For Gear Heads And Those Who Wonder How

This week I did some major manipulation of my picture files and was very diligent in making sure that nothing screwed up. Well of course it did and it appears I have not lost much except for the time it's going to take to get everything reorganized and back where they are supposed to be. Never the less things will never be quite the same. In the process of seeing what I was up against I came across this picture that always left questions in my mind.

When I came around the corner like the pickup is doing I noticed these tracks immediately. As I came closer I began questioning how the hell were these done? The grade on this road is probably 6 to 8%. I was headed to the river to fish and I knew when I came back I would try to take a half ass decent picture in an attempt to figure out just how they were made.

In a different life many dollars worth of tire rubber has been deposited on all sorts of roads because that's just the way it was. I like the smell of burning rubber not just in the morning but anytime but with all that experience I have never seen a set of tire marks like these.

After looking at this closely my conclusion is this-I do think they are from a burnout. What's important to note if you take a close look and see the grooves of the tires are not distorted where it changes direction.

These are not skid marks from locking the brakes up going down hill. This vehicle did not necessarily have posi-traction. Less weight was on the right side because of the incline and that's why the tire marks are so dark. I think the tires were spinning very fast at least on the right side initially and because again it is uphill the vehicle was moving very slow and that allowed with a very quick move of the steering wheel the vehicle to change direction in such a way that rear end of the vehicle did not begin to slide.

In support of that you can see that as the vehicle begins to change direction the weight transfers and the left tire gains traction and the marks become darker and after the transition completely both tires even out almost identical as the weight of the vehicle is centered because it is going straight.

It may not be much but I get a kick out of stuff like this. I think I may have got this correct but unclear why I couldn't figure it out before. Right or wrong.

Hugeness with a click of the picture