the Contour SVT (maybe as well as other duratecs) seem to be much more sensitive to temperature and humidity.

On a cool night, an SVT contour may have no probs pulling a Prelude but on a hot day it will have problems with a Civic Si. Why isnt the Civic suffering as bad? The point is that there is way too much variance from the best to worse case performance on these cars.

Heck its the only car I know that doesnt like cold winters either. Every other car I have ever owned and driven just kept getting stronger and stronger. God forbid you drive a contour when its minus 10 degress celcius. Its going to be as slow as if its 25degrees in the summer. It appears the the contour likes temperatures between 5 and 20 degrees and nothing outside of this.

My motivation for ultimatly wanting to do a 3L is to make sure that at its worse case performance, its no worse then my SVT is now on a good day.

Well with a topic name like "these cars suck" it makes one wonder. And what does the car and it being hot out have to do with you not getting off a good launch? Bottom line is, the car is simply not a 1/2 mile car...it was never designed with that in mind, and isn't meant to be used that way. If it were, it'd be a v8, RWD, and have the 30 year old fairmont suspension! Oh and it'd have a few pony logo's here and there as well. Seriously, you'd be surprised how small a problem heat soak is if you actually take the car out and drive it like it was meant to be driven.

Use the stock intake in hot weather...My Modded 98.5 lost to a stock 99 racing once becuase it was 80 out and i have a 9 inch open k&n filter.

Heat is bad.

I had a Taurus SHO which also sucked in the hot weather.

A custom /ducted airbox and a little UIM insulation goes a LONG way.

Hey Dan, I noticed you had the Pro-M...a question:
Did you make your custom airbox after you installed the Pro-M? Reason being mine is programmed for an open element, like the KKM, and I've been hesitating to try to get some cooler air to the intake b/c the Pro-M was programmed for my current setup. If I succeed I'm afraid that it will screw with the Pro-M, you see what I'm getting at? Any thoughts welcome...

Justin,
A cold air box will not affect your Pro-M calibration. My Pro-M is also open element calibrated, infact I still essenially have an open element - it is just surrounded by a big airbox (not like the tight fitting stock box) that gets plenty of air (not like the flow restricted stock duct). I dyno proved (back to back runs) a 12 FWHP gain with this custom airbox + K&N + shortened stock airtube (no accordians) + Pro-M over stock intake setup (WITH HOOD CLOSED..how is that for heatsoak protection!).

John Miks made the airbox, custom not his typical heat shield. Then I tweaked it a bit

I'd love to see some pics...
I know I could really improve on the heat soak issue too with a little effort. Thanks