ball bearing weights in wheels for better traction?
12-27-2004, 02:04 PM
#1
ball bearing weights in wheels for better traction?
My dad used to be really into rock crawling off roading competitions. Anyway he was showing me another video the other day and mentioned something that got me thinking.
He said that the offroad guys used to put water in their tires to help put more weight on the tires for better traction. Gravity would always pull it down until they span the tires too fast at which point the water goes all over the place.
So someone thought of putting ball bearings in the tires - like 100lbs on each tire. When the wheels would spin out, the weights weighed enough that they stayed at the bottom, but the wheel would still spin freely
What if you put the same weights (though maybe not 100lbs worth) in our tires?
in a way it isn't really like adding unsprung weight cause the wheels aren't actually spinning the entire weight of the weights, but i'm sure it'd ad some extra weight - just a thought since the Z can only take tires so wide
it might be that sports cars drive too fast for something like this and the tires might blow
He said that the offroad guys used to put water in their tires to help put more weight on the tires for better traction. Gravity would always pull it down until they span the tires too fast at which point the water goes all over the place.
So someone thought of putting ball bearings in the tires - like 100lbs on each tire. When the wheels would spin out, the weights weighed enough that they stayed at the bottom, but the wheel would still spin freely
What if you put the same weights (though maybe not 100lbs worth) in our tires?
in a way it isn't really like adding unsprung weight cause the wheels aren't actually spinning the entire weight of the weights, but i'm sure it'd ad some extra weight - just a thought since the Z can only take tires so wide
it might be that sports cars drive too fast for something like this and the tires might blow
Last edited by sentry65; 12-27-2004 at 02:06 PM.
12-29-2004, 11:13 AM
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thinking about this it seems that there is not very much room inside of the tires to put a very large weight that is round on a lower profile tire...plus i have tire pressure sensors in my wheels and i wouldn't want them being crushed, i think it would be better to just add a few pounds in the trunk if traction were that much of a problem... i'd never heard of this before, pretty cool idea if i had some serious offroad machine with big *** tires
12-29-2004, 02:48 PM
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First of all, let's clear up the issue of unsprung weight. Unsprung weight is a completely different animal than rotational mass; you have the two confused.
Rotational mass is the amount of weight that has to be turned to make the wheels spin. This would actually increase effective rotational mass as well, since there would still be some friction from all those bearings inside the tire.
Now, unsprung weight basically refers to every part of your car "below" the springs, including stuff that doesn't spin. This weight isn't about making your tires spin, it's about the proper spring/dampening for ideal handling.
Basically, think about if you drive a tire over a large bump at full speed. What you have happen is all your unsprung weight gets pushed upwards. Your suspension tries to counter this and after some give pushes the unspring weight back down. The more unsprung weight you have, the more force it puts against the working parts of your suspension, and the harder a time your suspension has dealing with it.
Cars that come with heavier unsprung weight usually stiffer dampers/springs, but those cars typicall have more body weight as well, so all is fine. If you end up with a light car, with lots of unspring weight, and you upgraded the suspension to handle it, you would have a very rough ride.
On top of that... who wants a bunch of ball bearing clanking around in there?
Rotational mass is the amount of weight that has to be turned to make the wheels spin. This would actually increase effective rotational mass as well, since there would still be some friction from all those bearings inside the tire.
Now, unsprung weight basically refers to every part of your car "below" the springs, including stuff that doesn't spin. This weight isn't about making your tires spin, it's about the proper spring/dampening for ideal handling.
Basically, think about if you drive a tire over a large bump at full speed. What you have happen is all your unsprung weight gets pushed upwards. Your suspension tries to counter this and after some give pushes the unspring weight back down. The more unsprung weight you have, the more force it puts against the working parts of your suspension, and the harder a time your suspension has dealing with it.
Cars that come with heavier unsprung weight usually stiffer dampers/springs, but those cars typicall have more body weight as well, so all is fine. If you end up with a light car, with lots of unspring weight, and you upgraded the suspension to handle it, you would have a very rough ride.
On top of that... who wants a bunch of ball bearing clanking around in there?
