balls to the wall vs like a rat up a drainpipe

balls to the wall

adv

  • With maximum effort or commitment. 

  • Full throttle; (at) maximum speed. 

like a rat up a drainpipe

prep

  • Very rapidly. 

How often have the words balls to the wall and like a rat up a drainpipe occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )