Windscreen washer nozzles are typically found on the hood of your car, or maybe on the wipers if the engineers were feeling creative. Head out to your local drift event, though, and you might find them tucked in the wheel wells instead—and it’s probably not for what you think!
Drifting is a sport that, by its very nature, destroys a lot of tires. It’s all that smoke and sliding about that does it. If you’re a driver for a wealthy professional team, that’s not a big deal—you just ask your tire sponsor to deliver more. At the grassroots level, though, tires are expensive, and you can only drive as long as you’ve got usable rubber. Thus, any invention that could increase tire life would be a godsend.
Enter a magnificently simple invention—the tire sprayer. With just a few bucks in hardware, low-buck drifters are finding ways to make their rubber stretch a lot farther.
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Drifting is fundamentally tough on tires. When drivers break traction in a slide, the sliding friction and excess wheel speed generate a heck of a lot of heat. Hence the tire smoke that is characteristic of the sport. You could say drifters are essentially executing burnouts with style, and you wouldn’t be far off the mark.
All that heat? It’s pretty bad for the life of a tire. It causes the rubber compounds break down and lose integrity, shortening the life of the tire. In the drift world, the stresses of multiple laps sliding around can lead to a phenomenon known as chunking. This is where the heat causes chunks of the rubber to delaminate and flake off the tire. This ruins the contact patch and effectively renders the tire useless for additional runs. Indeed, you wouldn’t want to drive home on a badly chunked tire, let alone consider taking it out for another run on track.
Tires chunking from overheat! Is there a method to cool tires? I’ve seen some clever ideas involving water spray in the wheel well. Thoughts and advice welcome! 190hp E36. Usually run 55psi in rear, but it’s getting hot out.
byu/reallyslow944 inDrifting
Grassroots drifters sought a way to make their tires last longer before chunks of rubber started falling away from the tread. After all, tires are expensive, and if you run out, you have to stop drifting for the day.
The solution to this problem? Additional cooling! Via a simple set of water sprayers aimed at a drift car’s rear tires. The water spray isn’t used when drifting, as maintaining predictable levels of grip is key to entering and exiting a drift with finesse and control. Instead, the spray is fired at the tires to cool them off after a hot lap or three. It’s believed bringing the tire temperature down after a run helps the tire last longer. As an aside, there’s no need to mess with the front tires—it’s just the rears that face temperature issues in drifting.
Could drifters spray water on the tires during a slide? Yes, but this would be counterproductive. Drifters actually need a lot of rear grip so they can control precisely how the car is sliding. Simply removing all grip with a big spray of water would see the car spin out more often than not. In the world of drifting, the water sprayers are there for cool-down purposes only, not for initiating slides in the first place.
Hooking up a tire sprayer is an easy weekend job. A brand new windscreen washer bottle can be had for less than $20 on sites like eBay or Amazon. Many come with an integrated pump, as well as hoses and nozzles to boot. From there, it’s as simple as mounting the bottle in the trunk of the car somewhere and fitting the nozzles so that they spray on the tires. Hook up a button or switch to fire the 12-volt pump, and you’re golden.
Difficulty of installation really comes down to your individual vehicle. Most installs involve drilling a hole or two to run water lines, wires, or to mount the nozzles in the wheel wells. You can go fancier if you like, too. Some prefer to repurpose one of their car’s factory switches to control the tire sprayer pump for a cleaner interior look. Others like to fit a larger fuel-cell type tank to store more water, so less refilling is necessary.
Different drifters throw out different figures when it comes to tire sprayers. Some claim to double or triple their tire life. Others go as high or six to ten times, but the lower numbers are in the more believable range. Typically, drifters talk about tire life in terms of laps—a water sprayer might see a set of tires last 20 laps instead of 10, for example.
Many drifters note achieving much longer tire life before tires fall apart, all achieved by water-spraying their rear tires after a few hot laps.
It’s true, though, that these tire sprayers do have some drawbacks. For one, some believe it’s impolite to spray water on the track where others might be driving—so choosing where to deploy the tire sprayers is key. There’s also a small weight penalty to fit the system. If you’re running a 5-gallon water tank for your sprayer, you’re adding around 50 pounds to the car, including the fluid itself.
