point of battery relocation

[sean]

Can someone please explain the point of this? I know a long tome ago I was told it was for weight distribution. I really have to call bull shit on that. It doesnt weigh that much. I am not making fun of the people that do this I am just curious. I know some factory cars came out with the battery in the trunk. My clown car has it in there. I can see how the wieght of the battery could teeter the 50/50 or 40/60 or whatever your numbers may be but does anyone have proof that it helped their times in any way. The only real situation I came up with as a reason would be in a front end collision hard enough to blow up the battery you wouldnt have all the acid under the hood doing damage.

[85_SS_302_Coupe]

In a drag car, every bit helps. You're not just taking weight off the nose of the car, you're putting it back right over top of the rear tire, usually the passenger side which is where most of the weight of the car transfers to on a launch. By itself, it may not change everything but when you add little things like aluminum heads and tubular K members and A arms, light weight skinny wheels, fiberglass hoods and light weight bumpers (or no bumpers on some race cars) you can start to see that a lot of weight gets taken off the nose of the car. Another reason is, it likely makes a shut off switch easier to install which is a safety regulation at a certain speed.

Beyond that, it gets the battery out of the engine bay, which makes more room for other stuff like turbo/blower pipes or whatever. In modern cars, it probably has more to do with packaging....there may not be room in the engine bay for a battery. I've seen a lot of road racing cars with the battery behind the passenger seat, to offset some of the weight of the driver.

[sean]

Well that makes sense.

[thecollector]

Sometimes you also need the real-estate under for hot side/cold side piping, turbo housing's or resvoirs etc.


Though it's not much weight it is ussually perched pretty far forward of the front axle centerline, moving it to the back behind the drive axle like 85 ss coupe said make's that much more sense and its cheap.

[RIXXX93GT]

Drag racing is about maximizing the car/driver capabilities to reach the set goal. I have seen many 500-600hp cars run mid 11's because they didnt do all the things to properly take advantage of that HP. Its all an accumulative effect and maximizing weight transfer is one of them.

[Black Horse]

Another way to think of it (get out your calculators girls and boys) - if you think of the weight transfer requirements of a drag car wanting to have everything balanced behind the rear wheels (max traction). Using the centerline of the rear wheels as your base point - calculate the moment arm of a 10 lb. battery 10 feet away (when in front) compared to the moment arm of the same 10 lb. battery 1 foot from the same base point. In other words, you have 10 ft-lbs of rotational mass working (lever arm) to help you rather than 100 ft-lbs. of rotational mass (lever arm) working against you. Makes a hugh difference!

(Calculations and explanation simplified to make things easy to understand).

[inferno50]

Another way to think of it (get out your calculators girls and boys) - if you think of the weight transfer requirements of a drag car wanting to have everything balanced behind the rear wheels (max traction). Using the centerline of the rear wheels as your base point - calculate the moment arm of a 10 lb. battery 10 feet away (when in front) compared to the moment arm of the same 10 lb. battery 1 foot from the same base point. In other words, you have 10 ft-lbs of rotational mass working (lever arm) to help you rather than 100 ft-lbs. of rotational mass (lever arm) working against you. Makes a hugh difference!

(Calculations and explanation simplified to make things easy to understand).
Now just think my battery weighed 34 pounds I believe.

[skeptiq]

Another way to think of it (get out your calculators girls and boys) - if you think of the weight transfer requirements of a drag car wanting to have everything balanced behind the rear wheels (max traction). Using the centerline of the rear wheels as your base point - calculate the moment arm of a 10 lb. battery 10 feet away (when in front) compared to the moment arm of the same 10 lb. battery 1 foot from the same base point. In other words, you have 10 ft-lbs of rotational mass working (lever arm) to help you rather than 100 ft-lbs. of rotational mass (lever arm) working against you. Makes a hugh difference!

(Calculations and explanation simplified to make things easy to understand).

Very well stated!

[pegasus]

I moved mine to the trunk bc i dont run a alternator and i need the room to run 2 big batterys (I have used my drag car to jump start my power stroke in the winter without the block heater pluged in)

[85_SS_302_Coupe]

Right...and to Dave's point, a lot of manufacturers including Ford have made efforts to put the battery behind the front wheels at least, so it's closer to the center of mass at least. The new Mustangs have the batter in the back of the engine bay which is at least better than in front of the front wheels like my Fox has it.

[pegasus]

i hate it when they put them in cars under the rear seats thats a pain in the butt

[Rick93coupe]

Boredom maybe?

[Mista Bone]

i hate it when they put them in cars under the rear seats thats a pain in the butt

it does get the Bug going though!

[pegasus]

it does get the Bug going though!

the problem is when ppl dont click there seat belts and you cant move the body to cut the battery cables

[uknowho1702]

Weight Transfer=traction and so I could put a kill switch in the rear of the car. Not that i need the kill switch because my car is no where fast enough to need it but pre planning

[sean]

All that makes sense. It just bugs me when I see someone saying the car is so fast and all they did was change the radio, add some wheels and relocate the battery. It sounds like its a combination of things to justify relocating the battery and if your not going to do anything but move the battery to the trunk you might as well leave it where its at.