Advice for high HP drag car launch control

Hi. I’m helping a friend of mine configure his LC on his Fwd R32 turbo Jetta. It’s running a hx40 and making 730bhp fyi.

I’ve got a simple LC strategy on my VR6T that successfully launches but my turbo is much smaller. Using that as a starting block we have his making boost using an ignition strategy, pulling 27.5 degrees of timing at 5500rpm. That’s the best we’ve found for responsiveness as any less timing it struggles to make even wastegate boost (14psi), and any more and it seems to overcome the wastegate and the boost creeps.

The biggest problem is the amount of time it takes to spool. Circa 3 seconds. Do to you think there’s anything we can try to make it spool a big quicker.

Also it sounds very aggressive. With something making this much power is there anything I should/can configure to prevent any failures? Currently the spark cut and fuel trims are flat and we’re just pulling timing.

Any help gratefully appreciated. We’re on an ecu black fyi.

thanks,

ed

There are few things that can make turbo spool a bit quicker - higher compression ratio, conservative camshafts, advanced camshafts, wilder LSA, nitrous oxide, high stall speed torque converter, very rich AFR with heavily retarded ignition timing, using CO2 fire extinguisher to cool down intake before making a pull, using alcohol fuel...

All good suggestions. In terms of what you have now, are you able to retard timing more until you reach targets then advance if the turbo drives beyond your target?

That strategy, sometimes combined with a variable cut, or variable RPM target, can really help get things going quicker, if your ECU can do it.

Thanks a lot for the advice guys. Few things to try there. I'll work through the options and see what works.

Cheers

Ed

Sounds good, let us know how it goes.