Frank's Note on 12/09/99: until Ed Bergenholtz start running with wheelie bars, people were laughing about it to FWD cars.  But for those people who's been on IR board in early 1998, they'll know that TOO firsted used wheelie bar in his Civic in 97 or 98.  In fact, the whole thing that brought TOO to the net was someone posting on IR saying in Texas, they saw a white Civic ran 11's with wheelie bars.  Words eventually got back to TOO.  Since people were talking about his car he figure he might was well check out what others were saying.


Re: before bashing...Is .50 sec. enough to consider??

Posted by NITRO on March 03, 1999 at 09:25:35:

I'm really surprised that folks are just now figuring out that using light weight wheelbase extentions in the lower 3 gears is effective.
The ruduction of et is for several reasons. First the longer wheelbase will not allow the front to "unload" under acceleration in any gear. Using a "locked" rear suspension can't duplicate the effect. Front suspensions that allow little or no upward motion still can't do it either. The fact is that anytime you're accelerating, the physics simply dictate that you'll transfer weight rearward. So even if the suspensions don't allow "it", you still lose front grip. The wheelie bars allow you to place the point of rotation over 6' rearward of the rear axle centerline. and that provides a lot of leverage.
If you build some non flexing tube affair and bolt it solidly to the rear of the car and measure the amount of "pressure" that it takes to jack the front up 1 foot, then remove it and jack the front up again using the rear axle c/l as the rear pivot, I think that you'll see the metnod to T.O.O.'S madness.
The et reduction is not simply in the first 60' either. Anytime you can reduce the amount of rolling "friction" between the car and the track, it's like free hp. So the car will benefit all the way down, mph included.
.50 sec is a minimal reduction achieved with a car that was set up to handle well. It did have 7" rubber up front, but if the car was to be optimized for quarter miles, the tire could be smaller yet. Don't forget that T.O.O.'S car was no lightweight either.
A set of bars might be a nice thing to take to the track. Pin them on and go.
Thank You

Re:WHEELIE BAR SALE


 

Posted by NITRO on March 02, 1999 at 15:39:20:

You may be interested to know that the light weight units with the sprung release will soon ba available for every Honda application. They can be clip mounted, so they can be installed at the track with 3 pit pins, and easily removed for weekly travel. The micro-switch release mechanism comes in the kit, so the entire system is race ready. We certainly do not recomend the use on streets (unless in the released position).