Burnout..One Wheel Spins..Why?

[solaris=amazing]

Is that cause of my split rear end? Today i had to get this out of my system and did 2 brakestand burnouts. The first time, only the right wheel burnt up good. The second time, i released the brake just as i was burning the right tire, then the left started burning up also-lots of smoke. My car is a 95 4.6L tbird, with TCS (traction control and abs 4wheel disc). The tcs was of coarse turned off on both burnouts.

[Reed]

open diff

[RandomTask]

To elaborate on 'open diff' as well as why your right wheel was spinning rather than your left.

A. An open differential is one that has no mechanism for compensating wheel spin. Your basic diff is composed of a ring gear, a pinion gear and two spider gears. Basically the driveshaft drives the pinion gear which in turn drives the ring gear. While driving this gear it turns the rotation direction of the motor into the rotation of the wheels. (from up and down to left and right) now the ratio in size between your ring and pinion gear are commonly reffered to as your gear ration. The higher the number, the larger the ring gear compared to the pinion gear. This increases the amount of torque you are able to transfer to the wheels but at the same time causes the ring gear (thus transmission and motor) to spin at higher speeds to achieve a faster vehicle speed. The spider gears allow for wheel spin while taking turns but when there is loss of traction (in an open diff) they direct all power to the spinning wheel. Thus that wheel will keep spinning. I wish I had an illustrated picture to show all of this. Check out www.howstuffworks.com may be they will have a more detailed explanation.

B. The reason your right wheel turns rather than your right. Your motor (as well as most others) spin clockwise. When this happens the down stroke of the rotation (the load) is on the right side. (this is as basic an explanation I can give you. I hope this helps!

[solaris=amazing]

RandomTask, thanks alot.. I love that sig you got :-)

[RandomTask]

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/differential.htm

[MagicRat]

Doing much in the way of one wheel burnouts is a quick way to damage the spider gears in the differential. As one wheel turns and the other doesn't, the spider gears must spin very fast on their shafts - something they are not designed to do for any length of time. They just have bushings with splash lubrication. The fast rotation and high stress shears the lube rapidly, resulting in metal to metal wear, and a damaged, seized or noisy differential.

[RandomTask]

Damnit magic, one of my early cars was a 1990 mazda 929. You tell me that know... I could have used that info years ago, before I went through 4, yes 4 rear ends... ahh the days of ignorance/arrogance...