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Science Time! Does Soaking Tires With Bleach Equal A Bigger, Smokier Burnout?


Science Time! Does Soaking Tires With Bleach Equal A Bigger, Smokier Burnout?

I’m not going to even pretend what the correlation is between vulcanized rubber and bleach is supposed to be. I’ve heard it from many sources over the years: if you want your burnout clouds to look like actual clouds, you needed some bleach in the water. Couldn’t tell you why that was the case, but source after source would come up with that gem. Water made sense…you needed to get the tires spinning somehow, and with the tired old shitboxes we were driving back then, water on the ground is what made all my friends heroes. But bleach water? I tried it once, at the helm of a mid-70s Nova with the supremely gutless 4.3L V8, and found that bleach didn’t do jack squat…the Nova spun tires as long as they were wet and the moment it hit dry pavement, it dead-hooked.

Maybe I was doing it wrong. Nobody told me to soak the tires in bleach to make sure the chemicals weren’t flung off of the tire, and even if I had done this, I didn’t have a car that’d do burnouts on command without help. But Hoonigan has the perfect test machine: the Shitcar, a thrashed-out BMW 3-series that exists solely to be beat on like a rented mule. They have bleach, they have a skidpad, and they have too much time on their hands, it seems.

Does bleach work? You’ll have to hit play below to find out. But we stick with another offering: automatic trans fluid. Lohnes suggested it to me once…smokes like a mother and slips like …dammit, I should remember this part…


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2 thoughts on “Science Time! Does Soaking Tires With Bleach Equal A Bigger, Smokier Burnout?

  1. Nitromike

    When I was 17, my driver was a ’76 Datsun pickup (I was into dirt bikes at the time) and was changing my oil on my mom’s concrete driveway. My buddy and I (mainly me!) decided it would be cool to pour some used oil down and do a burnout. After some creative footwork, heel and toeing the throttle, brake and clutch, I finally got the rear tires spinning and let me say, the smoke cloud was glorious! It was like the old John Force/Dean Skuza burn out battles of the early 90s! Unfortunately, my mom was none too happy about the complete mess that was made on her driveway and I got a royal ash chewing and had to go out with Dawn dishwashing soap and a broom and scrub the driveway clean. Yeah, it was totally worth it!

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