Well,I finally surpassed the 1000 mile marker so tonight was time for the hard driving. I have been reading old posts on how to do this for a while so I lined myself up on an empty street and just gunned it. To do this, I revved around 4-5K rpm, let the clutch to the bite area, and then when it was starting to roll release the clutch fully and floored it. This was by far the fastest car I had ever driven, and lived up to my expectations but it brought a couple questoins...

I never smelt the clutch burning like many people said...is there something I'm doing wrong, such as holding back?

Second, how can you time a release well. Suppose youre at a red light and you want to go right as it turns green...I have seen the tricks for when at a track and you know it's going green, but what if youre not 100% sure on the timing of the light. This process took me maybe 2 seconds to go through...am I just slow?

If you do it right you don't smell the clutch, especially after the clutch has serveral hard launches on it.

The friction material on the clutch is a lot like brake pads. The tendency to stink when hot diminishes a lot after they have had a few hard stops on them.

What you smell is the bonding compound being cooked out of the material, so the new clutch will do it at much lower temps than a seasoned clutch.

You will over time get better at the launch process. At first your thinking about every little step, once it becomes reflex, the time will drop down into the .5 second range.

If caught flat footed, you will always have a little more delay than the guy with a big V-8 but it becomes short enough that it is tolerable.

Just like the christmas tree at the track you also have other cues to go by.

If you are sitting at a traffic light and need to leave just as it turns green to get a jump on other traffic so you can merge or safely change lanes or something like that, you learn to watch for the yellow light on the cross street. You can usually see it come on if you look for it. If there are turn arrows if you're familiar with the local light sequence you learn how long of a delay there is between the end of the turn arrow and the green.

Much better to be a tad late than to jump out in traffic while folks are still clearing the intersection. About 6 months ago I was sitting first in line at a major intersection, and for some reason I decided to leave slowly. About a half second after the green came on, the car to my left was already moving, and I was just starting to move as some moron in a white firebird blew the red light at about 80 mph. He missed all of us, but several of the drivers in my side of the intersection were obviously shook up by the event. If I had done one of my usual hit the speed limit before I hit the cross walk on the other side of the intersection launches, I would have been right in front of him. So be careful with doing quick launches in traffic. People are not used to cars that can cross an entire entersection in 2 seconds.

And of course I would never recommend street racing from a traffic light.

Larry

You can ruin your tranny by dropping the clutch at high rpms. Be gentle like you are doung (kind of). Keep it to like 3500 rpms.

The wrx isn't a 1/4 mile car, and the 4 wheel drive means it is harmfull to launch the car hard.

Go drive on a track.