2strokebloke

I'm going to pose as an ignorant noob and ask "what is drifting" because somebody's going to ask sooner or later and it should make an interesting thread (which if it turns out good you can direct the real ignorant noobs to - let's just hope they don't read the ignorant part)

So, I want to know what Drifting is.

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Suislide

drifting, in short, is using a RWD car to create a lack of traction to the rear wheels (the drive wheels) and power through a series of corners sideways, using inputs of throttle to the rear wheels to keep on course. drifting is NOT getting sideways for half a second around a corner. drifting is the art of stringing many corners together into one long seamless run. it can be described as "artful recklessness", as basically you're out of control, but in control at the same time. you're trying to keep your level of out-of-control-ed-ness under control, if that makes sense.

and yes, in my opinion, ONLY RWD cars can drift. like i said, drifting relys on the lack of traction in the rear wheels to power through the corner crossed up. if you have a front wheel drive car, you can get sideways, but a) you won't be able to hold the drift for as long because your back wheels will be locked up (from using the e-brake) and will naturally want to slide back into line) and b) you won't be able to go as fast, since you'll be using a form of braking. also, since it's the front wheels being used to power the car through the corner, they have traction it's just not the same, and i don't consider it drifting at all. there are people who do, though. FWD "drifting", i call it "ass-dragging".

so there you go, a simple definition.

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RyanGiorgio

And what a perfect one it is.

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Ace$nyper

Wow well put. IHMO FWD can drift it's not as good but i think it's still a drift. You put the "art" of drifting into words well congrats.

dayna240sx

What about AWD?

Sean

i was just about to ask that. Although i have never done it, im sure it can be done on AWD. I would imagine it would be much easier it if was less than 50/50 power spread though

Good definition. 'controlling the state of out-of-control-ness'

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Ace$nyper

Yes AWD can drift. not all AWD give 50/50 though making drifting easier like on my dads subie when you step on the gas you get like 90 to the back 10 the front.

2strokebloke

But are you not forgetting that you do not need to use the e-brake to cause a loss of traction to the rear wheels of an FF car? (and therefor the rear wheels will not be locked up) And that so long as you do not apply power to the front wheels the rear end will not go back into line?
Otherwise a very good explanation.

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Suislide

but if you don't apply power, the car will lose forward momentum alot quicker, whereas RWD cars can power around loooong corners, staying in the drift the entire time. and you're right, you don't HAVE to use the e-brake...but unless the surface is slippery, it's a bit harder to throw the "dead" back end of an FWD car out.

AWD cars can drift...but it requires more skill. i'm not too well-learned on this topic as i'm a RWD drift freak.

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2strokebloke

But if you apply power, you only going to have to use the brake to make the turn, therefore lifting off of the throttle to induce oversteer to allow making a sharper corner will still save time - also believe me or not, there are plenty of RWD cars out there that are harder to coax into oversteer than some FWD cars (My '82 FWD Tercel will oversteer easily, but you really have to go at it to get a RWD Corolla from the same year to turn like that! - if you can manage at all)

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180driftking

I drift my dads fwd ED all the time, but it is alot easier in the rain. but it is possible. FYI drifting in japan started with fwd cars until rwd came into affect and the fwd cars couldnt compete.

Suislide

there were RWD cars a long time before there were FWD cars, so i don't believe this at all.

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Cbass

Ok, once more this fantasy notion of overpowering the rear tires as drifting comes into play. That's only one type of drifting. Most "drifters" out there who claim FWD cars can't drift are the ones who simply overpower the rear tires to lose traction. A FWD cannot do this, and has to rely on inertia to break the tires loose.

The simple definition of drifting, is overcoming the lateral traction of the tires, whether through inertia, overpowering, or locking up the brakes. This means putting more force on the tires sideways than they can handle, making you slide in the direction you inertia is carrying you.

Since a car has 4 wheels, you can classify 3 basic categories of drifting.

Understeer, where the front wheels lose traction before the rear wheels. This happens if you get on the gas too much in a corner, but aren't applying enough power to lose rear traction. The front end will push out towards the outside of the corner, and the drive has to back off the throttle. Almost all cars are factory tuned for understeer for safety reasons.

Oversteer, where the rear wheels lose traction before the front wheels. This is the most common form of drifting on the street. When this happens, the front end of the car points to the inside of the corner, and the rear end slides behind. It can be induced by many means, and is easily induced by using the throttle to keep the rear wheels spinning in a RWD car after breaking traction. Countersteering, or steering in the direction opposite the corner(turning the wheel to the right in a left hand corner) is usually necessary to maintain an oversteering drift.

