DriftQuestion here

[E7-S14]

My question is how much does tire wear make a GREAT diffrence drifting in the rain

my friend and i went out for a little rainy day drift prac. yesterday(it was in a vacant back parkinglot.. no one around..)My car which is an automatic with NO lsdHis car, a 5-speed WITH FACTORY lsd

my car slid easily... i mean beautufully, best drifting ive done since ive had the car(lil undr a year) but my tires are almost completly bald on the inside.

My Friends car didnt slide that easily..so i drove it and i had trouble getting the rear to kick out...i would think with it being 5-speed with aVLSD wouldmake it soo much eiasier.. He just bought new tires(some Falcon tire)

oh and MY car has drop springs and HE's running stock suspensionand i SUCK at 5-speed(stalld it a couple times )

hopefully you guys can help me.. this has been bothering me all day.
Modified by 240DRifter7 at 8:00 PM 3/30/2007

[slidecrave]

the answer to this is very simple.. think about it if there is less friction between you and the ground then guess what you will end up sliding around a lot easier.. so thats why your friend with newer tires was having a bit more trouble since all those things you mentioned dont make much of a difference when its wet and you have balled tires

[E7-S14]

but when my tires had good thread on them i still got it to slide easier than when i drove his..

i mean i thought the vlsd would make a drastic diff. or or maybe its me.idk

[mzeo]

what method were you using to initiate on your friends car? ...and how wet, like sloppy wet, or misted wet?

[E7-S14]

misted wetand at first i used a faint like teqnique(turnd into corneruntill rear kicks out like i do in my auto)

then i tried ebrakin it but i just couldnt keep it goin

i know its prob cuz of my lack of experiance but in my car i was accually doing quite well

[mzeo]

I'm still a newb compaired to 99% of the guys on here, but you would probably have better luck with clutch kicking.

Tire wear makes a huge difference.

The combination of more grip, vlsd, and manual are probably what hindered your going sideways in his car; Since you're used to the opposite. As long as you can drift in your car, that's all that matters.

[neverlift]

did you correct any of the lowering you did to your car? like no camber arms in rear(toe rods too buddy), your close to 3 degrees neg. in the back, your friend is on stock height/camber/caster/toe/blah, he has a better contact patch to the ground,not to mention he had you said new tires, well are they the same ones you have? no. I thought not,his are performance and yours are? touring most likely, not a knock at you at all just saying a performance tire is gonna out shine a economy tire...

btw,your sure your buddy has a lsd? orange sticker or 5 bolt flange.... or old lift the rear trick...

[phanatikz32]

at the risk of sounding like a dumbass can you please explain camber caster etc. to me, i am a newb when it comes to that sort of stuff and i suck at math...

[E7-S14]

did you correct any of the lowering you did to your car? like no camber arms in rear(toe rods too buddy), your close to 3 degrees neg. in the back, your friend is on stock height/camber/caster/toe/blah, he has a better contact patch to the ground,not to mention he had you said new tires, well are they the same ones you have? no. I thought not,his are performance and yours are? touring most likely, not a knock at you at all just saying a performance tire is gonna out shine a economy tire...

btw,your sure your buddy has a lsd? orange sticker or 5 bolt flange.... or old lift the rear trick...

No correcting what so ever.... just lowered.. but im sure its more than 3 degrees neg. cuz the camber was outta whack b4 i lowerd it.heres what my thread wear looks like

but do keep in mind it was wet

about my friends240im pretty sure its the VLSD b/c of the shape of the diff.coverand when he burns out he rips up both rears

I however will take another shot at his car on another day.. and ill nail it fersure

at the risk of sounding like a dumbass can you please explain camber caster etc. to me, i am a newb when it comes to that sort of stuff and i suck at math...

Caster(v)(dont ask me how to explain that lol)

Camber(v)

Toe(v)

[Joe]

yea thats like 4 degrees of camber dude lol. get that **** fixed immediately. youll go faster while sideways and tires will last longer.

and knowing what each alignment setting means is way different than knowing what they do to the handling of the car.

ohhhhhhoooooo

just for ****s and giggles here is my current setup

Front Rear-----------------------------Cam -2.0 -1.75Cas 8.5 n/aToe .1d in .1d in

[phanatikz32]

those pics helped alot i guess, but would you like to explain how each effects the handling and such kamin?

[kamikazi]

camber:say you have a stock car everything set up at 0. more than likley when driving hard on regular tires the outside edge and side wall will be torn up. what happens is, the tires roll and makes the contact patch move to the outside of the tire and in return makes it smaller. in order to fix that and gain more traction under hard cornering you must use negative camber. too much negative camber you run into traction problems under acceleration

toeyou can use toe to bit harder in turns but really eats up tires if using more than a couple digrees. when racing gocarts on oval dirt tracks we would put toe out in the left front and to in, in the right front. thus when going into the turn, that left front will bight really hard and pull the front into the turn.

also if you put about 2 deg. of toe in, in the rear of your buddies car it will kick out alot easier.

