Anybody know about racing with a car's front wheels off the ground?

Question

I was watching The Fast and the Furious 3 the other day and saw Vin Diesel at the end. He reminded me of the scene in the first movie where, in the last "race", he drives that monster of a muscle car. When he comes off the light, the front of his car pops up from the torque being generate by the rear wheels. That reminded me I had seen some races on a TV show with the cars doing the same thing. Is there some sort of sub-culture in racing where people intend to do this? Why don't all the supercars and new muscle cars do this? Does it have to do with the types of wheels being used on the cars or maybe their gear ratio or the way the driver times his clutch use (as opposed to other racers clutch timing)? Most importantly, is there some special term used in reference to this? Thanks.

Answer 1

if you have sticky enough tires and a very powerful engine this will occur if you do not have wheelie bars. It's called inertia. And it is actually pretty good for a rear wheel drive car as long as it does not tip over. When the front wheels leave the ground all weight is put on the drive wheels adding more grip and hence more accelerative force, ie the force is not lost to spinning your tires.

Answer 2

Inertia. assume that there is sufficient traction for the wheels to snatch the pavement, in spite of a superb type of horsepower spinning the wheels. The wheels are on the back of the automobile, on an identical time as the middle of gravity is approximately 0.5-way between the axles. The inertia of the automobile needs to maintain it the place it incredibly is, and the middle of gravity tries to stay the place it incredibly is. whilst the wheels push the automobile complicated sufficient, the acceleration is super sufficient that the front end lifts up. front-wheel drives can't try this because of the fact the wheels are pulling the automobile forward; on a rear-wheel-force automobile, the wheels are pushing the automobile forward. in case you look heavily, you will see the front end of any automobile raise purely a sprint- according to probability purely a 0.5-inch- whilst the automobile speeds up swiftly. For the flicks, apparently plenty greater exciting to have the front end circulate away the floor by some ft. BTW, motorcycles do an identical element, do not they? (Offhand, i'm not conscious of any front-wheel-force motorbike.) Take care!

Answer 3

1st off... What you seen in the F&F movies is NOT real.. In the 1st movie they used hyd. powered shocks to get the car to wheel stand like that.. Not the torque of the engine..

The right term is "wheel stand"

Let me point out.. Wheels up action ONLY happens at the starting line, not down the track or at speeds.. Its a drag race.. 1/8 mile 660' or 1/4 mile 1320'. Wheels comes up and goes back down in 100' or less most of the times

No, for the most part, it's not our intent to pull the front wheels up.. The intent is to dead hook, get the best traction and best 60' time we can.. So our ET's are lower. The by product of that you might say is having the front wheels come off the track on launch..

Now they are some people/cars that builds them to wheel stand to show off, run before the main races to please the fans (like jet cars do), etc

Now for real life... It's from 5 things.. Power, traction, weight transfer, low gear ratio, and high launch RPMs.

In drag racing you want the rear tires to hook, not spin.. You want the weight to come up and move to the rear... That's weight transfer.. Think of a sea saw, teetor toter... One end goes down, other end goes up. You want your car to do that

To help with weight transfer we will remove as much nose weight on the car as we can, move other weight to the rear (like the battery). Use A arm bushings that don't have the "teeth" in them, remove the front sway bar to free up suspension travel.

Then theres front and rear shocks that will free suspension travel more and let front transfer weight to rear easier.. (this will not make your stock 200 HP car wheel stand) it's just to help with weight transfer on drag cars

Once all that is done.. You need 500 or more horse power..

Then you have to have the chassis, suspension and rear tires that will hook that power to the track and not spin, and not let the car's chassis twist.

You want all the engry/force going straight to the rear wheels, not getting wasted twisting the chassis.

Then when the car launchs if it has the power and traction along with the weight transfer it will pull the front wheels up off the track..

With most cars this will be brief.. A lenght of feet less than 100 feet, time less than 2 seconds.. The height most common drag cars pulls the wheels is only inchs.. Like 4-8" off the track is the norm amount for "street" class cars...

Some race cars though will stand the car on the rear bumper.

My camaro gets about 6" of air under the front hoops on launch.. The front end is down and wheels is back on the track in less than 60' tough and under 1.6 seconds.

Answer 4

I think that chevy racer gave a thorough answer and explained fact from fiction about wheel stands.. Good job dude.

Answer 5

I used to know a guy who could drive like that, but he's dead now.