RWD Rally Advice

SO! in the process of having a merkur built but i have no rwd experience, ive done plenty of gravel driving and so called rallycross in my 2002 zx3 and 1993 legacy ss, and im no pro, but i handle myself well, and am very composed, but my daily is a 2011 wrx. so im just curious what i can do to improve my driving (legally of course) without actually having a rwd car here. sorry if this post is scatter brained.... yes i actively heel toe, left foot brake, and drive like im racing (not fast but practicing down shifts, car control, brake management etc) what would yall recommend?

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RileySteenFRT
SO! in the process of having a merkur built but i have no rwd experience, ive done plenty of gravel driving and so called rallycross in my 2002 zx3 and 1993 legacy ss, and im no pro, but i handle myself well, and am very composed, but my daily is a 2011 wrx. so im just curious what i can do to improve my driving (legally of course) without actually having a rwd car here. sorry if this post is scatter brained.... yes i actively heel toe, left foot brake, and drive like im racing (not fast but practicing down shifts, car control, brake management etc) what would yall recommend?

I'd say: first knock off that faggy LFB and girly-man "heel and toe" bullshit.
Heel and toe on a synchro box is posing.
Drive the gawddam car where you're going*

Develop a sense of fore and aft and L and R weight transfer.

Stand like this and watch endless Grupp H and F-cup vids


Then stand like that again or sit like this



or this to really increase awareness of weight transfer




and recall those vids in your mind...


*That's the biggest lesson: BE HERE NOW...
Be mindful of what the point of what you're doing is.
Driving to the store in traffic?
Drive to the store.

---

John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

Keep up the footwork. That's what separates the real drivers from the rest. Can't say I've ever made a non rev matched downshift. Normal, legal driving is seat time. Make the most of it. Practice the lfb to heel toe switchover. Find business centers to play around in when it snows. Charge off ramps so you can practice heel toe. Keep a perfect driving record. Good luck.

At the end of the day, you do what you need to do to make yourself a better driver. If you want to H&T then do it, same with lfb. Will you need it every mile of every stage no, but when you need to do it then by god it helps if you know how to, and are confident doing it. We are all doing this crazy assed sport for our own crazy assed reasons, you do what gives you the most enjoyment. Hell I don't practice hand brake turns, why, I still have the foot e-brake in the truck so what's the point in trying. Anyway a Scandi-flick is way more fun, and gives the spectators a show.

---

Yes, it's a Ranger.
Xr4Ti, it is rwd and was made in Germany.

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john vanlandingham
I'd say: first knock off that faggy LFB and girly-man "heel and toe" bullshit.
Heel and toe on a synchro box is posing.

You also talk about certain transmissions being horribly weak... I wonder if there is a correlation between the two.

Or, perhaps you are thinking of 'double clutching,' which surely is posing on a synchro box...

I'm guessing that you haven't spent enough time on really slick ice to understand that rev matching on downshifts can reduce or eliminate driveline shock that - on really slick ice - can lead to a loss of traction and unintended consequences.

When you have more grip, dumping the clutch on a non-rev matched engine will cause driveline shock that will beat-up gearboxes, and everything attached. (less-so on a close ratio box, but still... it will be there. Yes, the clutch acts a something of a buffer, but it doesn't soak it all up.

Again, I'm a newb to rally, but have spent a shit-ton of time driving stick on loose and slippery surfaces.

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ALS FTW

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john vanlandingham
I'd say: first knock off that faggy LFB and girly-man "heel and toe" bullshit.
Heel and toe on a synchro box is posing.

You also talk about certain transmissions being horribly weak... I wonder if there is a correlation between the two.

Or, perhaps you are thinking of 'double clutching,' which surely is posing on a synchro box...

I'm guessing that you haven't spent enough time on really slick ice to understand that rev matching on downshifts can reduce or eliminate driveline shock that - on really slick ice - can lead to a loss of traction and unintended consequences.

When you have more grip, dumping the clutch on a non-rev matched engine will cause driveline shock that will beat-up gearboxes, and everything attached. (less-so on a close ratio box, but still... it will be there. Yes, the clutch acts a something of a buffer, but it doesn't soak it all up.

Again, I'm a newb to rally, but have spent a shit-ton of time driving stick on loose and slippery surfaces.

You're probably right..
Winter 1970 from England to sweden in old RWD car on summer tires DEC-FEB 71
Winter 73-74 in Sweden on summer tires VW and Transit
Winter 74-75 in Sweden
Winter 76 all across Northern German to Sweden Mecedes 220s on summer tires in a storm that shut down all Northern Europe
Winter 76-77 snow daily from 4 OCT to March 77 Peugeot 404D

and on and on..
Feb 1985 Seattle to Fairbanks snow and ice from Bellingham--1 day quicker than guy from Fairbanks usually did the trip--Saab 96---with snow tires for once. -54 in Yukon

Winter 89-90 back in Europe
Winter 93 in Sweden--summer tires again

In rally only 3 Nationals..1 US was leading Group2 when shocks ripped up their mounts in the rear---so DNF while leading.
2 Canajian National on solid ice---no ice tires tractioized all to hell---massacreed all to death

On and on..


