Drag Racing Discussions > Front Engine Dragsters

What is the perfect Front to Back weight ratio?

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dreracecar:
Scales are very important to a door car set-up primaraly because the driver is offset.

But with the type of dragsters we run and of the thousands of combination variables, there is no set formula for front to rear weight %'s for the basic style of cars we run that if there was a 22% to 78% standard fomula for all cars but yours worked better at 25% to 75% THEN---that is the standard FOR YOUR CAR.

 It was years before I knew what the front to rear was, only because GG's wanted to get weight data on the cars and the scale would only weight 1/2 the car at a time. And there were times when I had to stick a different driver in place of my regular one and there was 60# difference, changed nothing and the car still did everything the same.

Now modern big show racing is different. There are standards for the cars themselves both funny and dragster, and the teams with multipal cars and because of all the data they collect are able to baseline a new build at the shop and even with that they still move things around. There will be a time in the near future(or they are doing it now,they are not telling) that they will have track specific cars (like NASCAR) based upon what works best at that track at that time of year haveing that type of weather. with the data collected and hopfully a consistant track prep, will move weight %'s to optimize that condition at that track.

rooman:
#1  A lot of the big show flopper teams move the fire bottle from front to rear to change the balance of the car depending on track conditions.

#2  The NHRA's rule that only permits one car change during an event was originally to allow a team to replace a damaged car but they added an additional clause saying that once you changed you could not change back as some pro stock teams were planning on running a different car (especially for night qualifying) to suit changing track conditions.

#3 Putting the fuel tank as far forward as possible can be a plus in a dragster as the fuel acts as ballast on the start line and goes away down track when front end weight is needed less.

#4 The position of the driver also has an effect. Cen-Pen cars have the shoulder hoop quite a distance behind the rear end centerline and although the driver generally needs to slide his butt forward to get his legs over the rear end, overall his CG is further back than in most cars--I guess that this one really depends on whether you have a big head or a big butt   :)

Roo

dreracecar:
My post was not to suggest that changing cars during an event was ever going to happen, my thought was having a known setup working at Dallas would be a completely different car at Charlette

George:
Bruce & Roo, What do you guys think about a spring loaded type of wheelie bar? I could rebuild my bars to gain more flex but the spring deal might allow a larger range of adjustment.

Thanks. George

dreracecar:
The bar on the back of my car is spring loaded. The wheel bottoms out when the front is 1' off the ground. The bar is just a safety precausion if somthing stupid happens. I am not in favor of useing the bar to launch the car, too many repetitive poundings and something is going to break and I have been called upon many of times to have to weld the tabs back on. Learn your car and get it working without haveing to use it and you will be much better off and quit trying to emulate the big show cars---APPLES AN EGGS

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