FWD overstreering/drifting/ *** dragging

[kairles]

you could get a bigger/over sized sway bar for the rear I hear that makes the car tend to oversteer more

[Delphince]

You will not be able to hold a long, continuous sideways drift around a sweeping corner with a front-wheel-drive car like you can with a rear-wheel-drive vehicle [...] a continuous slide around the whole corner, like those done with rear-wheel-drive cars, is not possible with a front-driver.

A good summation, but not entirely true. Inertia can do some interesting things to the rear of a car at a high enough speed. My brother drives and FF, and managed to fully clear a 270-degree highway exit ramp. He left-foot braked the entrance of the ramp, swung out the rear, and held it until the end of the ramp. The two main factors contributing to the feat was the high speed he maintained throughout the corner, and the hard rubber of the German Kristall Rotegos he'd installed on the rear out of curiosity.

(A side anecdote of the event was that halfway through the turn he passed a police cruiser that was parked on the inside of the turn. While the cop wasn't as enthused about the drift as my brother, it quickly became apart a Crown Victoria couldn't keep pace with that kind of driving, and one more pass through an exit ramp quickly lost him.)

<i>Edit: As always, doing anything like that on a public road is extremely dangerous, regardless of the time of day/night, and should never be attempted, etc etc.</i>

[Drift For Food]

I guess the key factor to the above statements is that with a fwd car, you can't continuously drift a car and maintain speed..unless the car is specifically set up to slide while under power, i.e. oversteer.

An initial feint and left foot braking will get you a long ways. However, at some point, you'll just bleed off all your speed and just kind of stop. This was what I hated about drifting my fwd car. It was doable, but man it was slow out of corners.

Now, if you take your stock car and tweek the suspension for on-throttle oversteer, you've got a different story. You can both have the rear end sliding and maintain speed through a corner. As well, this can be sustained for as long as you want. It would be a bear of a car to drive normally as a daily driver though, very unstable. Rwds have the ability to move in and out of stability, a fwd requires built-in, sustained instability(oversteer) to work, at least well and in a sustainable fasion.

[Tercel_Drifter]

Engine Braking:

Aright there are techniques that FWD can't use such clutch kicks and power over. However a techinique that I have found to be awsome is the art of engine braking. I essence engine braking is just another wieght transfer technique. However FWD car are the best cars to utilize engine braking. Or better said they are the most efficient cars for it(along side AWD cars).

There are a few reasons why FWD is an ideal platform for engine braking based drifts (and engine braking in gerneral). In FWD drive cars the front tires power the cars movement (duh) and when braking a car wieght is transfred to the front. The front tires increase gripping capacity and can apply more stopping force

Engine braking is not as valuable in RWD cars because the wieght still transferd foward so the braking capacity of the rear tires is some what inefficient. the front tires will increase in grip, but during engine braking they are not providing the stoping power.

Now the most important reasons why engine braking works so well in FWD cars is because the rear tires are free they are uneffected by the engine's power. when engine braking the wieght transfer is fast and a bit violent, the rear tires in theory are using 0 percent braking and will continue to hold momentum. While the front of the car is slowing down.

Application would be as follows: aprouch a coner in say 3rd gear, pick a point where you would like to initiate a drift. right before reaching that point downshift fast. whithin a slit second you'll fell like your car was kicked, quickly input your steering. beacause you have down shifted your car should be set to rev high one you decide to hit the throtle again.

depending on your car you might be able downshift more than one gear. but i suggest starting with one and seeing how your transmission holds

[marshun]

theres a good fwd drifter here in hawaii. kyle arai. and he can take big sweeping turns pretty good.

i usually laugh when he's on the track cause its just unusual to see. but i give him respect cause i dont think i could do that with a fwd car.

[Tercel_Drifter]

yeah He posted some videos, a few months ago. that guy is really good.

[Kptrk06]

Hi everyone, Im not really new here, I snoop around alot, but I never post, so here goes. I live in a little town in southern Ohio, I'm the only person I know of locally who has any experience in drifting. I have 2 vehicles, an suv and a little 1st gen Neon that I picked up for 800 bucks and Ive put a little money into it. I started drifting because a mixture of (get ready for this)...Need for Speed Underground and a video I saw online of some kid in his mom's Ford Taurus with trays from McDonalds underneath the rear wheels. I know, thats some pretty lame *Censored**Censored**Censored* reason to get into it. Very quickly I realized that drifting my Neon on NSFU was totally different from drifting my Neon in the real world. There are no tracks around my area, so practicing for me took place in deserted parking lots of old, ran down, abandoned warehouses or shopping centers. Tons of smooth pavement, no traffic whatsoever, and it would be the last place police would show up. I practiced with my little Neon and actually started to learn how to control a few decent drifts...well, they were decent then(about a year and a half ago, now they pale in comparison), but as my skill increased, my tires took more and more of a beating until one day they finally blew. I ended up spending a few hundred dollars on new ones and decided I needed another way of practicing...I was snooping around and thats when I think I found this site. Someone mentioned Gran Turismo 3...so I ran and picked it up for around 20 bucks. That was the best 20 dollars Ive spent in my life. I know, you cant base everything on a video game, but it did help me learn alot. I would try stuff in the game that was unimaginable in real life, and learning to cope with it in the game made it easier to use it in real life. Id get up one day, try a new style of drift on GT3, then go out and try it in real life...More times than not, I was pulling very clean drifts with little or no errors, because I had been perfecting them on the game. I had then became obsessed with buying an RWD car, but there are nothing but Mustang's and Camaro's when it comes to SOhio, so ive stuck with my Neon and just kept building my skill with it. I wish I had somewhere to post some of the videos I have, but oh well. To my question...

I have recently been trying to concentrate on more of a weight transfer style of drifting, but it seems like....say im going to take a right corner. im at around 40-50 mph, i jerk left, then right, then pull the ebrake. According to what most people are saying, it should get the back end sliding out...but it seems like for me, that it makes the car want to go into even more understeer than when grip driving...One of my techniques that i learned that makes initating a FWD drift is while driving in a straight line, about 2 seconds before turning into the corner, I yank on the ebrake and lock up the rear wheels, while still going straight. When I do this and go to turn, my front wheels keep traction and turn me through the corner, while my rear end slides out VERY easily because it wants to keep going straight because there was no traction, and depending on my speed, I can keep up a good countersteer drift throughout the entire corner. The first couple times trying this, I had alot of trouble countersteering with one hand, and i hit a curb and it cost me a new rim and tire, and 20 bucks to get a wrecker to pull me over the curb but since then ive perfected it and can do it pretty flawlessly. I was just wondering if anyone else has that problem with the weight transfer technique and if anyone uses my "early ebrake" technique or if they know the proper term for it.

[Tercel_Drifter]

I would suggest getting a large sway bar in the rear, also have the ebrake cable tightened. imo

[TireFrier]

i used to have a VW Rabbit GTI. it was all setup for autocross with neuspeed springs/shocks (bilstein maybe? i didn't set it up). but it had NO front sway bar, it had a front strut brace (neuspeed) and a lower tie bar or whatever. it had a HUGE rear sway bar. if i came into a corner hot and braked late it would kick the back end out real nice. this was not really ON PURPOSE (i wasn't TRYING to drift the FWD, it just oversteered on me thats all), but it helped me get through the corners faster to come in hot and brake late like that.
If you're having fun drifting a FWD, then great. but i wouldn't really plan on accomplishing anything with it. RWD is where its at.

[b1ue fear]

Tercel_Drifter wat size rims and tires do u use?

[Tercel_Drifter]

For Drifting I like stock Paseo Skinny tires (15"s) in the rear and in the front i use 15"s as well but ideally they're about half an in. wider, if I'm not mistaken. For breaking the rear loose at lower speeds (good for practice) i use the stock 13" tires in the rear. Mind you these set-ups are not for day to day driving. But for pratical purposes. You might try using the same size tires all around except that in the front use slicks. One of my friends has a 93 sentra se-r and it seems to the sentra performs well with this set-up

[DJchinwoo]

Fwd

Yea for my First car i had to learn In a INtegra..yuck..but i totalled that thing real Soon..

[mranlet]

Your best bet is to ditch your tercel, and get a RWD ANYTHING

Most useless post ever?

[driftfreak]

Most useless post ever?

nope..good advise..

[BlakeFuller]

Ok, so here comes my FF drifting thoughts:

Getting a FF car to drift is a bit like dancing with a pig. You see on the one hand it's really impressive to be able to get a pig to dance, but on the other hand, you're still dancing with a pig!

That being said. For non-competition, pure fun if you have an FF car and you like drifting, go for it and learn car control.

Besides 70%(if not more) of the people now rockin 240's that used to drive Honda's never really learned how to drive their FF cars properly anyways.

Remember it's better to have 70%(FF) of the car your friend has (FR) and be able to drive it 100% than to have 100% car and be able to drive it 70%.