1 Gen Mitsubishi Eclipse GSX for drifting?

[Mr.Mecha]

a a a, you didn't say the magic words...

DSM diamond star motors, a joint venture between Chrysler and Mitsubishi. Mitsubishi did most of the work though.

and as long as you AWD drifter guys take into account that the subaru's system is rear biased and eclipse's is front biased you can continue the discussion on similarities.

[Feint]

Besides the famous creep that DSM's have,their weakest point is their drivetrain.Any DSM tuner will tell you that.You'll be burning through transmissions like a pyro.I don't think that makes it ideal,along with the front-biased AWD.


Harder than a Subaru to convert? For the Subaru,they have specially designed center differentials to convert the car to RWD.Obviously there is a little more to it,but for the most part,pretty simple.

[drz]

I don't know where everyone is getting the idea that DSMs are front biased They are nominally 50:50 with a viscous coupler. The center diff in the cars is completely conventional, with no provisions for adjusting bias. However, it may be said that the bias is really in fact dynamic, as when one end starts to slip, the viscous coupler on the diff progressively locks up, sending more torque to the other axle, thus changing the effective instantaneous bias ratio.

I autocrossed a '91 Talon for a year and a half, and I became pretty familiar with it mechanically, lol. However, I firstly blame it's problems on it's age and mistakes I've made, not on any particular weakness of the car's design. If a DSM is in good shape, the drivetrain will easily withstand 400+ HP if hard drag launches and power-shifting are avoided. Anyone who tells you that the DSM drivetrains are weak are either mis-informed, or needlessly abused their car with clutch-drops and/or full-throttle power-shifts. It doesn't take much intelligence to understand that 6000rpm clutch-drops like many DSM owners like to do will tend to break parts that where originally intended to hold the stock 200hp.

During the time I had my DSM, I had prepared it for autocrossing with complete suspension and some basic motor mods. It had reasonable power, and ran a best of 13.1 with an easy 1.9 60ft. But where it really shined was on the autocross course. Obviously, I prefer my cars to be a bit "loose" in the rear, and this was no exception. With the right maneuver, I could enter any turn as sideways as I wanted. Getting it sideways was the easy part once the suspension was set up right (including a HUGE rear bar and stock front). The problem was maintaining the drift through the turn.

There were a number of limitations that hindered controllability while sliding. First of all, the weight distribution of the car is vary unfavorable. To establish the desired balance, the roll stiffness has to be set so that the inside-rear wheel is nearly lifting off the ground. Even the viscous rear diff can't hope to send the power to where it needs to go in this situation, so very little torque makes it to the outside-rear wheel where it's needed. As a result, the power-on behavior of the car while "drifting" is similar to fwd - you end up with a stabalizing moment that tends to pull the car out of the drift.

Secondly, by nature of the steering trail (or caster, if you will), the forward thrust of the front wheels compromises the steering feel. In the case of my Talon, once power was applied while in a slide, the steering feel completely dissappeared. One must undertand that to control a drift in a AWD car, the steering motions are very exagerated compared to RWD drifting, and positioning is far less precise (meaning you turn the wheel A-LOT). The result is that it's VERY easy to loose place of the steering wheel. Example - I would often come out of a drift only to find that the steering wheel was one full turn from where I thought it was, and once the front tires regained traction, the car would violently steer to one side.

Third, it quickly became obvious that you need a LOT of torque to effectively perform an AWD drift. With AWD, there's only so much technique you can use before you really just need more torque to maintain a drift with reasonable speed. The numbers I'm thinking of for a DSM are 400+ ft. lb. engine torque, and probably another 100 or more if you want to do anything in 3rd gear. The drivetrain will handle this kind of torque, just remember that clutch-kicking should be left to the RWDers. The key to successfully drifting AWD is applying the power smoothly, and if this is done, the stresses to the drivetrain will be significantly less than in, say, drag racing.

Here are things I would do if I were attempt to drift a 1G DSM:
1 - respectable coilovers and adjustable shocks. 400lb front, 400+ rear.
2 - biggest rear sway bar you can get (Suspension Techniques has a good one), stock front bar
3 - weld the center and rear diffs. You'll loose street maners, but it will force all wheels to turn the same speed and eleminates bias altogether, which you don't need when the wheels are sliding anyways.
4 - LSD front diff. The stock front diff is open, but I'm pretty sure the LSD center section from the automatic trans can be made to fit. If nothing else, the Phantom Grip should suffice.
5 - swap out the variable-assist power steering pump for the non-variable pump off of the twin-cam non-turbo engine. Just do it and thank me later.
6 - spend a lot of money and build a fuel and turbo system that does 25+psi boost by 3000rpm and carries it through 7000, using as small a turbo as you can get away with.

Be prepared for an increadibly steep learning curve. Understand that roughness/quickness in steering motions and smoothness in power delivery are the keys to success.

And BTW, only the 2G cars had issues with crank-walk. Also, you could weld the center diff and remove the front halfshafts to make it RWD, but your just asking for trouble there. The rear-end and transfer case were not designed to withstand the full driving torque, much less from a modified engine.

[Coiloverkid]

my wagon = 360 rwhp. nuff said.

[mranlet]

^ Holy crap - I see a Turbo Legacy Wagon!!! DETAILS PLEASE!!!!!!!

-------------

Excellent post DRZ!

Feint - the DSM AWD and most of the Subaru AWD's use the same system for power delivery: a Viscous Coupling. Fusing the pieces together to eliminate power to a set of wheels is essentially the same, although you do it in different places...

Chas - I'll agree that Mitsubishi/Chrysler is a pretty crappy company (or at least was when the DSM's were being produced) but they did manage to build the AWD models with plenty of gusto... Don't forget all those Starions as well... and the Zero's...

Mr. Meecha - Most Subaru's are not rear biased. The VC drive ones continuously vary power front to rear with an initial 50/50 split, but the automatic N/A Legacies plit power 90/10 initially (front-biased) and will transfer 30% to 50% to the rears depending on the model and year. It would make sense to assume that Subaru's are Rear biased due to the longitudinal engine configuration, but in reality very few really are heavily rear biased with exception of the STi, which now even has a Variable Center Differential! People often think that the Subaru AWD system is like the ATTESA of the Skyline GT-R, but unfortunately that isn't the case.

-MR