A few weeks ago we tore the car apart to fix the handling on it and it went from wheelstanding 1.28's to spinning 1.37's and for some reason I have to crank the wheel to the right now (say from 12 o'clock being center to 1 o'clock being center). The tires don't crinkle at all when they used to crinkle hard.

I'm stupid and realized when I put the tires back on after working the suspension they were on the wrong sides after two weeks of this problem (they have about 50 passes on them) and I'm wondering if that's the reason for the spinning and off center wheel. My theory is the sidewalls don't like going the other way and the wear on the tires may be different which would change the roll out leading to the off center wheel. They're 14.0X32 Hoosiers.

We've already put new tires on but haven't made any passes yet, my mind just needs some ease to see if someone agrees with my very amateur theory

 

I always rotate side to side. Usually every weekend. You should always measure roll out on a new set of tires.

 

Even the drag radials??

 

I dont switch MT drag radials because they are directional. My BFGs I used to switch.

 

He was asking about slicks in particular. It's standard practice to rotate slicks side-side. I don't think that was your problem.

Craig

 

Well, the thing is it had so many passes on the same sides and this car hits the sidewalls hard and crinkles them good, plus the left side wears harder than the right.

The rollout was about the same when we bought them, they were about an inch off after those 50 or 60 passes. The more passes made the better the 60's were getting, granted that can be expected but one weekend it went from 1.37's, to 1.36's and finally 1.35's the next.

 

Wow....an inch off after 60 passes?!?! On new slicks once you do your first burnout the rollout isn't supposed to change after that. My only explanation for your 60's getting better is maybe you have some preload in the suspension or something outta wack that the increasing rollout was counteracting causing the car to launch better. And once you swapped sides the rollout difference and suspension setup was seriously unhappy. Dunno....weird. Did the car pull / launch to one side or the other?

Craig

 

Whats bent or screwed up to cause one tire to wear more??? Sounds like the housing is bent or a suspension piece.

 

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I always rotate my slicks, every 5 pass'. Unless we don't have time between rounds. I've never had tires wear different. As said, sounds like it's got a problem.

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The housing might be tweaked, the cover kept loosening up last year and we just did finally put a girdle on it. That and when we scaled the car it was way heavy on the left side (the side that wore the most).

I found out 2 things tonight.

A. The car pushing to the left was caused by swapping the slicks, we put the new set on and it is back to its old self in that regard.
B. The poor launches were due to the converter going bad we think.

The other weekend after we scaled and tweaked the suspension I made one pass and had a 1.32 60 ft. and the car binded up after it came to the ground (converter tightening up I think in hindsight) and then it came back to life with a miss, at the time I thought it had just bogged down via us messing with the carb or something else. We found a broken pushrod the next day so we assumed that was all but tonight after one pass the tranny got up to 170 and 3rd round when I was running the burnout out it bogged the motor down because the converter was going tight or whatever it does. We had this happen one time when the bearings went out on the sprag, not sure why it causes it to leave so bad this time while the last time it didn't cost us ET unless it put the car under a hard load. I don't know if the converter messing up along with breaking a pushrod was just a coincidence or if the pushrod may have been bent and putting that load on the motor finally broke it.

The weird thing was we ran 6.28's on 7 cylinders and tonight I was running 6.19's on 8, I'm assuming the converter is just slipping really bad... It is doing so fairly consistantly though, I just find it odd that it would run 2 tenths off but consistently. The thing is ancient (but works well) so it's not surprising if it did go bad. Luckily we have another one that is new so hopefully it straightens the car out next weekend and I can become the wheelie king again

1fastws6... The car had a tendency to go hard left, the last good pass I got out of it was a 1.28 were I got a little close for comfort to the guardrail, that we don't think was due to anything wrong in the back, we checked everything over. I never even considered the lack of launch being due to the converter.

Sorry for the long writeup but thanks for the input fellas, this is all driving me crazy... I guess that's why I'm typing this up going towards 3 AM when I have work tomorrow lol