well for the last few weeks I've been going out at night and learing how to drift on a dirt road near my house. Its a sharp left turn followed by a moderate right turn. Anyway, I'm getting pretty good at the left hander so the other night I decide I'll try to get some continuous action goin on. I slide around the left then sling it the other way for the right, and BANG!!!! I hear the most god aweful noise. Turns out the line I took had a huge pothole and just my luck i nail it hard. The suspension bottomed out so bad that the car is sitting funny now. I think I blew my shocks, the one side of the car is a full inch lower than the other. hehe whooops, my bad. Not like I really care since I'm replacing pretty much all of the suspension in a month or so anyway. Just thought I'd share.

 

Yeah but when you can drift on pavement....that's skill right there.

 

YEa I have been trying to get a good drift on the pavement and I just cant get it right.......

 

yea i agree, dirt drifting is kiddie **** compared to pavement, but even if i knew how to initiate a pavement drift my car couldn't handle it. not yet anyway hehe....

 

If your car is sitting crooked it is not the shocks because they only work dynamically, not statically.

Drifting pavement is a higher speed activity requiring precise knowledge of your cars handling characteristics. Pay attention to skilled drivers comments about RX-7 snap steer. Maybe the best way to learn is to go to something like the Bob Bonderant driving school. I learned to drift in a finely prepared Cooper Monaco (setup by Lance Reventlow when he owned it) at Elkhart Lake, and I do not drift my RX-7 on roads. It is always possible to make a mistake, even from hitting a pebble and bumpsteering. In all fairness, I never crashed while drifting autos, but I did put down my Triumph T110 a couple times; one time sliding under a barbed wire fence at 30mph. When I quit sliding cars and motos I switched to bicycles and put a few of those down, too, until I quit 10 years ago (I had a bad habit of passing sports cars on steep downhill turns with my bike - the road is wider on 2 wheels). Anything that can slide can crash. One hopes in a car to use throttle power to add cornering force to keep the car inside the turning circle. A delicate operation best learned on a skid pad.

B

 

TA maybe you need to go dirt track racing?

 

I drift my REPU on wet pavement. It wont do dry worth a **** because of the open dif. But i have been practicing on the wet for about a year and a half now and have gotton surprisingly well. I can hit corners up now with entry speeds beteen 30-55mph and steer the wheel all the way to lock and then just steer it through with the thottle. I think i am the only REPU drifter out there, but they actually work really well, i will have to get some pics up to prove it sometime. ehehaa.

CJG

 

dirt os no problem but it DEFINETLY(sp) helps when gettin your mind set on adjusting and comphensating weight transfer of the vehicle your driving
get a feel for it on dirt, the rain, then dry pavement dry pavement isnt really for the stock fb`s maybe an exeption to the SE cause of the low torque but the fact is fb`s are unstable in the corner even with aftermarket suspension, there small size and near perfect weight distibution makes the corner hard to comphensate even in rain, iv drifted plenty in my car both my gsl and gsl-se but its just doesnt beat the stability of my friends 240sx........theres something so jerky about the fb ...my fc (when it ran) drifted nicely.. very easy to enter and exit. the fb just wants to grip lol. wich is a good thing...if your looking for that. the cars iv drifted include
nissan 200sx
1984 gsl
1985 gsl-se
ae86 corolla
both auto and manual 240sx`s

there definetly more stable in the corner, my gsl-se has suspension mods on it also. sway bar, new bushings, even before i put it on the car just wants to grip, by far the easiest car to drift for me ISNT an fb
sorry guys
just my two pennies

 

Any car, like a porshe or FB, that has suspension tricks to keep handling smooth under moderate stress is going to snap steer at high stress.

B

 

The difference between a limited slip diffed' FB in the rain and on dry pavement is insane. I have almost lost it on sharp turns many times in the rain. Having boost doesn't make it any easier.

 

yea i realize the FB is a bad car to be doing this with, but its better than the TA and thats all i got I really wanna get a hachiroku and set that up for drifting, but finding a GTS in good shape (or at all for that matter) is near impossible around here. oh well.

 

dry pavement drifting is cake in an FB. The car is simply awesome for drift. I have maintained an 80 degree slip angle before and recovered during an autocross, its just awesome fun (that was also the day I wore down a solid 1/4"+ of tread on all 4 tires... eek)

 

I've heard that removing te rear sway bar reduces sna steer.

B

 

I know how to drift my 7 perfectly.

Hell I even figured out how to drift my old 4cyl Mustang!

 

There is no such thing as perfect drifting. You may know your car and what it is going to do but you will never know what could happen. You could spin a wheel on a rock and entirely screw up. There's good drifting, but never perfect. There's a thin line between drifting and hitting sommething or spinning out.

 

Yeah but sliding out, not hitting anything, thats called planned for.

 

200sx? aren't those things fwd?

 

no RWD TC

 

BS!

FB drifts fine on pavment. You just need to know what you're doing. A little weight transfer and a tap on the brake and I was at full lock at 30mph. Driving on the dirt is a little different. You have to learn to make inputs well before you want the reaction from the car. However, it will teach you to balance the car and to make minute inputs to keep the car doing what you want. It's not nearly the same as road driving, but for a beginer it's a good start.



BTW this is with about 4-5" of free play with the steering wheel. I really need to rebuild the box.

 

Here's me in my friends Mark II Supra.


And my other friends '78 Datsun 280Z



Sorry about the image sizes, I'm not hosting these pics.

 

Z

Aico: TC? please explain

 

200SX has a turbo

 

ahh. weird. learn something new everyday. I always thought the 200sx was just another celica clone.

 

not all of them, some are just 2L 4banger

 

Up until 1990 or so, they were RWD... After that, they became based off the Sentra. Look at the Haynes manuals next time you're at the auto parts stores.

How different is the FB to the AE86? Similar weight, similar size, similar power, solid rear axle... Is there a suspension type difference somewhere? I thought both use MacPhearson strut in front and coil spring/shock in the rear.