Author Topic: How much ballist do I need in my FED?  (Read 9395 times)

Offline novacain

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How much ballist do I need in my FED?
« on: November 15, 2014, 09:15:19 PM »
    I have a 166" FED. with no weight box in the front. With the current engine it pulls the front wheels about a foot and sets down without a problem. I'm pulling out the 355 and putting in a 383 [ sbc ]   About a 120 hp increase. I don't need a bigger wheelstand and don't really want to go to a wheelie bar. Does anyone have a formula on how much ballast to put on the front. The car weighs 1620 with me in it. I'm 260. Any help is appreciated, thanks in advance.

Offline ricardo1967

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Re: How much ballist do I need in my FED?
« Reply #1 on: November 16, 2014, 05:41:27 AM »
It directly depends how far out your motor is (and tires, gearing, launch RPM, etc..). If your powertrain is located far back like vintage dragsters (like mine), you may want to start as heavy as 200 lb, then start taking weigh off. 300 lb is not unheard. If you do have the wheelie bars, I suggest having them attached (set high) to act as a safety net until you have your setup figured out. In my case, the fire bottle acted as my wheelie bar. Expensive mistake!




Offline masracingtd1167

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Re: How much ballist do I need in my FED?
« Reply #2 on: November 16, 2014, 06:08:43 AM »
I agree with Ricardo ! You can always take them off later . Another thing to think about is if you put a lot of weight up front when the front comes up it will be even more weight hitting the ground ! The last thing you want to do is break your chassis or front end ! Bill

Offline wideopen231

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Re: How much ballist do I need in my FED?
« Reply #3 on: November 16, 2014, 03:03:59 PM »
As much as I hate idea if adding weight.I agree start heavy and backdown. If making another 120 hp I would think anything over 100 should cover it. Have you moved everything possible foward? Few pounds off driver? could have resisted didn't want to. This si why I have my motor out 50" hopefully avoid adding weight.
Relecting obama is like shooting right foot because it did not hurt enough when you shot left foot

Offline novacain

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Re: How much ballist do I need in my FED?
« Reply #4 on: November 17, 2014, 05:21:53 PM »
   Thanks for the input. Sounds like I need to do some measuring on the engine distance. It sets farther out than some that I've seen, SBC w/ a regular length 350TH and a coupler. I like the legroom, I don't think I'd fit in a car with a shorty 'glide. Probably end up putting weight on the front, driver could stand to lose about 50 lbs. but it's unlikely it will happen. Thanks again.

Offline George

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Re: How much ballist do I need in my FED?
« Reply #5 on: November 17, 2014, 08:51:22 PM »
I would consider a wheelie bar and throw some weight out front. We run a bar and a battery, 2- #10 fire bottles ,#30 lead and 3+ gallons of fuel way forward.

Offline JrFuel Hayden

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Re: How much ballist do I need in my FED?
« Reply #6 on: November 17, 2014, 11:23:13 PM »
novacain, the best plan is to work toward a balanced dragster. Yes engine location is important with a balanced race car, measure from the motorplate, ie back of engine to the center of the rear axle. Our JrFuel car is 48" with a 225" wheelbase, and a total of 325 lbs of front axle weight, and car total weight , with an all iron 406 ci SBC, and with driver is 1435 lbs.
Your car with the 355 sounds close to a good balance, but with more power you may need to add at least 25 lbs of ballast to start with.
You can't win races or have good runs if you can't steer the race car. We run 7.0's with a 5 foot long wheelie bar about 3" off the track. My 2015 plan is to keep adding more ballast and keep raising the wheelie bar to the point where we don't hit the bar, but still only get the front wheels up 6".  Keep-in-mind you will need more ballast than us because your car is short at 166" and you weigh 100 lbs more than our driver. So your 260 lbs is behind the axle there-by having more of a chance of pulling the front up. i have given a few FED the suggestion to add 20-25 lbs to the front only to have them run faster. Also your slicks might be too big and they "dead hook" and not spin enough to keep the engine RPM in the right HP range.
Another thing to keep-in-mind is a too tight converter can yank the front end up at the hit. i have had racers call Hayden Wheels asking for a front wire wheel light disk because they are red-lighting too much, but what they really needed was a looser converter so at the hit the wheels would not come straight up out of the lights.
I don't know of any "ballast formula" because there is so much that can affect car balance, engine location, HP, torque, wheel base, converter, launch RPM, slicks, tire pressure, wheel width, tire speed, weight of the front end and rear weight too. Try something on every run until you get a well balanced combination.

Jon Hansen, Hayden Wheels, 800-624-3803
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Offline novacain

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Re: How much ballist do I need in my FED?
« Reply #7 on: November 18, 2014, 04:04:13 PM »
 Will do. Thanks for the information.