[Joe]

toeyou can use toe to bit harder in turns but really eats up tires if using more than a couple digrees. .

also if you put about 2 deg. of toe in, in the rear of your buddies car it will kick out alot easier.

your explanation of camber was perfect, the most important thing to remember is since you are drifting its really easy to get an idea of how your camber is set because the tires wear so fast. you run a set of tires and look at the wear pattern, make adjustments off of that lol. just eyeballing it works great if its a serious track car.

but your toe explanation is 100% incorrect.

2 DEGREES of toe is INSANE. ive never seen that in my life on the most fully built cars on the planet. toe is measured in TENTHS of a degree or FRACTIONS of an inch. and toe OUT is for easy, snappy initiations. not toe IN.

here is a short explanation for REAR toe.

im gonna reiterate this is for the REAR of the car. not the front.

toe in - more traction, slower,harder initiations, more stable while drifting.

toe out - easier to initiate, easier to drift but not good for speed. (slower drifting compared to toe in)

for the first 2ish years i drifted i ran a little bit of toe out in the back (.1-.2degrees). it made initiating SUPER easy if you have some horsepower. i never had to clutch kick. just roll into the throttle and turn the wheel. even at 90 mph the back steps out nicely, even if its slower than a clutch kick. a couple months ago i made a change to toe IN in the rear because i was going for my "pro" license and needed some more traction and speed. it made a BIG difference in the way the car felt. I had to start clutch kicking and using more techniques to drift for the super high speed stuff but i also had to use less throttle adjustments to hold full lock and surprisingly less steering adjustments too. the car just has more traction while sideways. and i know that sounds stupid but if youve felt a change in handling like that you would understand. think of going from a ****ty all season tire to a Z speed high end tire.

[kamikazi]

yea my bad 2deg. would be insane. and when adjusting or playing with toe settings, if you put too much you will get wheel hop so if you adjust it to much just take alittle bit out.

i am thinking about gettting one of these. its a camber caster tool for changing setting at the track, the set up with the quick set adapter is 190$http://solotime.com/index.asp?...D=464

[E7-S14]

ok please escuse my noobish question, but ill never kno unless i ask

i have some idea of what parts can adjust camber/caster/toebut im not 100% sure

i kno withs Adjustable RUCA's in the rear you can adjust your rear camber.but what parts will let you adjust everything?What pars can do the same for up front?

thx

[kamikazi]

well stock, you cant really adjust much. you can adjust a little of camber and toe out back and only toe up front. you should be good for a while if you get some camber plates, rear toe rods and since your lowered you might have to get ruca's to get a little more back to a balanced set up but you might be fine with just the camber plates.

[E7-S14]

im actually savin for coils(hopefully ill have em buythe end of summer)so im gonna lower it as much as i can and it still b practial on the streetsi was planing on just goin with some RUCA's but since you suggested camber plates im gonna have to get those too

[kamikazi]

most of your coilovers out there come with them. so see if the brand of coilovers your going with come with them before you buy some.

[Matej]

You have non-directional tires, and if you friend has Falkens, they're most likely directional, which makes a big difference.When drifting with directional tires, put the rear ones on backwards. They will drift much better, and last way longer.

[Joe]

directional tires only make a difference when you are talking about water movement. they do not drift any differently and do NOT last any longer.

there is NO difference in a street tire, on dry pavement, if you run a directional tire backwards vs. forwards

a RACE SLICK, yes. direction makes a difference. but not a STREET TIRE.

[H8tred]

Figure I'll bring the thread back to life a little, and dive into the Caster.



Think of a bicycle wheel in the front forks. The contact patch of the tire is actually ahead of the turning axis, this is effected by rake angle of the forks (Has nothing to do with cars at this point). The contact patch being in lead of the steering axis makes the bike more stable and easier to keep up right, while on the downside, it lessens steering response. Now, on the other hand, if the contact patch is directly under the steering axis, it give less stability in a straight line, but the steering response is quicker. Hence it's name, Caster, like caster wheels on a cart.

If you do a search on bicycle geometry, you can find a lot more info, but it's not exactly apples to apples since we're dealing with two wheels rather than one. However, it will give you the jest of what it's all about.

[typeZEROs14]

can you adjust caster with stock suspension parts?? or aftermarket

[Joe]

aftermarket only.

[SX APPEAL]

I go to an automoticve technical school and have access to alignment racks and such, so recently was making some adjustments on the S14, basically putting it back to factory specs since it was lowered when i got it and hadnt been realigned. Luckily the previous owner had installed adjustable RUCA's. I found that the adjustment range these provided allowed the factory rear toe cam bolts to be used bring toe back into spec. Since with the rear multilink setup on the 240, when you adjust either camber or toe, one adjustment will change the other. This worked for me, but every car is made and flexed up differently, so it may not work for everyone. But I was able to come from about -2.75 rear camber and 1 rear toe back to about l1.3, and .1 respectively