Yes got the idea from f and f, how do they do that?

 

Only happens on turbo cars. The fire/flame comes from hot unburn fuel mixture between shifts. These fuel mixture is so hot it's waiting to burn, but it's missing oxygen. When it reaches the end of tail pipe, and sees tons of oxygen in the open air. It catches on fire.

 

it just means the car is running rich .. i.e. a lot more fuel than needed

or wut tony said

Ant

 

That's not a good thing, right?

 

Run a wire from your spark plugs on the engine to the exhaust. Screw a spark plug into the bottom of the exhaust(and mount it). Hook the wire to the spark plug in the exhaust. Now in the middle of the wire close to the drivers seat where that wire is ran, splice into the wire a switch box(on/off) now whenever your spark plugs fire in the engine so will the one in the tail pipe when the switch is on.

 

That would only work if your car is running really rich. It's bad for performance and gas mileage to run that rich anyway.

 

cool thnx, whats all those switches on your console?

 

i heard you can do that if you gut your cat.

 

i guess my car is turbo then.

 

Actually, back in my Stang days, some local guys down here would rig up a system that would let the car run completely rich (almost stalling) by flipping a switch that intervenes with the ECU and Air/Fuel sensors... It would throw almost pure gas fumes down the exhaust and a switch with a little BBQ ignitor at the end of the tailpipe...

Gas fumes going down the pipes (no cats to absorb) and the flip of the ignitor switch... Flamethrower; for as long as they had the engine run rich... (you can see Flamethrowers like that on old customized shoebox cars and hotrods). I did hear that one guy held the button down to long and the flames backed in to the exhaust manifold and blew the internals of his block... Not sure about that though... But it looks damn good, since I saw most of these guys everyweek on the way to the races... They would flip the switches on the streets, and after they would win a run at the races.

 

I'm not him, but that looks like a set of controls for a nitrous shot.

Shayyadin

 

Okay..okay..any cars that runs rich

 

I've seen it on Rods, old cruisers and mazda rotaries, easy to do on carb fed motors run it lean and set up an ignitor at the back.

 

if you're running that rich, the cat should catch most of it and try to burn it off, and it'll melt the cat internals in the process, blocking flow.

so as some other people have mentioned, only try this if you don't have a cat.

-V

 

The most simple way(and the most common) to make fire from your exhaust is this:
Get a separate coil to run your extra spark plug that you rig up to your tailpipe. Hook up the coiland the extra spark plug the same way the other spark plugs are connected.

That is it. The power required to run the extra coil when you floor it takes power from the other spark plugs and some dont fire at all. The fuel thus runs rich and ignites at the tailpipe. This is very bad for performance but it looks cool.

BTW, works best with a Big-block engine.

 

You have to set this up just prior to going in for an emissions test...


Can you imagine the look on the faces of those moron emissions "techs" (they seem to be idiots here in MD) as flame shoots out into the collector? Wonder what the computer would register?

 

I would imagine that you would pass if you did... hehehe, since you are burning *everything that comes out of your pipe...

 

It has nothing to do with turbo cars, turbo cars just happen to run richer than normally aspirated engines which in turn makes it easier to do this. Also, most turbocharged cars run without cat converters (the modified ones at least). The cat is the primary device for breaking down these flames. The platinum pellets turn almost anything unburned into water vapor. If you remove your cat on any car that has a decent amount of power, or any car that runs a bit rich it should shoot flames.

 

I agree with Brian, it doesn't necessarily happen only on turbo cars (which, as he said, run richer in general, to guard against detonation).

But running rich isn't necessarily bad. For highly boosted RX-7's, running rich is a good idea. In a rotary engine, any unburned gas left in the chamber evaporates from the surfaces, cooling the engine. And as we all know, pinging rotaries have a tendency to fail catastrophically.

 

my signature gives a nice pic of what you're talking about. when i first saw it on the fast and the furious previews, i was speechless to say the least!