It will take longer to watch this 4 minute video than it will to perform this fix on your race car or hot street car. If you are familiar with parachutes on cars, then you know that the cable used is one that is like many used in a number of ways throughout the automotive, motorcycle, and industrial worlds. They are simple in operation. A solid wire slides within a lined housing that is made of multiple wrapped cables for strength with a liner on the inside and a plastic housing on the outside. The problem with these cables is the ends where they housing is cut.
When that housing is cut at the factory, or when you shorten it for use in your application, the housing cables tend to stick out the end of the plastic and are sharp or jagged. This makes for something that can snag on fabric or cord pretty easily. That means there is a chance for the housing to snap the parachute even after the inner cable has released it, which keeps the chute from deploying when you need it.
In this Motion Raceworks Tech Tip Tuesday video you’ll see Doug Cook talk about the problem, and explain just how it almost cost him personally when racing his Nova this year.
There are ways to fix it. Watch, it is simple and easy and you should make this modification on your own ride.
Wow….I’m old enough to remember when NHRA Tech Inspectors (remember them?), would make you shorten the cable housing enough to prevent the problem this video created a solution for.
I’ve been doing it this way for over 40 years. Did something change? I’ve never had an air system. Does the air release system require the cable housing to extend to the center of the parachute pack?