84 Gsl-SE vs. C4 Vette
 

This was a lot of fun. I was driving back to school from the NIN show in kansas city (awesome) on I-70 and I see this sweet looking black mid-eighties vette coming up behind me. It looked bone stock (even exhaust) and had a huge (stock?) wing on it. The guy did a flyby and I decided to chase him a little bit. I figured that I would get raped if he wanted to race me but I wanted to see how I would do against a vette that was equally as old as my car.

When we reached a gap in traffic we started cruising next to each other, checking each other out. I had a passenger and he didn't. He never looked over at me but it was pretty clear that he wanted to race. He dropped back and I slowed down to 60 in third gear and we cruised at this speed for a few seconds then started creeping on each other.

I floored it at 60 and we were side by side until about 80 then he started slowly pulling away but nothing like I expected. I thought I was going to get thoroughly blown away. We did 1 pull from 60-120 (third gear) and another from 80 to 120 (fourth gear, basically the gsl-se doesn't want to go much faster than 120 :) ). Both times we would stay side by side for 2-3 seconds and then he would slowly pull away putting 3-4 cars on me by 120. We gave each other a thumbs up and he exited, nice guy.

His car puffed some black smoke when he let off so I'm guessing it was not in the best of shape. Shouldn't I have been blown away (moreso) by a stock C4 vette especially at highway speeds? It did have a car club sticker of some sort on it but I couldn't read it. Another possibility is that he was just not flooring it. Either way it was a real rush to race a vette to 120 twice in my little bucket. I was proud of the old girl for running with a V8.

Well, C4's weren't exactly supercars, especially in the mid eighties. They didn't actually have any guts until the early ninties when the LT1 (I think) started being used. As far as the puff of smoke goes, not really a sign of a bad motor. Black smoke is usually a good indicator of cheap/bad fuel though. Either way, nice runs. I've only ran one C4, wiith my FC, and I kicked his ass, but his WAS a piece of shit, so my win made sense, lol. Nice car, BTW.

it had a TPI motor. TPI motors were even more trucky than a LT1 was, which is.. trucky.

Trucky as in all low end, a 200 degree cam, no top end whatsoever... only 230 hp.

The LT1 raised power to 270, and iddnt have the biggest handicap the TPI had, the intake runners not letting it make any torque over 4-4.5K rpms. The LT1 intake is good to 8K - headers and a CC306 cam gives you 350 whp with a tune on one. Same cant be said for a TPI with the stock intake!

Anywho, C4 vettes have an awesome chassis, but are totally handicapped by that motor. v8 swapper guys might be playing with them if rx7s werent so much cheaper and still have the same degree of handling (well, 2nd gen, 3rd gen is about as expensive) and an easier time doing the swap, to boot. I guess when the prices go down youll see c4s showing up with LS swaps going up against you instead of craptacular ones.

And, personally, the biggest beef I have with the C4 is a damn S5 FC has SUCH a nicer interior, and its pricier than any but cherry T-IIs. :P.

i remeber my first run in with a c4, it was a 91 i think.

i barely pulled him from a roll, a 60 - 100 and stopped there about half a car ahead.

from a stop i pulled him by a car adn a half due to his traction issues, or so i assume.

my mods,gsl-se racingbeat holley 600, streetport, stripped hatch. ac/ps springs, shocks, 12lb flywheel, exedy clutch.

ack, double post, sorry.