Four wheel drift, which is when all four wheels have lost traction, and the car moves sideways, instead of changing it's yaw angle, as it does with understeer or oversteer. If you watch vintage racing from the 40s and 50s, you will see lots of this. This is also what you see in Rally racing, it's simply using your inertia to overcome the traction of your tires, as you can maintain a much higher speed if you don't slow to the cornering limit of the tires.

That said, there are many different ways of breaking traction to initiate a drift. Most people use the e-brake or a clutch kick, but the underlying principle of drifting is weight transfer. When a car is at it's cornering limit, a small transfer of weight/inertia between front and rear will make the difference between understeer, oversteer and four wheel drift. You can feel weight transfer when you brake, and you feel like you are being pushed forward, that is weight transferring to the front of the cars, directly onto the front wheels giving them more traction, and taking that weight and traction away from the rear wheels.. You can also feel it under acceleration, when you are pushed back into the seat. This is putting weight onto the rear wheels, giving them more traction, again at the expense of weight and traction of the front wheels. You also see this during cornering, when you feel pushed to the side of the car on the outside of the turn. When this happens, weight is being transferred or "loaded" onto that side. Often in production car racing with relativly stock suspension, you'll see the inside rear wheel lift enitrely off the ground under cornering, because it doesn't have enough weight over it to keep it on the ground.

That said, let's examine a few of these techniques.

E Brake - This is simply using the E-brake to lock up the rear wheels. It scrubs speed quickly, and isn't that good a technique to use. Of course, nearly all cars have a parking/emergency brake, and it's right there, making this one of the easiest techniques.

Braking Drift - This technique is more advanced, and relies on weight transfer. You continue braking for a short time after you turn into the corner, which loads up the front wheels with lots of weight, causing the rear tires to exceed their traction threshhold through inertia. This drift can be continued by overpowering the rear tires, or by skillful management of the cars inertia through left foot braking. This is most useful in medium and high speed corners, where you have lots of inertia to work with.

Power Oversteer - Pretty simple, using the power of a rear wheel drive, or heavy rear biased all wheel drive car to overpower the rear tires, exceeding their longitudinal traction, which makes their lateral traction threshhold very low. This is useful in low speed corners, where you can't rely on inertia alone to drift the car.

Clutch Kick - This is a technique very similar to power oversteer, it involves disengaging the clutch, building higher RPMs, and dropping the clutch to send an extra jolt of power to the rear tires. This actually has a twofold effect, not only does it overpower the rear tires, but the sudden lifting of the throttle results in less weight transfer to the rear wheels.

Throttle Off - Also known as Kansei drifting in Japan, this is an age old technique for cars with a fairly neutral suspension balance. Lifting the throttle mostly or completely during cornering causes the weight that was on the rear wheels from acceleration to transfer to the front wheels, resulting in a high speed drift of a slight angle, making higher cornering speed possible in some corners. This is very effective when combined with heavy braking to transfer weight to the front wheels. If you watch Rally racing on pavement, this form of drifting is fairly common. This is also the form of drifting used in the anime series Initial D

There is also a technique called "Shift Lock", but I'm not too familiar on it, so I can't comment.

Some cars can't use all of these techniques. Rear wheel drive cars can, but front wheel drive cars are limited to E-Brake, Braking Drift and Throttle Off drifting. The only way to drift a FWD car, aside from keeping the E-Brake locked the whole time(Ass Dragging ) is to carefully manage the weight transfer, to keep the rear end lighter than the front end, and keep an oversteering balance.

All Wheel drive cars can use all of these techniques, but maintaining a full drift in an AWD car usually requires overpowering of all four tires, with a few notable exceptions being the Skyline GTR because of it's advanced ATESSA E-TS system, and cars with permanant high bias to the rear wheels, such as the Porsche 911 Turbo.

Hope this clears up the issue for some of you out there.

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SR20DETpower

IT is possible to assdrag FWD cars, I do it a lot on grass....

basically all you have to do is overcome your inertia, on grass/dirt its very easy to loose traction. So if you want some oversteer, you have to do just that.

I could talk about the scientific babble of this but I'll just let you think about it lol......


lets not forget most rally cars now are AWD, basically the natural tendancy of AWD is understeer.....


it is possible but on concrete, a RWD car will hold the drift a lot longer, go faster, and look cooler

Sluttypatton

Shift lock is a technique that involves letting the engines RPM fall in between a downshift, then quickly releasing the clutch. The engines inertia will rapidly slow, or completely lock up the tires, inducing a drift.

There are other less practicle means of inducing a drift as well, such as the dirt drift, where the driver drops his rear wheels off of the pavement before a turn in order to easily slide the rear wheels.

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Last edited by Sluttypatton on 13-54-2098 at 25:75 PM.