Man was I lucky it was never icy and slick conditions ever..

---

John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

IMO the important thing is that no matter what car you have, front drive, rear drive, both drive, whatever... click with the car so you can ignore it and actually look at where you're going. If you know, deep down know, what makes your car do what, then you can let your lizardbrain do all the work and you just focus on that point down the road waaay down there, you want to be THERE, watch it like a hawk watches its lunch.

---

Pete Remner
Cleveland, Ohio

1984 RX-7 (rallycross thing)
1978
Silence is golden, but duct tape is silver.

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john vanlandingham
Man was I lucky it was never icy and slick conditions ever..

As a Canadian who grew up on the prairies I find the repetition of 'on summer tires' telling of the conditions you were actually traveling in. But, what-ever, that wasn't really the point anyway. (which you either missed, or purposefully deflected from)

Been here on the prairies for 10 years and have not seen a single event that constitutes a winter storm nor would I ever truly feel the need to run studded tires for the winter. Where I grew up not having studs meant not getting back to your house If you went "down" town. And yes of course there's bad days here but one actual blizzard amounts to more snow overnight than the entire decade here. In the mountains it's a different story but still nowhere near as bad as winter driving can get.

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Power means nothing if you cannot control it!

I heel&toe on every downshift, mostly because I don't like the destabilizing lurch that happens if I don't, but partly because I like to be nice to my transmissions. That being said, I know of at least one fast driver who uses the tranny-snatch in a RWD to help rotate the car.

I LFB a lot in the middle of corners in my FWD car, but that same habit put me into a bank in a RWD car. The story of that adventure is on here somewhere.

I use my left foot to brake *before* entering a turn a lot, particularly if I'm not going to have to downshift. I distinguish this from LFB as it's a slowing action, not a line-adjustment action. In other words, I consider "braking with my left foot" and "left-foot braking" to be two completely different things happening at two different times for two different purposes.

In general, I found that in a RWD car I had to be a little slower entering corners, mostly because the car swings around a lot more and uses up road space. That's not such a big deal on wider roads.

I also found that I could bomb over middlin-sized jumps better because the car didn't want to crash in on its nose quite so much.

---

Self-righteous douche canoe

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ALS FTW

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john vanlandingham
Man was I lucky it was never icy and slick conditions ever..

As a Canadian who grew up on the prairies I find the repetition of 'on summer tires' telling of the conditions you were actually traveling in. But, what-ever, that wasn't really the point anyway. (which you either missed, or purposefully deflected from)

I rarely have any idea of what ever the fuck points you are getting at. I don't think you know either..
I have no idea why you even post anything here.. You seem primarily interested in puffing your chest up.

You made an asinine, ignorant and condescending assumption.
I helped you see that it was an asininee, ignorant, and condescending incorrect assumption.

I repeated "on summer tires" because driving on snow and ice with decent Nokia or Gislaved studded tire---my preference being Nokia's wonderful NR09s in 165 x 15----is easy and I've done plenty of that, too. Depending on road bed temp, bout like loose gravel..

What was your point?

Oh I checked "I'm guessing you haven't spent time on...."
So. You guessed wrong..The summer tire reference is "even with excellent Michelin XZX radials--on snow its slicker"

---

John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/30/2015 01:34AM by john vanlandingham.

Any critical thinker/reader would look at a post and not look for some obviously poking of fun at someone, but would look at how the discussion started for a hint as to what 'the point' was...
The post opened from this quote from you:

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john vanlandingham
I'd say: first knock off that faggy LFB and girly-man "heel and toe" bullshit.
Heel and toe on a synchro box is posing.

I then went on to talk about why rev matching, which inherently includes heel and toe, is important and - with tongue firmly in cheek - suggested that if you didn't think it was valuable that you must not have spend any time in seriously slippy conditions. (knowing from your countless micro-essays that you had spent years in Europe and Scandinavia)

The point - which is directly related to RWD Rally Advice (as opposed to being JV centric) - was that 'heel and toe' isn't posing, but is useful and is more mechanically sympathetic to the driveline (See the SRDC's comments above.) The fact that you claim heel and toe isn't needed, but also think that some gearboxes are inherently weak probably isn't a coincidence.

And Steve... I was neither talking about Alberta winters nor winters in the last 10 years. Southern Alberta, from what I've seen, doesn't really have winter as I grew up in.

All good gearboxes crunch a little bit. That's how you know the synchros are still there.