Of course, it’s worth noting that one needn’t install automatic tire sprayers to get the same effect. Some drift tracks have water traps that drivers can pass through to cool their tires after a run, which achieves much the same result. It’s also possible to jump out of your car and hose the tires down with a handheld pressure sprayer. It just so happens that many drivers appreciate being able to cool their tires at the touch of a button after a run.
It’s ideal to get a nice wide spray that covers the whole surface of the tire.Â
Having seen a number of these installs online, I had one major question. Do these actually work? I headed over to r/drifting on Reddit to find out.
“It works,” AvarethTaika told me. “I don’t run them, but I know people who do.” Keeping the tire together is the main motivation. “The biggest benefit is reducing chunking by reducing temperatures, not so much extending tire life directly.” They note that they’re most useful if you’re doing a lot of hot laps without breaks in between. “If you’re not drifting back to back, you don’t really need them … I’ve never had issues with just good airflow and resting between runs, plus quality tires.”
BigDirtyBeefOnes noted a mixed experience. “I have sprayed a lot of tires, but over the past few years, I have stopped,” they explained. They found the spray to have negative impacts in the long run in their experience. “Spraying the tire when it is hot cools it rapidly and seems to make the tires harder,” they said. “This improves tire wear, you get less delaminating and chunks coming off the tire … but it takes away grip.” They noted the value was primarily for low-power grassroots cars, which can get by with less grip. Higher-powered cars need more grip to provide a controllable drift experience. “It’s great for seat time and low power, but as you progress and look for more grip, it’s no longer worth it,” they explained.
Drifter ohisofly has direct experience with sprayers and still uses them to this day. “It works,” they explained. “I’ve had tire sprayers for the past year and must’ve gone through at least a hundred gallons of water so far using mine with an 8-gallon tank.” They note the DIY solution has real benefits for those drifting on a budget. “Tire sprayers onboard like mine are more of a grassroots thing,” they explain. “I’m glad I went through the trouble because it definitely helps the tires last longer and prevents delamination and chunking.”
As far as installs go, ohisofly has a tidy setup on their Nissan 350Z. They used flat nozzles to spray nicely across the width of the tire, and they’re neatly mounted on the rear bumper support on each side. The water hoses go through the pressure release flaps into the trunk, where there’s a nice 8-gallon tank mounted centrally behind the front seats. A few tweaks over the years have made the system more usable. “I added a bunch of one-way valves to prevent the tubes and tank from creating a siphon effect and dripping after you shut off the sprayers,” they explain. “I also upgraded the pump after the original one stopped working.”
If you’re chewing up tires at a rapid rate when you go out drifting, you might like to try tire sprayers yourself. It’s unlikely to cost more than a few hundred bucks at most, and assuming your drift car is a properly rough missile, you won’t be too upset about drilling a few holes in the body to mount nozzles. Given a pair of decent rear tires can easily cost a few hundred bucks, you could make some serious savings if you get your rubber lasting even just a bit longer.
Ultimately, tire sprayers aren’t a must-have in the drift community. It’s true that there are multiple ways to improve tire life, from driving style to alignment, and other factors besides. Still, it’s a neat innovation that has been found useful by many in the grassroots community. The next time you see water and steam pouring from the wheel wells of a battered S13, you’ll know exactly why!
Image credits: ohisofly (supplied), Steazy via YouTube screenshot
My brother and I would spray WD-40 in corners of our slot-car track for laughs. This all feels like a barely grownup version of that.
And after reading your article, as often as not, there’s a lot more to the subject. But still, I’d argue that spraying WD-40 on the tires, would let you do the lurid drifts, the sport requires, without chewing your tires up.
Not that drifting is my favorite type of motorsports.
How hard to add something like this for the intercoolers in a modern (991.2-992.2) 911 (the twin turbo base/T/S/GTS models)? An old first-gen STi of mine had this for the top mount under the hood, and always thought any/all top-mount intercooler set-ups should have this!
Pretty easy I would think. I have purchased window washer bottle/pump combos before, as a start to a meth set up. However it was comically small. lol
sprayers for windshields are usually threaded and are held with a nut on the under hood side. The STi had a timer though, I have seen the buttons on eBay, I’m not sure if the timer is built in, but I’m guessing they’re out there.
