It’s a common theme in the automotive and drag racing hobby and it’s one that we’ve all seen a time or three: individuals pouring stacks of cash into an engine and power adder combination to make the kind of horsepower they need to go fast, but completely neglecting everything from the flywheel to the tires, spending nary a nickel on the drivetrain and parts that must cope with all that newfound power.
From the transmission and the driveshaft to the pinion, axles, and wheel studs…everything else in the drivetrain has to be upgraded correspondingly to the power and torque, at the very least. Failure to do so is simply asking for the worst. Of course, the worst, in most cases, is the very scene you witness in this video by Hans Pierre Jr. of Free Life Films from the No Guts No Glory grudge race a week ago in Orlando, in which the wheel studs sheer off the drivers side of a Pontiac Trans Am just off the starting line, nearly sending it careening into the concrete barrier.
Fortunately, the driver reacted instinctively and had the wherewithal to collect the car up before it hit anything as it did a three-wheeled dance. But just to kick a man when he’s already down, just after the car comes to a stop, the errant wheel and tire slams into the rear bumper.
At one point, you can see one of the staring line officials pick up what appears to be the remains of a destroyed wheel stud, which pretty well tells the tale of too much horsepower and wheel studs not quite up to snuff for the job being asked of them. Fortunately, this all occurred where it did and not further down the race track when stopping a three-wheeled race cars isn’t so simple.