which is better?

which diameter tire is the better front tire for drag racing ? a small diameter or a large one?

the one with a "W" on the sidewall...........

richter69 wrote:the one with a "W" on the sidewall...........

lol don't the big tires go on the back?

It all depends on the application.

If we are talking about reaction time vs front tire OD vs the staging beams.........

Sometimes if you have a car that could easily go real red without even really trying to squeeze the tree, you can fudge the reaction time a little slower by either going to a bigger OD front tire, or staggering the wheelbase side-to-side, so the staging beams see a bigger surface area.

Or if you want to fudge the RT a little faster, going to a smaller OD front tire (and/or having no wheelbase stagger) will sometimes do the trick by reducing the surface area the staging beams see.

thanks dave thats the info I needed. I have a 26" tall tire now but need to improve my reaction times on a .400 pro tree. Guess I will try a smaller tire.

Make sure you don't have any stagger in the front end. I don't know what kind of car you have, but most older race cars were built with the front wheels staggered.

I missed the front part lol.

I did some switching with the front tire diameter and concluded getting the suspension and rear tire situation under control was more important.

BigDave65 wrote:Make sure you don't have any stagger in the front end. I don't know what kind of car you have, but most older race cars were built with the front wheels staggered.

I have an '88 mustang notch any stagger is by accident, or smelling alcohol fumes lol

BigDave65 wrote:..............but most older race cars were built with the front wheels staggered.

That pretty much depended on the application back then, and today. There's really nothing wrong with running some wheelbase stagger if a given car's combo can use it, or needs it.

You see a lot of wheelbase stagger on the Pro Mods (and similar cars) that are using a clutch and/or where no delay box is used/allowed on a .400 pro tree. Some have well over 1" of wb stagger.

But on the other hand, you don't really see a bunch of wb stagger on the P/M's & Top Sportsman cars that are running a torque converter (such as a Lencodrive, or Bruno/Lenco, or 'glide) and a delay box is used/allowed on a .400 pro tree. On these cars there's really no reason to use any wb stagger since the delay box should be able to adjust out any red lights.


I know on one guy's 4.70 TS/Quick 8 car I worked on (that didn't use a delay box), having stagger vs no stagger was the difference between the driver having to be super careful & wait a split second after the flash of yellow to not red light without the stagger, vs him being more consistent & comfortable in the car allowing him to squeeze the tree a little if he wanted to with some stagger in the car. It just depends on the application if stagger would be useful or not.

On a side note you definitely don't want to confuse the average walmart, pep boys (or etc, etc) alignment shop by getting them to align a race car with wb stagger built in........could be a bad idea in waiting to happen in most cases.