Way back when I worked for one of the largest automotive magazines in the world, we had a monthly minimum of photos of smoky burnouts and/or sideways drifting. Also, the cover was required to contain a minimum number of capitalized words and exclamation points! Top Secret Info NOW REVEALED!! It was a LOT!!!
This is to explain that I was a drifter before the Japanese made drifting cool.
An anecdote: I was driving a Pontiac TransAm on Mulholland Drive near the Ventura County line. Over the radio, the magazine photographer said calmly, “Okay, Mac, get it sideways after this school bus.” Followed by a more frantic: “NO, NOT THAT SCHOOL BUS! THIS SCHOOL BUS!” (We even spoke in all-caps with exclamation points!) The kids loved the show. The bus driver, not so much.
After burning down hundreds of tires (MAYBE A THOUSAND!!!) in sometimes as few as a dozen odometer miles, I discovered something that tire engineers have difficulty explaining. Many street tires fail to recover anywhere close to their previous level of grip after a burnout or drifting session.
(Note: I say “odometer miles,” because the photographers demanded the car remain absolutely stationary as the rear wheels spun. This required precise footwork with manual transmission cars, especially if the nose of the car was pointed at another less than two feet away. The Ole Miss journalism professors and Mississippi Highway Patrol thought I was just driving like a nut when, in reality, I was simply doing self-directed study for my intended career path.)
“How do all these attention-garnering war stories help me?” you may ask. Here’s how: You will encounter customers who are unhappy with the tread life of their tires on their performance cars. The reason might well be smoky burnouts or drifting.
Not that they will admit to it. Since even V6-equipped Mustangs have more horsepower than the TransAm mentioned earlier, almost every car – even front-wheel drivers – can be made to do smoky burn-outs. However, without certain modifications, drifting is almost exclusively for rear-drivers.
Other customers may complain about sudden changes in traction. A once-stable rear-drive car may now try to spin out on every corner. It’s what engineers call “oversteer,” and race drivers call “loose.” (see Performance, October 2012)
When challenged with a question about poor tire life or bad handling in a performance car, I respond with: “Have you done smoky burnouts?”
The likelihood that the reply will be truthful is low. Quite low. Even the mythical hero of television’s NCIS, Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, would not get a straight answer. A friend of mine who is an expert witness in “lemon law” cases that involve this and other vehicle abuse offers simply: “They all lie.”
The next question is harder to dodge: “Do you have a teenage boy in the house?” If the answer to the second question is affirmative, the mystery is solved. Mom and dad may not know that son has been doing smoky burnouts or drifting, but the chances are high that he has. To wit – I once approached my son with the blunt accusation that, “I know you took the car when you were 14 and I was asleep. Your parking job sucked and you curbed the tire.”
See, they don’t remember that you were that age once.
Why the Loss of Grip?
If I can inspect the vehicle, the first question will answer itself. Sometimes I don’t even have to bend over. If a pair of tires has noticeably less tread, burnouts or drifting likely has occurred. Sometimes one pair of tires still has mold pimples, while the other is down to 6/32nds (or less) of tread.
I’ll also check in the fender wells of the drive wheels. I look for bits of blazing hot rubber that has affixed itself to suspension components or bodywork during the burnout.
After my for-the-photographer burnouts, one could scrape up enough rubber to make a baseball-sized orb. I wanted to start a collection of these. I planned to display them alongside an assembly of aluminum blobs left from aluminum wheels after car fires. (These were fires we happened upon during back-country drives; I didn’t start them.)
The cooled aluminum puddles are incredibly beautiful, but the underside is a smelly, toxic mess. The collection concepts were vetoed by Mrs. Demere, and no one squashes an idea as emphatically as a fiery Scots-Irish woman.
Tires that have recently suffered through burnouts or drifting show many uneven wear patterns. Heel-toe wear and strange feathering are common. I am sorry now that I did not keep a photographic record.
The “why” on the resulting drop in grip remains speculation. The best guess I’ve heard from tire engineers is that the near-300˚F tire temperature experienced in a burnout or drift causes a re-vulcanization. The cooled tire tread becomes harder. This is especially true for the race tire compounds found on Dodge Vipers and other super-exotics. (Yes, the tires have the same tread pattern as siblings with the same model name, but the rubber is identical – or very close – to that of a race tire.)
Those who drift in competition replace tires after every couple of runs. I’d suspect that drag racer John Force, the king of burnouts, replaces tires at least every half-mile or so. And you’d be shocked how the multi-thousand-pounds downforce produced by the front wing of a Top Fuel dragster causes those skinny little front tires to chunk.
Speaking of burnouts and drifting, visit macdemere.net for stills and macdemere.net/videos.html for video. Let’s see those Japanese kids drift a stock, fully loaded Freightliner.
In the meantime, getting to the bottom of grip complaints with performance tires really isn’t that hard. Far more often than not, someone has been playing hard. As long as the tires don’t take as much blame as they do abuse.
