Here's the background, then you can have a chuckle at my little adventure. 4 or 5 years back, I was forced to send my existing convertor off to get new flex plate lugs welded on due to the result of a flex plate bolt backing out. At the time, I was aware that my 60' times were a little soft, and that an extra 500-1000 rpm on the hit would probably bring it around.
So, the convertor gets redone and off we go to the race track. Sure enough, the 60' improves, but the car lays back .2-.4 seconds and drops 3 mph. It does, however get more consistent. After several rounds I actually get around to noticing that it's actually down several hundred RPM at the stripe. This is the opposite of what I expected, as I thought the ET/MPH loss was due to more slippage. At this point, I'm flummoxed, as the car is quicker in the 60', even at the 330, and slower all the rest of the way down track.
Because my 4.88 gear set was not in the best of shape, I took this opportunity to take advantage of the extra 5-600 rpm now available at the stripe and swapped out the 4.88's for 5.13's.
Result? The car picks up another couple of hundredth's in the 60, and not really a whole lot down track. Maybe .05, tops. It did however, become even more consistent. Run 'er and live with it, I say.
Fast forward a some more and a new set of lifters results in a cam lobe going away. All right, it's time to put a roller in it if the cam's coming out anyways.
So, out comes the old Mopar 528 solid and in goes a Comp 575 solid roller. There was a bit of a glitch with that but I got it solved. Off to the track.
Now, I haven't ran any 1/4 mile passes, but at our 1/8 mile track, my 60' times are back in the 1.60 range (soft) and my ET and MPH show no improvement over the old 528 when it had "not enough" convertor and "not enough" gear in it. Oh well. Run 'er. Right?
So the other day, my son helps me down load my GoPro footage to the PC so we can watch it on our TV in hi-def. That's when I noticed something interesting that you couldn't see clearly when replaying the GoPro through the iPad.
My friggin' convertor is barely flashing to 4 grand on the hit! It's dragging the motor down big time, and you can really tell on the video that it's struggling to power out of the hit.
I won't change out convertors this year, but I will this winter. Just need to have a few good months again before I tackle hauling that lump out of the car for a convertor change.
Stupid race cars!

Thats great, I use in car camera all the time on my instruments since I have no data logger but alot of instruments that I cant watch them all and drive.

You confused me on the "flummoxed" so I looked it up..... Me, id just say bewildered and leave it at that.

When did "flummoxed" become a word? 1837 huh? I live under a rock, never heard it before.

flummoxed
1
[ ˈfləməkst ]
ADJECTIVE

bewildered or perplexed:
"he became flummoxed and speechless"

Just bought one 'for my wife' to 'use with the kids'.

Looking forward to using it for it's intended purpose.

LOL, I was thinking the same thing! I also don't have a data recorder and things happen so fast I'd like to be able to really see what's happening sometimes. Need to look into one of these cameras.

I bought one of those action cameras just for entertainment. You know, cool inside shots me making passes. I didn't realizing what a great tool they can be until I started paying attention. Watching you actual shift points, your gauges and stuff like that.
The first incident was noticing a fuel pressure issue in a friends car by looking at the cowl mounted pressure gauge. Some of my friends have mounted their cameras under the rear bumper to analyze how the car launched. Again, with positive results. None of us have (can afford) data recorders but it's easy to justify a camera.
RMCHRGR, your wife's going to love it.

Might be some past UK influence on the vernacular in Canada - they were a colony, after all... I've head the word used by Brits before..along with graunch, fettled, knackered...and Blighty...

Some of you guys might want to look into "Arduino" boards. If you've ever done basic programming, you can easily setup a datalogger for various applications. For $40-$50 you can record temperatures, pressures, rpm, o2, etc to an SD card and look at it in Excel later. Obviously the complexity of the code amplifies with the number of inputs, but might be worth your time.

I have used one to watch the tach and afr on a pass. They are also nice because you can show your converter guy what it is doing on a pass. Very useful "tool".

I found it most helpful on the suspension under the car.

You would be AMAZED how much happens in the first 3 tenths that you could NEVER see by watching live launches.

We use to video a lot of passes on the starting line and then play it back at home on TV in slow motion,(frame by frame) we learned a lot by doing that