When I was 13 (1980) I was riding around in car with my 16 year old friend. I was the passenger and he was the driver. The car was his dad’s Cadillac.
At one point he stopped on a wood bridge and did a burnout for about 30 seconds. The car was stationary and the back wheels were spinning. Lots of smoke was being emitted from the tires.
Ever since then I have wondered: how did he do that? Because when you press the brake pedal, all four wheels are braked. So how did he get the back wheels to spin while braking the front wheels?
I recently asked him on FB how he did it. He said:
Brake torque it just until it was starts spinning then let it go wild
I am not sure what this means.
And also, since it was his dad’s car, I highly doubt he modified the braking system to allow only the front wheels to be braked.
I have also been in a car where this was done. When I was in high school I had a friend with a 1968 GTO and he once did this in the high school parking lot. I do not know how modern brake systems work, probably by computer, and this trick probably won’t work with modern ABS brakes. In the 1960s brakes had a mechanical proportioning valve that distributed the braking between the front and rear brakes (I used to work for Ford and this came up when we were doing computer modeling of brake fade but I can’t remember exactly how this valve worked). It required a minimum amount of skills to apply just enough brakes that the front wheels would hold, and at the same time give it enough gas so the drive shaft would defeat the rear braking. Once the wheels break static friction and start spinning, there is even less braking needed, and you are now ready to destroy your tires. This also requires testosterone in sufficient amounts to defeat the brain.
If you hold down the brakes to get the engine revved way up and then let it go (a brake drop), the driving wheels will come up to speed very quickly. With rear wheel drive, most of the weight in the front of the car (the engine) instead of over the driving wheels and enough overall weight, the wheels are going to spin under the car for a while before it starts moving.
I believe you can also apply the brakes hard enough that the car doesn’t move but lightly enough that the rear brakes aren’t doing much.
I had friends that would get the ground wet (sometimes with bleach) and they could do a burnout just by having someone lift up the rear end. It took enough weight off the wheels to get them spinning.
In addition to having a car that can physically do it, you also have to have the confidence to actually go for it. If you don’t punch the gas down hard enough (or let off the clutch fast enough) instead of the wheels spinning you’re going to take off…a lot faster than you likely anticipated.
I tried short screeches a few times in my youth, never wanted any sustained burn. You just have to get the timing between hitting the gas and braking just right. Easier to use the clutch when you have a standard.
Almost positive it had rear drum brakes. And drums needed regular adjustment to make sure the shoes were the right clearance from the drum inner surface. If they haven’t been adjusted in a while then it’s easily possible to step on the pedal enough for the front brakes to hold the car stationary while the rears aren’t yet engaged (or fully engaged.)
Cars set up for drag racing often have a “line lock” device to keep the front brakes engaged while heating up the tires in the burnout box.
US cars in the late 70s, early 80s were transitioning from 4-wheel drum to disk up front w drums at the rear to eventually all discs by the 90s. All dates ballpark.
During the era of discs only up front on front-engined cars w RWD, the fore-aft balance of braking force was massively in favor of the front brakes. Which makes all the rest of the tricks outlined by others above that much easier to do.
Plus of course crappy 1970s bias ply tires.
Back when I was doing the motorhead thing I’d always respond to a show-off doing a big burnout with the comment “I guess you scrimped on tires; they’re way too weak.” Pissed the guys right off it did.
This thread is reminding me of the idiots who wrecked their cars with a different kind of move. In an automatic transmission vehicle, they’d open the hood, step hard on the brakes, then pump the gas so could watch the engine jump. Guys who did that a lot seemed to have car trouble before long.
I remember my dad telling me about doing key drops (I think that was the term). Turning off the car while you’re driving so gas keeps getting pumped through the engine, but without burning. Start the car back up and fuel and air in the exhaust system ignites and makes for a rather spectacular sound.
It was also likely that you’d split the muffler open in the process.
they kind of had to be; most cars other than small compacts and subcompacts had self-energizing (“duo servo”) drum brakes in the rear, and those can be incredibly prone to lockup.
I heard a story on Car Talk a while back about that. (all stories on Car Talk are a “while back” now. )
They were talking about their earlier days working for a dealership, and how they always had to drive through this tunnel on their way. While driving through the tunnel, they would do exactly that in order to create a big bang with echos.
Apparently, he did one really well once, and ended up blowing the muffler clean off.
You have to balance the power you send to the wheels with the brakes to keep the car in place. Balanced correctly, the right rear wheel will over come its brake force and start spinning, the other three tires with no power going to them keep the car pinned in place.
I spent a lot of money on tires when I had my 1969 Mach 1
In a typical car there is not a ‘locking differential’, which means the rear tires turn independently of each other. This is perfect for going around corners when one wheel has to turn faster and further than the other wheel. The drawback is, that the power becomes uneven, and if one wheel is ‘stuck’ all of the power will go to the other wheel and that wheel will spin while the other just sits there. It’s always been the right side for me, I think due to the configuration of the gearing in the differential preferentially providing more power to the right side. Note though, that if you did physically stop the right side from spinning the left side would get all the power and it would spin.
I think it’s just coincidental; I found a video of a Ram pickup doing one and it was its left rear wheel that broke free first. I think it comes down to torque; when the engine is applying a torque to the driveshaft, it’s also applying a “counter” torque to the body of the car. WAG is that the rear wheel which becomes more “unloaded” due to that torque is the one more likely to break traction first. and Sigene already covered the part about the open differential.
Most modern vehicles have a “burnout” button. It is the one with a image of the back of the car and 2 squiggly lines behind it.
Actually, most older cars, especially with drum/drum or disc/drum brakes have the front brakes “set up” to grab first and are usually larger than the rear brakes. Modulate the pedal until the sweet spot where the fronts are grabbing good but the backs are loose enough that the engine can overpower these brakes. Or just back off the adjuster on the rear brakes and save your brake shoes if doing burnouts is your thing. I always said these people have more rubber than brains.
Not quite the same thing, but back in the 90s one of my younger proteges was into “drifting” his souped up import. He was part of a regular “club” that would get together late at night to race around industrial parks having noisy smoky fun.
They’d all go to the scruffy joints that sell used tires for a few bucks each. And get a set of well-worn tires installed on their extra set of drifting rims for the night. Then they’d drive to the appointed site, change out their regular driving rims for the drifting rims with the sacrificial tires. Then drift / race / etc, until they blew out the junker tires. Then put their driving rims back on the car and go home. 1 night’s racing = 1 set of junker tires. Repeat again next Wednesday.
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