Prediction: You WILL damage your car in one way or the other.
Drifting happens. You should be looking for how to avoid drifting if you want to be fast.
I understand it's become very popular to do this with your car though. I hope you get some good advice. I'll be the first to console you when you try it and hurt your car, or worse, yourself.
Good Luck, and practice on the autocross course, or find a paved empty parking lot, field or something. There should not be any thing to stop an uncontrolled spin except the fricition of rubber and pavement.
Wait for rain, and then find a huge empty parking lot. You'll probably want to try it first in a smaller car and then work yourself up. Or you can just do what I did, get a GoKart and go play in some dry dirt :thumbup: ... it's not a car, but it's a start.
Driving sideways at an autocross will earn you an instant ejection. Autocross sites are too hard to find to risk losing one because the owner/cops/neighbors usually don't like seeing peoplke driving in smokey circles.
Big Parking lot at night in winter when it's just snowed.
1)turn DSC Off.
2)Start at low speeds to get a feel for oversteering.
basically you can turn your front wheels left or right, floor it, then when oversteer occurs, just counter steer.
If you go faster like I do (usually 90-100 km/hr ) (yeah it's a big ass parking lot with a nice runway) you can feather brake into an oversteer.
Or you can keep the speeds lower (30-40) and perform a J-turn by disbalancing your car, then pull up and drop the e-brake to give a litthe swing. It's almost like doing a reverse 180.
REMEMBER:
Look where you want to go.
Practice in the wee hours of the morning 1-4am, because no one is there, and you won't risk injuring others in case something goes wrong.
If there is a car which enters the lot. Be curteous and come to a full stop and let them pass.
It's really hard on your suspension. It's designed to absorb up/down movement, not lateral movement. When you're drifting, you're essentially pushing in really hard on the bottom of the outside rear wheel. That's tremendous sideway stress to a wheel. If you have low profile tires, you also risk damaging your rim as the tires will rolll underneath it a bit when pushed like that. That's why the Japanese drifters lower the psi on the tires to give it more sidewall contact patch.
With the warnings out of the way, there are quite a few ways to induce oversteer. Drifting is essentially throttle-steering your car once it's in overstter condition. What's throttle steering? Well... uhmm.. go to a car control clinic. They'll have you go around in a circle really fast, and you'll notice that you can increase the diameter or decrease the diameter of the circle by adjusting the gas pedal without turning the steering wheel. It has racing application too, because you can turn left/right in a turn by using your throttle, not your steering wheel. Driving schools rule!
How to induce oversteer? Well, find a real wet area. Dry spots are too harsh on your car. You can 1) pull handbrake while in a turn, 2) full throttle to spin the rear wheel while in a turn, 3) in the middle of a turn, abruptly lift off the throttle, then re-engage throttle once the tail have spun out.
My recommendation is first go to a BMWCCA sponsored car control clinic. Learn what understeer and oversteer feels like, and how to control it. After you're familiar with what it feels like, then try it out on a wet parking lot. Don't try drifting around on the street! Your turning radius may be a lot larger than you anticipated and you'll hit curbs, real hard.
What's the difference between understeer and oversteer? In understeer you see what you're going to hit. In oversteer you have no idea what you're going to hit.
It's really hard on your suspension. It's designed to absorb up/down movement, not lateral movement. When you're drifting, you're essentially pushing in really hard on the bottom of the outside rear wheel. That's tremendous sideway stress to a wheel. If you have low profile tires, you also risk damaging your rim as the tires will rolll underneath it a bit when pushed like that. That's why the Japanese drifters lower the psi on the tires to give it more sidewall contact patch.
With the warnings out of the way, there are quite a few ways to induce oversteer. Drifting is essentially throttle-steering your car once it's in overstter condition. What's throttle steering? Well... uhmm.. go to a car control clinic. They'll have you go around in a circle really fast, and you'll notice that you can increase the diameter or decrease the diameter of the circle by adjusting the gas pedal without turning the steering wheel. It has racing application too, because you can turn left/right in a turn by using your throttle, not your steering wheel. Driving schools rule!
How to induce oversteer? Well, find a real wet area. Dry spots are too harsh on your car. You can 1) pull handbrake while in a turn, 2) full throttle to spin the rear wheel while in a turn, 3) in the middle of a turn, abruptly lift off the throttle, then re-engage throttle once the tail have spun out.
My recommendation is first go to a BMWCCA sponsored car control clinic. Learn what understeer and oversteer feels like, and how to control it. After you're familiar with what it feels like, then try it out on a wet parking lot. Don't try drifting around on the street! Your turning radius may be a lot larger than you anticipated and you'll hit curbs, real hard.
What's the difference between understeer and oversteer? In understeer you see what you're going to hit. In oversteer you have no idea what you're going to hit.
The Japenese Drifter shows dont lower their PSI tho. If you've ever seen that 30 min clip where the guy gets out he's hanging onto the car and its still going (big ol drifter show)... their cars have mad camber and extra stiff tires that only make contact on the inner edges. This gives them less contact area on the ground so they can continuely keep the tires spinning and drifts more consistent... kinda like playing in the dirt
Plus, i dont know that I would lower my PSI to drift on a normal car anyway... as you said you risk rim damage and lowering your psi only encourages that, plus your sidewalls aren't meant to be used to save your rims.
I would go ahead and pick this up if you want some good instructions on all the techniques. http://store.driftingshop.com/driftbible.html
I wouldn't go out there and do some of the harder techniques...
And look under calendars. There is one this weekend at Las Vegas, but it's too late for you to register. Nonetheless, there are plenty more coming up! I think I may be going to either the June buttonwillow or the september Sears point driving school.
It would be cool to have a BMW in the D1 drift competitions. Dodge has a Viper in it, so does GM with a GTO that asian kids think of as a front wheel drive grand prix.
Most of the drift cars are dialed with a lot of over steering. They usually remove the rear sway bar and modify the steering column to improve turning angle.
To drift in a BMW is quite easy. BMWs are pretty balanced front to rear. It is easy to side step on any given corner with weight transfer (brake or throttle). To keep it side way, you need HP to sustain the rear wheel spinning (smoking).
I know a lot of people (at the race track) really look down on drifting. I had a classroom instructor called my action stupid (while I was one of the instructor at my BMWCCA chapter. BTW, I am the VP for my local chapter). In my opinion, drifting actually improved my driving skill. I am no longer panicing while the back end come out at the high speed corner. Yes, it does burn your rubber. But, so does driving on the track that burns fuel, brake pads, brake rotors and other things. I am sure some people here constitue that abuse to your car.
Drifting is just another form of motorsports. Please try it in a safe place. Also, to have a real cool drift, you gotta have LSD in your car. Otherwise, you can't keep going sideway too long.
what does it do to the tires? just wear tread? is it harder in summer tires?
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