i loved driving through the mountains, its so beautiful, i was going to north carolina and through west virginia and kentucky(i think) anyway it was a blast, all i have locally are industrial parks, i didnt think anyone else hit these....

i prefer backroads because its safer but, we have alot of little industrial areas that are great to hit. there is one that is nothing but a huge open lot and another section where there are planters and its abandoned. bad part is that all the best spots are in the next town over which is about a 2 min drive, but the cops are super assholes.

One of my favorites now is area where there are always large semi trucks during the day. And so its a huge area of four lane wide roads that are only marked as two lane, and there are no stop signs, just a whole bunch of wide 90 degree corners, its perfect for learning new things. Even when I spin really badly I still have never hit anything.

STick with parking lots till you have mastered your car control. Open roads will leave you with big tickets or big repair bills if you fuck up.
I personally have been sliding on a regular basis for 2yrs solid, and feel I am consistant enough to take it the mtn roads. I use alot precoutions when on open mtn roads. We have a full crew early in the morning to prevent any thing from happening to potential bystanders.

If my coolant seal holds out for a few more runs whe should have some wicked vids out soon.

Parden my writing I have a wicked flue so my mind is on scramble mode

haha if your talking about my video, that car has died (RIP) blew the engine driving to my girlfriends house going 60mph in 5th gear just cruising. i have accidently slid my SA a couple times because i have drag tires on the back that are slick in the rain, and i can honestly say it feels comfortable even when the backend gets out.

Sliding mountain roads = trouble

the few times I have gotten the gut to try its been a 35-40 mph feint/clutch kick on a u-turn. The car went sideways, tires squealed, I finished that one corner and said okay, thats enough. I'll leave mountain drifting until/if I ever get better goofing off in a parking lot is good enough for me.

I remember the first time I slid out of control. There is one semi-tight turn half a mile away from where I live, on the same road, that has one of those yellow signs that reads 20mph, but I can take it at 40 no problem. Well, one day, I don't know what I was thinking, I was probably going about 50 when I went onto that turn. Next thing I knew, my rear end came out effortlessly. Amazingly, tho, I did not panic. Ever. Instead, as if on instincts, I countersteered quickly to the left (road bends to the right with a slight incline at the beginning, decline at the end of the apex) and got on the brakes, my only focus being "Don't go in the ditch, don't go in the ditch." I still gotta learn to jam on the clutch, too, to keep the engine from stalling, but I was able to keep the car within the same lane I was in. Ha! Go me. So, my 7 ended up facing the opposite direction in the lane I was in, and was parked right by the ditch. I just started up the engine, turned around, and went on my way. And vowed never to take that turn no faster than 40 ever again. *L* I'm just glad no one else was on that road at the time or that would've been messy.

There is a parking lot a few miles away from where I live, and I took another peek at it: no streetlights littering it! So, I might give it a whirl one of these days. Big big parking lot. Hardly ever occupied. So, plenty of sliding room.

How does a parking lot help you learn to take lines and how to apex etc.

I can understand if you have cones or whatever but if you don't you could run wide on one run then run really tight on another and you'd barely notice.
Do you guys get smooth gutters in the US? Or just those horible 90 deg angled ones, industrial + smooth gutters = the win

one word. car control

parking lot is good fro learning car control, but yeah, its not a help for cornering and lines unless there is something like a tree or pole or curb to drift around.

we have those horrible 90 degree ones. at least almost everywhere that there are curbs, sometimes they are the smooth gutters though. anytime you hit those curbs though, something bound to break.

A parking lot is really only good to help you realize the limitations of your car, sort of, along with how well it'll handle a slide depending on your speed and angle.

I guess it would be good for learning the basics, but once you can catch and link should "graduate" to the track or something where you can apply a racing line and go for deep entries etc

Yeah, I don't think any one was trying to say that we where learning good racing lines by goofing around in parking lots.

I use parking lots for practicing new ideas or techniques. I'm not going to dive into a corner to see if I know how to do a braking drift, or something like that. You can learn how to do constant radius dohnuts, figure 8s, or use it as a skid pad.

Parking lots dont have a lot of structure, but they are great place to learn how to be consistant in holding a slide. Once you are able to shift through gears mid-slide, and change directions w/ out spinning out, through a road cone in. Then see how close you can get your front end to it. Its alot safer then on the street to learn the art drifting.
I've been doing local events and parking lots for 2.5yrs and finnally feel comfortable to take it to public roads. But I do have a full cew of people to video, and spot the road for Scott, and Me

yeah, i go on some roads in very secluded areas, but thats awesome you have a crew to spot for you. thats a good way to stay safe and i think that we can all agree its best to stay safe while drifting.

before i had my rx-7 i used to slide past the planters in the sears parking lot in my accord to see how close i could get haha kinda pointless but gives you a good sense of where a car is in a slide (especially since my car was slowing down trhough the slide)

so i didnt want to drift my SA, but i took my girlfriend home tonight after it rained, and i have huge drag tires on the car. 245/60/13s on the back and 205s in the front. the car grips like crazy in dry weather, but it just slides around every turn no matter how slow i go. so it had rained and the car would slide, and i have to say stock SA are soooooo much smoother than stock FCs drifting. they can handle a bigger angle with no changes to suspension, they arent so prone to spinning like an FC.

now my only concern is how will i feel drifting my 450lbs more FC. might need alot more hp than i plan on putting into it.

and for the hell of it i ran through a parking lot and did a lot of understeering and a little bit of sliding. probably there for 30 seconds just to get a better feel. i love my SA though.

So how do you control the snap oversteer???

Seems like my car has all the ingredients, 300+rwhp, hard suspension, locked diff....

But I am finding it very hard to control the snap oversteer as I pick up speed. Maybe my powerband is too narrow?

faster hands,better throttle cotrol, and better suspension setup(tuning)

remove the rear swaybar and install a nice simple panhard rod.

Not to be rude, but what are your experiences with setting up this chassis for drift?
From what I've researched you remove the rear swaybar when running the watts link due to the binding issues, not only from the watts but the angled upper control arms.
So when installing a panhard bar, you should also install a tri-link to remove all bind. Wouldn't you then think a rear sway bar would add more adjustabilty to your tuning of the rear suspension?

I have also tried running no rear sway bar on stock rear suspension. It made my transtions very unsmooth, and initations skeetchy. But what works for one person may not work for another. But both scott and I use rear sway bars with different amounts of pre-load and bushing styles.

What are you doing to where you get the snap overstear? Example, are you pushing on the gas and turning until the back end comes out? Or are you using another technique? Or is it just any time, no matter what?

speaking of understeer, i spun out last night. i was trying to take it easy around a corner thats usually a 35 or 40mph turn grip. and the backend slid at like 30 or 25. and i can honestly say i think i could have held it if i accelerated. this ever happen to anyone else? i also countersteered way to late.

thats oversteer....

One thing I've found when going into a corner. If you're going to drift it, make sure you know that before. Don't just dive in and think, well if it kicks out I'll drift it. You have to make sure it's going to kick out, that way you're prepared and ready to counter steer much faster than just waiting for something to happen unknowingly. Particularly with under powered cars like Rx7's (yes they do have power, but it's all up the top).

That's oversteer, and it sounds like you need to take those drag tires off the back... lol