Burnouts Ruining Tires

[LouNY]

Burnouts, especially the real smokey ones do NOT require much horsepower or torque, once that tire is spinning it doesn't take much at all to keep it spinning. As long as the brakes on the none spinning end of the vehicle hold while the tires are free to spin, it can and will spin if desired till it blows.
As far as drifting with these front wheel drive car they are using the parking brake to cause the rear end to slide out.
It's nothing like power drifting the driving tires out, as many learned to do with rear wheel drive vehicles in snow.
They are just driving into a corner and locking ip the rear wheels so as to lose traction, by varying the braking they can vary the rear drift on a front wheel drive car.

 

[davisjt1977]

This is an awesome thread. Glad to know that at 68 I am still a kid at heart (immature per the others)
My dad always told me I had better not be doing that because he would know and then one night he & mom drove thru Shoneys where we did burnouts,etc. Glad we were not doing it that night. Then when I got my own car, I let the smoke out.

 

[oosik]

My first car was a brand new 1965 VW. I paid for it with my own $$$$ - $1685, as I remember. I was newly married - just out of college - we were on our way to Alaska for my first permanent job.

Money meant too much to us for such foolish activities. Not that you could ever do a burnout in a VW.

After that - such activities never held much interest for me.

 

[cqaigy2]

Drifting is a very good skill. I learned it on frozen ponds/lakes in Vermont, mostly with a '69 VW beetle. Like in the commercial.

Back in the 60s during winter, my dad used to ride with another local veterinarian that drove a VW bug. Snow drifts, they'd take a run at, and slide over the top to the clearing on the other side. If they got stuck, a farmer would hook up and pull them to the next clear spot on the road.

 

[ultrarunner]

Had a Chevy Monza with a 350 ci that would smoke tires just accelerating with a slightly heavy foot.

 

[tallyho8]

Besides being bad on your tires, aren't burnouts really bad on your brakes also? It seems it would wear the pads out quickly and, if long enough, boil your brake fluid ruining your master cylinder.

 

[IndyJay]

Besides being bad on your tires, aren't burnouts really bad on your brakes also? It seems it would wear the pads out quickly and, if long enough, boil your brake fluid ruining your master cylinder.

Yeah, it's probably bad.

 

[coast40]

Yeah, it's probably bad.

Yeah, that's why I have 2 Hurst Line-Loc setups for future projects, a 68 Dart with a 440 and some other project. The Line-Loc allows you to lock your front brakes to do a burnout for drag racing. My 32 Ford 3w coupe (racecar from 1959) had a locking aircraft brake valve mounted on the dash for that purpose.
Hurst 1745000 Hurst Roll/Control, Line/Loc Kit - Universal

 

[Gem99ultra]

Yeah, that's why I have 2 Hurst Line-Loc setups for future projects, a 68 Dart with a 440 and some other project. The Line-Loc allows you to lock your front brakes to do a burnout for drag racing. My 32 Ford 3w coupe (racecar from 1959) had a locking aircraft brake valve mounted on the dash for that purpose.
Hurst 1745000 Hurst Roll/Control, Line/Loc Kit - Universal
View attachment 761777

Great looking little car Coast140. Reminds me of my '38 Chevy 5-window coupe w/rumble seat, 283 & 4 speed.
It's clear that most responders on here have no idea as to the purpose of burnouts when drag racing. I understand won't attempt to explain. They're not into drag racing, and that's okay too.
Those doing burnouts at signal lights, etc. are simply jerks doing what I call postering. That's for no purpose other than getting attention, of which won't come from me. ...keep that on the dag strip, not public streets. (I'm NOT for public street racing nor drifting!)

 

[npalen]

I've always assumed that any vehicle doing an extended burnout would require a line lock otherwise would burn up the brakes, but that may not always be the case?

But then there is the AWD or 4WD burnout:

 

[MossRoad]

Besides being bad on your tires, aren't burnouts really bad on your brakes also? It seems it would wear the pads out quickly and, if long enough, boil your brake fluid ruining your master cylinder.

Who cares? It's your dad's car!

(said in high school by anyone that never borrowed their dad's car)

 

[MossRoad]

We had 4VW buses, a beetle, and a Karmann Ghia.

One of the 70's buses had an oddball motor in it that was larger displacement and had dual two barrels. It would spin the rear tires on dry pavement. Great snow car. Never got stuck.

If you did it just right, you could jump the front tires over a beer can.

Also, they were pretty tough. My sister, and later me, did many a stupid thing with that bus. Jumping RR tracks was pretty easy to get airborne.

This video is pretty illustrative of how easy they are to get airborne. Been there, done that. Many dozens of times. Almost daily on a local RR track. About 45-50 and up and over.

 

[cqaigy2]

Look at that, didn't even need a drag chute if you got a water brake.

 

[Northcountryboy]

I’ve only done the one burnout with my car and it was just before putting my new tires on.

 

[Raul-02]

The cars could get around the track much faster driving straight so what is the point other than entertainment?

The point is to show off and compete over who has the most skill. There's a fair bit of skill needed to maintain the drift and the more extreme the better.
Burnouts never impressed me.
Doing a 1:00 Stoppie on a 500 pound motorcycle for 100 feet and dropping the thing in an about-face does impress me. I am impressed with the sincerity of the person's death wish.

 

[ultrarunner]

I wonder how many seconds of burn out equals the time of running my Echo Brush Cutter?

 

[M59]

Ahhh, three things that are near and dear to my my heart. Lots of horsepower, tracks, and a competitive spirit. One of our instructors at the BMW Performance Center in Greenville SC set the current world record for longest continuous drift ( power slide ) of 232 miles on a circular pad. Johan Schwartz drifted continuously without stopping for fuel by having a second car drift beside him while transferring fuel.

Many of the new cars today are incapable of power drifts or doing burnouts since the on board sensors detect wheel slippage and direct power to a non slipping wheel. The Nissan GTR shifts power from side to side and front to back so quickly that wheel spin, for more than a 1/10 of a second is almost impossible. Wasting tires making smoke gets really expensive, I rather wear out tires on a track and watch the G force meter head past 1.5. Best mileage I ever got was 8K miles for set of 4 and changed them when I wore thru first set of steel cords on inside of each tire.

Never too old to have fun.

A link to the record

BMW M5: Guinness World Record for drifting

Guinness World Record – how the new BMW M5 drifted 374.2 kilometres in eight hours, setting two records in the process.

www.bmw-m.com

 

[Turbo5upra]

I enjoy spirited corners- on ramps and such and typically get a summer possibly 2 out of a set of tires and 2 winters out of a set of snow tires…

They aren’t caused by “burnouts” just having fun going around corners- I’ve never done more than a few second “burnout” but could see how it would be fun- if you’ve never driven a well balanced car at its limits it’s fun and very predictable… it also prepares you for those moments when others would panic and not know what to do.

 

[ovrszd]

I'm with davisjt1977. At 70 I still enjoy a good burnout. There's a wooden bridge at the North end of my farm. When wheeling we usually have a burnout contest at the end of the day on the wooden bridge with our offroad tube buggies. It's freaking awesome!!!!

Although I don't have a video of that, I have this one on the blacktop in front of my house. Good, clean, American fun.

 

[ovrszd]

Here's a pic of my 2004 Jeep Rubicon with Kenne Bell Supercharger doin a burnout on the same blacktop with 37" tires.