Did this over 15 years ago. I learned it from someone that was doing for a while already so this ain’t new.
Well, it’s new to me!
Before opening the article, I was pretty confident that this was going to be about helping them spin the tires without too much effort. I was expecting them to have a bunch of recipes for soaps or lubricants to expedite things.
I do appreciate the quality of some of those setups.
…or maybe they could add an accelerant for some flaming burnouts! Like this one that I used to have on the cover of a clipboard portfolio when I was a kid.
Or colorful smoke.
50 years ago it was used on street vehicles that could not reliably bust the tires loose to get a “burn out” going, Sorta like a mobile drag race water box.
An old windshield washer fun prank: Reroute the hoses to squirt out between the driver’s legs. Laffs galore.
My dad and his buddies (who were dicks, apparently) would swivel the nozzles on their cars (I’m assuming these are old-school stuck on the hood types) to point sideways so they could spray their friends on the sidewalk when they drove by.
I used to get my drift tyres part worn for £10 a pair. Even in my MX5 I could wear out four pairs in a day, which was slightly more than I could fit in the car.
My car, including the custom cage, AP Racing hydraulic handbrake and turbo cost £2000, and I was working three jobs to pay for drifting, so new tyres for practice runs would have been a luxury.
I did toy with cooling spray, but I’d have made it from scrap parts for a fiver, in fact I still have a box with pumps and nozzles in it that I was going to use, but it never seemed worth the effort.
Different tyres react differently to the heat, I had a few Bridgestones that delaminated in long strips, long enough to leave gouges in the paint on to top of my hard top when they let go. Some tyres would chunk, some would just wear out. You tend to pick out the good ones from the pile.
I was only running 160bhp, and in a light car that doesn’t put a huge amount of heat in the tyres.
For competitions I used trackday tyres on the front (and they would get pretty hot) and winter tyres on the back for easy breakaway yet loads of grip while sliding.
At my power level it was certainly nothing like doing burnouts. 70mph at full lock would only produce a light hazy wisp of tyre smoke.
I stopped competing when it moved on and you needed big power, I just couldn’t afford to tune it more or swap to a more powerful platform.
Drifting is the most fun kind of driving, and I miss it so much.
If you’re a drifter, a person of “no fixed abode,” traveling from town to town, possibly living in your vehicle, you need to save every penny.
I’ve actually seen plenty of drifters spraying car tires, that’s why street parking in SF is so dicey.
Why do I have the urge to use vegetable oil instead of water and get really drifty?
Nah. Place cafeteria trays under the rear, then you can have some real fun!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1eqKtfyD1I
Not so effective on RWD cars. Maybe if you cover the whole tire with trays?
Pretty cool solution. I’ve seen people do this with intercoolers before. They reported +5whp and better throttle response, so about the same as a clever decal.
On our farm back in the 1960s we used an army surplus CCKW to haul tomatoes to the cannery. The GMC six had about 90 horsepower on a cool day., which never happened in tomato season. Between hauling maybe four toons on the truck and another maybe six tons in the trailer in muddy fields and getting over a highway overpass on a hot day faster than a brisk walk the original engine didn’t cut it.
To remedy this we put a Oldsmobile 425 engine out of a wrecked CHP car. I just looked it up and see it was rated at 370HP and more importantly 470 Lb-Ft of torque. Big improvement.
Problem was that with great power comes great heat and the design of the CCKW didn’t really allow for a larger radiator. Even a bunch of electric fans didn’t help. What we ended up doing was mounting a 5 gallon jerry can filled with water on the front bumper with an electric fuel pump connected to some spray nozzles so that we would be continually spraying water onto the radiator. That worked perfectly for about an hour at a time, but you only really needed it going over the overpass and about a half hour after that waiting to get unloaded.
I used that trick a couple other times since then. The thing to keep in mind is that if the cooling system is marginal for a load and grade, the brakes probably are too.
Oh, back on topic. I know of at least one Porsche 935 that used the water spray on the intercooler.
The old WRX STis had them. 10 second spray IIRC