Oversteer

[funkyboogalooo]

ok me riddle me this? how the hell do you control rear wheel drift? I love it when it happens but havent got a clue what i'm doing

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mikebatty/

[Dave_H]

On the right car you normally contol it with a mix of the throttle and the steering.

I've sat here try to think how to explain it, but it's a "feel" thing as far as I'm conserned - Others may well be able to explain it in a "techie" way, but I've always found I've been able to sence what the front or rear wheels are doing, and to either steer or apply the gas when needed.

I'm assuming from your post you meant how to keep your car "hanging out" rear-end wise?

If not, then oversteer is normally caused by the rear end of the car being light, or not having much down force to get the grip.

I may just be talking B*****ks though

[simpo one]

Try a skidpan for starters. Don't worry, they're so slippery that it all happens at 20mph, not 120mph!

[GreenV8S]

quote:


ok me riddle me this? how the hell do you control rear wheel drift? I love it when it happens but havent got a clue what i'm doing

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mikebatty/

Sorry, there's another of those endless rambling posts coming ... !

I guess you're talking about oversteer here? This is basically where the rear wheels slide more than the front ones.

The most obvious way to provoke this is by accelerating hard while cornering, although you can also provoke it by braking hard into a corner or using engine braking. In either case, oversteer starts when the back wheels start to slide more than the front. When this happens, the back of the car will start to drift out. This situation is relatively unstable and if you don't catch it, the back end is likely to slide further and further. Ultimately it could spin right round although you would usually run out of road before this happens. (Curiously, you are likely to run off the *inside* of the corner.)

I think this is probably one of the easiest ways to lose control of a TVR, and the biggest danger most of us will face. Every TVR driver needs to know what to do to get the car back under control, because it's something you will never encounter in front wheel rive cars, and until you've developed the rear-wheel-drive mindset it can be a frightening experience. Even if you know the theory, it can take a lot of practice to put it into effect and more often than not, the first few times you try are going to be pretty ugly.

Basically you need to balance the car by steering into the slide and feathering the throttle. You want to get the front wheels more or less pointing the way the car is going. This means if you're going round a right-hand corner you straighten up the steering slightly, or even steer to the left ("opposite lock").

These two corrections work together i.e. the more steering correction you give it the less throttle correction is needed, although normally you would do both together. The sooner you start to apply the correction, the less correction you need. In the wet, it can be extremely hard to catch it and even if you do everything right you can easily push the car past the point of no return. In the dry the car is less unstable and it is far easier to recover.

No doubt everyone will have their own stories to tell but in my experience, the first half a turn of opposite lock came fairly naturally and this was usually enough to catch the car in the dry. When more extreme correction was needed I used to run out of elbows until I got into the habbit of 'palming' the wheel round to get lock on and off quickly. The in-car video shows that these days when the car is drifting I take one hand off the wheel immediately the back starts to move, ready to grab an armful of opposite lock.

Having got the opposite lock on and stopped the car going wight round, you hit the second problem. Since the car is now sideways with loads of opposite lock on, it's going to swing back *far* faster than it stepped out. By the time you've caught the first swing, you need to be winding off the opposite lock - don't wait for the back end to straighten up or it'll overshoot the other way even further, and you'll have a huge tank slapper which will certainly see you into the scenery. More often than not, you'll go off on the outside of the corner, some way after the actual bend, and it can take some explaining to show how you managed that.

Once you have the hang of it you can hang the back end out with relatively small corrections of steering and throttle. But while you're practicing you can expect the car to get away from you from time to time, and use up a lot of room. I'd strongly suggest you don't try this on public roads and certainly not where anyone else could become involved. If you find yourself at an airfield day or on your private test track, the best way to practice is to drive round a tight corner in first gear. Boot the throttle briefly, and as soon as the back starts to move, straighten the steering and take your foot off the gas. The car will jump back into line. Since you're expecting it you should soon be able to anticipate how much steering and throttle correction you need and soon be holding longer and longer slides. This should soon be second nature. The tricky part is recognising when the back is stepping out and reacting quickly and positively, without overreacting. This is just a matter of track time, and in a safe environment this can be great fun to practice.

There's one more thing you should know. If you aren't sure you're going to catch a big slide, you do have one other important option. Simply jump on the brakes and lock all four wheels, and the car will slide to a graceful stop, more or less in a straight line, scrubbing off speed the whole way. If you do this soon enough you stand a very good chance of missing the scenery, and if you are unlucky enough to hit anything, you've done a lot to reduce the severity of the impact. If you try to 'ride it out' and get the car back under control, yes you may manage it but if you don't you're going to be travelling faster, and probably spinning, when you meet the scenery. You can very easily knock all four corners off and potentially destroy the car. Unless that lap time is really important to you, jumping on the brakes is a much safer option.

Hope this makes sense!

Cheers,
Peter Humphries (and a green V8S)

[Madcop]

The last post just about says it all. All I will say is for gods sake dont practice it on the road because when you see Tiffany Dell doing it he has had a huge amount of practice. He also I assume, wouldnt do it on the road.
Police training used to be done with a view to developing and controlling the skid on a skid pan. Great fun but purely impractical for the road as there isnt room to do it.
Training now is centred around recognising when and how the vehicle is going to be put into this type of control loss and AVOIDING IT in the first instance. Control is taught but believe me it is not something you want to do for real unless you are in a safe environment. It can very easily and quickly go cloudy for you.!!

[anonymous-user]

I ended up in a sideways drift in the wet in my Spitfire last week.

Going around a roundabout around 15-20mph and the front became light, so I turned a bit tighter on the steering wheel so as to get around the roundabout, and the back began to slide aswell.

Ended up doing a very slow sideways drift/tailslide.

All I could think was, I drive a 3.0Turbo Supra, a 4.0 Chim, and I'm going to lose control of a 1500 Spitfire!!

Managed to catch it though.

Lee

[Wedg1e]

Yup, had a few of those 'underpant-discolouring' moments in my old Tasmin! As Peter says, once it's let go, you wind on some opposite lock and sit there waiting for something to happen. Next thing you're spinning the other way, frantically winding the lock off but to no avail. All I could do most of the time was pray I didn't hurt someone. Luckily, I never hit anything either, although on the most memorable occasion, when we came to a standstill, my mate in the passenger seat opened his door, observed the large fence post about 2" from the n/s taillamp, said "You don't want to get any closer than that" and spent the rest of the journey in silence!
I always found (in the Tas at any rate) that if I did catch the slide it would always fetch the car up with a lurch as forward motion was resumed. Down to my cack-handedness, I suppose. The bigger Wedge I have now feels a lot more controllable, on the odd occasion when it seems things might go tits-up; however I'll almost certainly be going faster in this than I would've been in the Tasmin when it does happen.... ;-)
I went for a hurtle in a Cerbera the other night; we left a sliproad at 120 that I'd have been pushed to reach 85-90 on in the 390..... bloody hell those things can shift.

W.