Another question about wheel stands

[Alan Roehrich]

Question: How do I tell when it is too high? Or not high enough? The car is real smooth, it pulls the front wheels up smoothly, carries them 60 feet or so, and sets them down fairly soft, right at the 1-2 gear change. Don't really have any traction problems, except on the very poor tracks. The car often hooks when other cars won't. I'd like to find another 0.05 or so in the 60 foot, the car goes about 1.37 when it is not going through the 60 foot clocks on the back tires, about 1.46 or so on the back tires.

I could drop the front of the CalTracs one hole, to the bottom. I can loosen the front shocks, and I could even swap to "trick" springs (it has stock springs). Any of those should make it go higher. I can tighten the shocks to keep it down. I'm looking at dropping the front about 2-3 inches, I'd like to drop the rear the same, but the finders are tight.

I put a 2 degree shim under the housing to get the pinion down 2 more degrees. The car SEEMED to work smoother, and carry the front further. It has about 4 degrees of pinion angle, but the rear separates about 4" or so, and I'm afraid the front of the differential is raising up and the pinion angle is going to zero or less.

I'm also thinking I'll have more HP in the engine after this winter, and we're going from an 8.0 pound per HP class to a 7.5 pound per HP class. Possibly even with close to 90 more HP. So I'm concerned about keeping the car hooking better than most.

[BillyShope]

Once the fronts lift, you have 100% of the car's weight on the driving wheels. You can't do any better than that. Actually, your goal should be to have the fronts just "kissing" the track surface on launch. Out of thousands of pounds, you're not going to miss a pound or two at the rear.

[Alan Roehrich]

It'll be pretty hard to keep the car tied down that much. And on a 9" slick, I don't want to be on the ragged edge. Not too many fast Stock Eliminator cars can keep the front that low. The only way to keep it tied down is to hang weight on the front, and tighten the shocks. I've actually got stiff front springs, their stock for the big block car. I need to cut a coil or so, the front is 2" to high static.

With the lower HP engine, I hope to gain about 30HP or so over the winter, and if I move to the lower weight class, I can take 215 pounds out of the car. MOST of it will HAVE to be from the back.

It almost seems as if the bigger wheel stands are the result of the car launching harder, the quicker the car, the bigger the wheel stand and the farther it carries the front tires. Well, with the exception of the guys who run really loose front shocks, and trick springs. They go up violently, and higher, than we do, and most often come down earlier and harder.

The other thing we get from the car lifting the front end is a low reaction time. We're just now getting to where I can put a taller front tire on it to get more roll out.