How do you drift ?

[Mux213]

Ivan141 Wrote:the ae86 would probably plough straight ahead due to excessive understeer. They really need suspension work to make them handle correctly.

Sounds very formiliar

[robokill]

True nothing more than true the front understeers way to easy.

Easier even when you "try" to overpower the car on dry tarmac if the rear has to much grip it will take more than 6k and alot of smoke to overpower it.

By the way calling the drift states of the car about the yellow one now belonging to

The prez who is registert but hasn't posted anything yet.

The yellow one goes great had a wet roundabout on friday evening what a great fun with that car :-) right as left no prob with doing sideways

[Ian.G]

I am currently in the process of learning to drift my hachi.

With the westfield and going fast I have been used to correcting oversteer as quickley as possible as sliding costs time in a lap.

I took my shiney white Hachi to a trackday at Donington Park yesterday instead of the westi. This was partly to make sure the car can cope with being thrashed to within an inch of its life and partly to explore the handling a little more than you should do on the roads.

On the roads I've mainly 'played' with power oversteer on wet junctions and exiting roundabouts. The car is really well behaved in these situations and is very controllable.

Donington was soaking wet yesterday - and a recently resurfaced track and some spots where oil was dumped the night before didn't help matters.

At the moment my car has BF Goodridge tyres on the front and Perelli P6000 on the rear. All tyre pressures were set at 27 psi. The P6000s are a very hard compound and were impossible to get any temp into them in the wet.

One corner called the 'old hairpin' was chosen as the corner on each lap to experiment with a longer provoked slide.



The 2 way LSD felt very strange to begin with. Comming down the crainer curves (the above picture cant show you how blind and steep this is). If you have to lift a little for the corner you could really feel the diff locking up on decellaration which unsettled the car a little. Feathering the throttle made this a little less noticable.

The first few times through the corner with a bit more speed and gas that required the hachi turned into the apex really nice but then suddenly broke away. There was very little time to deal with this and I just had to accept there was a spin coming. My shiney car (on the other thread) is now covered in mud and grass LOL.

The next few times into the corner I trail braked and turned a little sharper than I needed to. It is very easy to flick or 'feint' the car into a slide. The back broke free at a more progressive rate which gave me time to get some opposite lock on and balance the car out on the gas. I dont think I was judging when the lock needed to be wound off very well as it was quite easy to just spin right round on the gas or to get into a 'tank slapper' situation. One think for sure is its more difficult at higher speeds.

Dealing with power oversteer on roundabouts and junction exits has not prepared me too well. I think some of this is sliding into or during the corner drastically changes the attitude of the car. On a roundabout you 'provoke' the loss of grip - on the track you are already near to the limit of physical and mechanical grip.

Another issue is the steering rack on the hachi - my westfield has 1.5 turns lock to lock so you don't need to move your hands or feed the wheel to add opposite lock. I guess the hachi is nearly 3 turns. This is taking some getting used to.

I am going to attend one of the practice sessions in the UK at the end of this month. I am not put off by yesterdays experience - it just shows me a need to experiment more with straight dounuts with a widening circumference and better control the transition from lock to lock in figure of 8 moves.

I think part of becoming a better driver is accepting you have something to learn. Most people just assume they are driving gods - I do not.

Looking forward to getting better.

I also wonder if my hachi is set up the best it could be for drifting - I think all of the dampers are clicked to medium and I haven't got a clue what poundage the springs are or how strong the front and rear rollbars are. The car has no body roll at all so I'm assuming they are quite stift. It also has rollercentre adjusters on the front so the car turns in real well and there is no real strong understeer. Has a fair bit of camber on the front too.

Would be interested to know how yours is set up.

[Mux213]

Ian, super cool!

[rikard]

Ian.G Wrote:Would be interested to know how yours is set up.

I am currently running -3.5 deg camber in the front with the shocks set to almost 2/3 (17 clicks from hardest, 45 click total adjustment) hard in the front and the back 4 clicks harder than the front.
With this set up I got next to no understeer at SPA a few weeks ago. Yesterday I did a track day in France and raised the car by about 15mm in the front to clear some bigger tires and now I am getting a little understeer but overall the car feels very good.
The day was actually very good as you could drift and the marshels did not tell you anything at all
Nice short track with a lot of 2nd and 3rd gear corners.
Going there again on the 5th of Dec, it is only 100 euro for the day!
Fot the people in the UK, it is actually only 1 hr from Calais
Here is a picture, trying to go a little sideways!

[JonT]

I was interested in Spa for my Euro tour especially as arriving in Zeebrugge makes it on the way to the alps. Their website didn't mention the track days, just driving schools. Is there a calender for the track days.

[rikard]

JonT Wrote:I was interested in Spa for my Euro tour especially as arriving in Zeebrugge makes it on the way to the alps. Their website didn't mention the track days, just driving schools. Is there a calender for the track days.

Don't think they are listed yet for next year and sometimes they don't list them on the website.

[Aico]

Is the picture from Spa? I checked the map, but Spa isn't that far away for from Holland. Could be a nice trackday if the price is around 100 Euro's.

[rikard]

Aico Wrote:Is the picture from Spa? I checked the map, but Spa isn't that far away for from Holland. Could be a nice trackday if the price is around 100 Euro's.

The 100 euro track day and picture was here:
http://www.circuitdecroix.com/
(I think the site is down right now!)
They have another one on the 21st of this month and on the 5th of Next month! I will be there for sure in the 5th, maybe on the 21st as well!
Would be great if some more AE's could join.
It is 1 hr from Calais and about 45 min from Lille.
http://www.circuitdriver.com/guides/croix.asp

[Aico]

Damn that a 3 hour drive. Well the track seems cheap to hire and it looks good. So it should be worth it.

I once went to Papenburg and that was 3:15hour drive so I can live with it. Do you know howmuch is it to rent the track for 1 whole day?

Would be nice if you can get the 100Euro/person fee, with a group smaller than 10 cars. This way you can organise it more easely.

The beauty is people from the UK, Franch, Belgium and Holland can come to the track.