Drifting Your Eclipse

[808drifter]

Dont know if you want this to be stickyed or what. But here you go.
An artical to at least back me up.
http://www.hondatuningmagazine.com/f...ama_interview/

And a Good Walkthrough I made.

Despite what a lot of people think, it is possible to drift a front wheel drive, or FF car.
Although it is possible to do, it is not very efficient in long turns.
The tendency of a FF car is to go straight, or recover from a drift by understeering.
Understeer is when a car continues straight, despite turning the steering wheel.
This is every drifters enemy.

Since power is displaced through the front wheels, massive ammounts of power make hardly any difference in these cars. As far as set up, a stiff suspension is optimal, with maximum front camber in the front, and minimal in the rear. Also, running a higher tire pressure in the rear will increase the tendency for the rear to break loose, or slide out.

On street tires, I recommend 38-44 lbs. If you have very grippy "R" compound, or other high traction tires, and you wish to drift, I recommend putting stock or cheap hard tires in the rear, and the better grippy ones in the front. This inbalance will force the car to upset very easily.

The driving technique for a front drive is very, very, different from a rear drive. Since these cars tendency is to understeer, a very forceful, and exagerated technique is required.
In FF cars, the more than 75% of the cars weight is in the front, so getting the rear out is not
too difficult, instead keeping it out is.

There are three standard forms of getting a FF to initiate a drift.
The first is E-braking.
I only recommend this to people with hand brakes, and not foot pedal parking brakes. Some worry pulling this lever will damage their car, but the only problem Ive ever encountered with this technique is stretching the parking brake cable, which can be easily adjusted.
To initiate an E-brake drift, you must be moving atleast 25mph.
I recommend second gear drifts, as most FF cars are high revving four cylinders, and have the most power in this range. I recommend 90 and 180 degree turns for practice, where there are no curbs or enbankements to possibly hit.
The key is to pull the e-brake quickly, keeping your thumb on the release button. You want to accellerate in a straight line, keep your left hand at 10 o clock on the steering wheel, and your right hand on the E-brake. Turn the steering wheel FIRST and yank the E-brake up immediately after turn in. Once the car begins to slide, release the E-brake.
This should be very quick, maybe one and a half seconds for all of the above steps.
Once you release the e brake, you should grab the steering wheel with BOTH hands, and accellerate. You will probably have to counter steer. Counter steering is when you have to steer the car away from the direction of the drift to direct where you want the car to go next. For example, you may be drifting left, but steering towards the right.
The key here is not to be clumsy. Practice winding your wheel without hitting your wrists together, or crossing your arms. Its difficult to do and not have your hands get misplaced. You have to teach yourself to anticipate counter steering.

The next technique is trail braking.
This technique requires much more speed, skill, and
courage. The basic idea of trail braking is similar to the e brake technique, but not as abrubt. Trail braking, is breaking the balance of the car to become
loose in the rear by braking hard. The hard braking forces the weight to transfer to the front of the car, making the rear light, and easy to rotate. I recommend trying this at a high speed auto cross or tracks with a lot of run off.
This usually takes a great deal of speed, as you must brake very hard but still have a lot of speed to carry through your turn. I like using third gear,
braking hard and consistant, slightly turning the wheel, causing the car
to begin to rotate. The tendency of the car is to want to counter rotate so
practice this technique with great caution and anticipation.

The final technique is my personal favorite, weight transfer.
Trail braking is an example of weight transfer, but there are even more drastic and effective ways of using weight to change the direction of momentum in a car. A pendulum turn, or "scandanavian flick" is used often by rally drivers. In order to get the car to turn the direction desired,
they first turn the car the opposite way in advance to the corner. The logic in this is that when a car is broken loose and begins to spin, but is less than 90 degrees to its
direction of travel, the car wants to spin back the opposite direction to try and correct its spin.
Drivers use this to their advantage to keep the car sliding the direction they
want it to instead of understeering. This same method can be used in front drives. Since they tend to understeer, this method is extremely effective in the front heavy front wheel drives. Also, in addition to forcing the weight to push the rear of the car out, the weight will be pushed towards the front of the car which are the drive tires. So, if the car begins to slide too much, you can simply accellerate, and the car will pull itself out of the slide.

The most import thing about drifting a front drive car is if you are uncomfortable with the slide, or if you begin to panic, !!!DONT!!! hit the brakes!
When in doubt, use the gas! Using the gas will cause the front wheels to pull the front of the car straight and back in control. Remember, this does NOT apply to rear wheel drives.

[808drifter]

Ill try to get actual photos of me up.

[rodbls]

A pendulum turn, or "scandanavian flick" is used often by rally drivers. In order to get the car to turn the direction desired,
they first turn the car the opposite way in advance to the corner.


OK, funny story. I was watching "Top Gear", now on BBCA. They were doing a "White Van Challenge", and Richard "Hamster" Hammond tried to go around their test track in his van, and going into the first turn said, "I reckon I can make it rather quick around this turn, let's give it a little bit of the Scandinavian flick..." and then proceeded to ferociously flip the van on its side. It was the funniest thing I've seen in a long time.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=4UKIRwf9CXY

that's a link to the video. The van flips at about 4:45 seconds or so in...but the entire challenge is pretty funny.

[vanilla gorilla]

Lol, drifting a FWD.
I'm trippin balls over here.

Crazy ricer shit.

Theres a difference between drifting and sliding, btw.

And I'd love to see pictures, or videos.

