Jon Burke Wrote:
>
> starts getting interesting on page 2. (oh, and my
> username over there is up2mtns)
>
And I'm a noisy little cricket...
You gots to understand. There's sideways, and then there's driving at maximum grip. On gravel or dirt, you're going to necessarily be "sliding" but the car's gonna be at a pretty good angle.
At the last rallycross (boo, hiss, I know, so f'ing what) apparently I was ooh'ing and aah'ing the crowds with my "sideways" driving. This being the first time in a very long time that I was in my RWD, and my new engine is putting down 160-odd HP instead of 80-odd and since *I* built it as a shit brickhouse, it's insensitive to revs so I can wind it out to 9000rpm and know that it's not going to frag, so I was really using that power.
And to use that power in corners, you need to vector your thrust. As JVL says (and damn it, it's *true*) in a FWD as long as you can steer in the direction you want to go, the rest of the car will follow. In a RWD and AWD, you can't steer (all of) the drive wheels except by pitching around.
Elliot (I Like it Sideways on DI) said that I was faster into and out of our hairpin than the big power big grip AWD guys, in my half as much power little RWD thing. Thrust vectoring... get the CAR aimed in the right direction, and in the right gear, add a bootfull of throttle, and get those big soft compound Michelins churning and awaay we go. I gave him a ride afterwards and he kept going on about how it "gripped like AWD".
I dunno what this has to do with steering quickeners. I just wish some FWD cars had shown up so I could compare times... but every day I wake up I learn something new. Who'd have thunk that you need power in order to be able to use power... weird, eh? No way to go 10%, it's full-out or nothing.
Pete Remner
Cleveland, Ohio
1984 RX-7 (rallycross thing)
1978
Silence is golden, but duct tape is silver.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/31/2008 07:59PM by Pete.
