For the Road Warriors: Why are Burnouts in Drive a Bad Idea?

doogievlg said
I have never really heard of poeple being paranoid about them. Just dont rev it to the moon in first while spinning the tires.

It's the shock when the tires hook. With a stock torqueflite, being in Drive-Low the over running clutch is most vulnerable because it takes load to lock it.
When the clutch gets damaged enough, it doesn't hold and that's when the front drum can spin up as if in reverse. If the tires are spinning good in Drive, the governor and throttle position should shift the transmission into 2nd or Drive. If the transmission is in manual first, the overrunning clutch is still spinning; so again it seems best to put it into 2nd or Drive before letting the tires hook.

This guy seems to have a pretty good handle on the mechanics of it.

pc-charger" said
These type of explosions are somewhat rare, but if one ever happens to you, believe me you will remember it. There are a number of factors that contribute to this type of failure and even if you disregard the warnings about low gear burnouts with a stock trans in the drive position or the same low gear burnouts with a non LBA valve body, you will likely get away with it for a long time. You may even have a driveline failure, repair the failure without inspecting the transmission and still get away with it. The key is that in order to have a failure of the roller clutch that creates the condition that overspeeds the drum, the little legs that position the wave springs and rollers have to get bent over enough to let them fall out of place plus you have to have enough of them fall out of place so the roller/sprag ceases to hold any longer. This doesn't happen everytime there is a driveline failure or driveline shock and the explosion does not normally occur until after the driveline has been repaired and the car is back on the track. It may happen the first time back or it may take many more burnouts/launches before it fails.

If you choose to ignore the warnings, that's your choice and no one can change that but there are others that would rather not take that chance and take steps to reduce the possibility of this type of failure.

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