[Blackcrow64]

I'm not gonna knock this, but I'm just gonna say that from my experiences with FWD, RWD, and AWD there are huge differences...

In my experiences, you can drift a RWD and AWD car, but not a FWD... The FWD is more or less throwing the back end weight to cause the car to slide...

But like I said, I'm not gonna knock it here. I just want everybody who reads this to be on the same page with the proper terms of it.

**EDIT**
Oh yeah, do you guys want me to sticky this then?

[808drifter]

Dont sticky it unless evryone else agrees that it should.

And I hope you guys read the link I posted.

[NateS]

I used to own a 1987 cavy with a hand brake. Deffinatly tried all these techniques. They are very fun when you get good at it. Keep in mind since you are "sliding" the car and actually not drifting expecially when using the e-brake method. This sliding of the rear tires will tear them up FAST. Trust me you will know when you get bald spots on your tires. At higher speeds like highway speeds your car will shake violently. If your serious about trying to "drift" your fwd car keep in mind that tires are expensive...

[driftchick420]

Originally Posted by vanilla gorilla

Lol, drifting a FWD.
I'm trippin balls over here.

Crazy ricer shit.

Theres a difference between drifting and sliding, btw.

And I'd love to see pictures, or videos.

That is soo funny! i cant stand people who think fwd cars can drift. there is a difference between draggin ass and drifting, a BIG one. I totally agree with u. dude needs to invest in a rwd if he wants to drift

[808drifter]

Originally Posted by driftchick420

That is soo funny! i cant stand people who think fwd cars can drift. their is a difference between draggin ass and drifting, a BIG one. I totally agree with u. dude needs to invest in a rwd if he wants to drift

Yah go tell that to team Falken and there FWD Civic.
BTW heres a vid of the guy that now drives the Falken Civic at a D1SL comp in japan. (note: He won. He was the only FWD) If you read th link I posted instead of just jumping to the end and posting ignorant comments, you would have known that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOASjjpRnXk

Please dont try to pull out the E-Brsking isnt drifting argument, cause I have NEVER seen someone drift a car and "never" use the hand brake.

[driftchick420]

Originally Posted by 808drifter

Yah go tell that to team Falken and there FWD Civic.
BTW heres a vid of the guy that now drives the Falken Civic at a D1SL comp in japan. (note: He won. He was the only FWD) If you read th link I posted instead of just jumping to the end and posting ignorant comments, you would have known that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOASjjpRnXk

Please dont try to pull out the E-Brsking isnt drifting argument, cause I have NEVER seen someone drift a car and "never" use the hand brake.

All i am saying is there is a big difference between being pulled by your front wheels and being propelled by your back ones. I never said anything about ebraking, drifters do use their ebrake in certain techniques, but drifters can pull a drift without using it. They can use their ebrake to adjust their angle, but fwd drifting is really not much of a skill, its just draggin ass like i said before. If you want to really experience drifting, get a rwd car, its so much more different. I have a fwd car and i am now lookin into a rwd

[808drifter]

I own a FC.
Drift that also. (me and my FC)

Yes you can get a FWD to slid without touching the E-Brake. Just ask anyone in here who has had to brake hard while racing, the ass end will try to come around.
The less you touch the E-brake in a FWD the longer the slide you can hold.

BTW sry for calling you ignorant.

[driftchick420]

its ok! btw, i love ur rx7! they are one of my fave. cars ever!

[Blackcrow64]

I'm just gonna throw in a note that you don't always have to use the e-brake to drift... I've drifted RWD without using the e-brake. You can also in AWD without it, its just much harder to do it without it...

I was worried for a minute that this was gonna turn into an all out war...

[rodbls]

I can drift my eclipse in the snow...most of the time it's at really inopportune times when I dont want to...like going 5mph around a tight hairpin on campus, and having the ass slide out without warning and almost killing people walking. It's a FWD car, didnt ebrake, and for sure it was mad skill to not hit anything....I guess all I am saying is that I am a super drift pro when it comes to FWD cars in snow.......there is some fuel for this fire, lol

[L-Spec]

Originally Posted by 808drifter

I own a FC.
Drift that also. (me and my FC)

Yes you can get a FWD to slid without touching the E-Brake. Just ask anyone in here who has had to brake hard while racing, the ass end will try to come around.
The less you touch the E-brake in a FWD the longer the slide you can hold.

BTW sry for calling you ignorant.

There's a lot of misconception in this thread, but I'm not going to point them out, just be aware. Also, Team Falken signed with the Civic because it's different.. that would be publicity. I'm willing to bet that the company signed that Civic through a business stand point, not for Supa JDM Dorifto lol. Weight transfers work well with tuned suspension, not economy or factory "sport" tune. When I had my Eclipse at the autoX, believe me, it didn't have it's ass end come around, it understeered like a mofo, so I dunno if you're talking through experience? ..because I am.

I'm not knocking FWD .."drifting" either, but FWD can not continue a controlled oversteer. It's stops going sideways when momentum runs out. RWD, however, can transfer the momentum and delay the energy momentarily via the gas pedal. Going sideways in a FWD is fine and dandy, but nothing beats going sideways at 100km/hr and keeping it there

Also, going slidewayz around a 90 degree turn at about 50 km/hr in the rain is hardly impressive. You're going to have to try harder to impress a fellow rotary lover

Oh what the hell, here's a challenge. If you can do drift donuts, then your car can drift. Go try it, drift around a pole three times. They aren't called drift donuts for nothing (hint: You can't use reverse lol).