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Old 07-23-2009, 05:19 PM   #25 (permalink)
earwicker7
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Location: Burbank, CA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by wstar View Post
Losing traction has its advantages at times, especially in tight cornering when you want to drift more than steer to make the tight radius (think U-turn without 3 lanes of space to do it in, for example). It's also a valid technique at the drag strip. If you're running slicks, you roll through the waterbox and do a full burnout to warm them up. If you're running street tires, you skip the water box and do a mini-burnout (anything more is just wasting rubber) to clean the surface of the tires off.

I'm not a fan of high-school kids doing burnouts and donuts in the street either, but it's not right to say that loss of traction has no place in serious driving.
I'm just referring to what I think of as the typical burnout... flooring the car from a dead stop. My experience in cars I've owned has been that the better cars (911 and 370Z) barely lose any traction at all even when floored. My 70s Z-28 (and numerous front-heavy land shark grandma mobiles I've driven), on the other hand, would burn out at the drop of a hat... the problem is, they didn't have any forward momentum while doing so.
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