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is it possible to calculate what a cars quarter mile time is if you know the time it takes that car to get from 0-60 ?

the way i was thinking about it, if you plot the graph of Time ,in sec, verses speed in MPH. and "ASSUME" it is a streight line, u can get the equation of that line easilly from the 0-60 time, then integrate that and you should get the equation for the time it takes to cover a certain distance, substitute 0.25 miles into the equation and you are supposed to get the time. i have tried this but the math just doest seem to be working.

please correct me if i am wrong

 
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If the car accelerates perfectly linearly then yeah, you could... but since you gotta shift gears, not really. Every time you change the gears, you're changing your acceleration magnitude because of the gear ratio (higher the gear, slower the acceleration rate). Most cars that run 0-60 in 4.xxx seconds will run a 1/4 in the High 12's - Low 13s. So I guess you could take 3.15* (0-60) time and you'd get close. But then you get to something like a Civic and your 1/4 is only twice the 0-60 time because you're only trapping at 85 or so rather than 100.
If you search around on the internet, there are some calculators for 1/4 time that need the car's weight, HP and a few other basic numbers and they'll get pretty close.
But as far as some factor to multiply by... no, that's not gonna work. There's too many variables.

 
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i like what boilermaker said...but yes, there are too many variabes. Just in the physics part of it you have to find displacement(1/4 mile), initial and final velocity, friction, wind resitence, mass, and other things that will affect your time including your shifting, which affects your acceleration/time..

If you really want to ghetto guess it...find a nice stretch of road that you know is a 1/4 mile...i have one near my house, from the top of this very vacant road to a mailbox is a 1/4 mile give or take a few feet.

the best way...GO TO A TRACK!!!

 
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Anybody else plot out a "ghetto" track? We found this long stretch of newly paved road that is straight for like 3 miles that hardly anyone drives on, measured out a 1/4 mile by using the distance meter thing in the car (forgot the name =x) and then sprayed a start and finish line flaurescent orange. Here's the stupid part, we time ourselves with the radio. start a song and GO 1,2,3,4 blah. Never did it in my civic, used to do it with my old car, Chevy Lumina =\ I doubt it was anywhere accurate that showed that the chevy was runnin like 16's-17's. Maybe I'll go do it again in my civic and see if it was kinda accurate by comparing with my track times.

 
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Here a site where you put in the weight of your car, and the horsepoewr, and it will give you an estimate.

http://www.fantasycars.com/derek/qua...it=Get+Results

 
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what is the weight of our cars?

 
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Coupe about 2507 lbs.

Sedan about 2557 lbs.

 
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16.7 sec for a coupe...

 
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16.7 I don't know... I would think our Civics would be slower. But what do I know? Apparently nothing.