Thrasher

Yesturday I was out at a parking lot kicking around my gf's 89 GTU, and I noticed that while entering powerslides and trying to drift that I would turn the wheel and the car would still be going strait just slidding on the front tires?! I just put new tires on there (not awesome ones but still new!) so what could I do to fix this? It has stock suspension so anyhelp here would be great.

Thx
-Zach

SlithyTove

A bit of advice:

It's not the cars problem, its the driver. These cars aren't designed to powerslide, as powersliding is one of the absolute slowest ways to go around a corner.

To get grip to the front wheels you brake slightly entering the corner which shifts weight to the front, then as you move through the apex of the corner, ease off the brake and onto the gas to transfer weight to the rear so that the rear doesn't go sliding out from under you and you exit the turn accelerating.

tmak26b

Zach, you dont have enough power..... What you experienced was plowing

Barwick

you can't just simplify it by saying powersliding is the absolute slowest way to go through a corner, it's a lot more complicated than that.. although it's usually pretty slow, occasionally for really weird corners it IS the fastest way, because either way you work it out, you'll have to exit the corner at the same speed, regardless of how fast you take it, and if powersliding gets you from corner entry to corner exit (and facing the right direction) in a faster time than any other way, you'll probably come out on top.

Anyhow.. there's lots of ways to do it.. be careful when doing this, have a LOT of runoff space to know what's going to happen.. when entering a corner if you want the rear end to kick out, enter towards the corner at full throttle, then lift off the throttle and turn the wheel to start to enter the corner, the weight shifts from leaning back to leaning forwards, and gives the fronts more grip for that little bit of time.. you can do the same with the brakes if necessary, then when the rear end is getting too out of hand, give it a little gas to shift some weight towards the back.

tmak26b

You really think a 89 NA can have enough power to do that?

SureShot

Are you running 50 or 60 profile tires, at what pressure?

SlithyTove

Its been my experience that most peoples powersliding involves flopping around on the road like a dead fish. Admittedly a lot of fun, but pretty useless as a technique.

Perhaps there are a few, odd corners like maybe very very very sharp 180s where you more or less have to come to a complete stop anyway, but under most situations its a big waste of speed and tires, and more dangerous to boot.

Now drifting is another matter entirely, but to properly drift one has to be able to properly corner or the 'drift' will just be that much more flailing around.

All this coming from a former road flailer btw.

SureShot

The reason I ask the profile & pressure is when I first got 225/50's, I ran them at 35psi (duh). It was like driving in the rain all the time. Dropped the psi to 24, and it was like rails in a pinball machine.. :-)

tmak26b

how did u manage to fit 225/50 in the front?

Thrasher

Thx guys for all the info, I was not really going for speed or anything (I was just in a parking lot kinda small and had curves made with curbs so I was just playnig around with it nothing serious) I want to take it out to some nice roads so I can practice drifting but I havn't found any nice ones yet

I will work on transphering the weight more, thx for the tips BTW. ohh and I have 215/60's on all 4 corners @ 35 psi I will also try to lower that to 25 or so. And btw it dosn't really take too much power to get sideways although a TII would make me happy