Confession time: I never did a burnout until my late twenties. I finally had a manual car, and I embarrassingly had to ask one of my friends how to smoke its tires. Fortunately, Engineering Explained put together a highly detailed step-by-step guide to smokin’ the meats so you never have to ask that question yourself.
Here’s the quintessential guide to ripping a burnout with a manual transmission, complete with the whys and hows of what it does.
Every car has a happy spot in RPM where it will break its tires loose, and part of the trick to the perfect burnout is doing a bit of trial-and-error to find where that spot is. For his Honda S2000, he says it’s around 5,000 RPM—add too much more and you’re just placing undue stress upon the clutch.
The only thing he misses is in his explanation of the point of a burnout. While it is useful in drag racing to get tire temperatures (and thus, grip) up, for some of us, the burnout itself is the point. There needn’t be an occasion. Some of us just like to watch the tires burn.
What’s better than watching Hoon of the Day? Being Hoon of the Day. Go forth, and create many, many clouds of smoke. Remember, kids: tires are evil, and they must be punished.