Drifting Guide

[Garry]

Here is a guide for all your questions you have to do with the exciting area of R/C - Drifting.

This guide is written by Garry of the MSUK forum, and is NOT to be reproduced in any way, shape or form without expressed written consent from the author.

To find what you are looking for easily, use Ctrl+F and type the word, phrase or number in the box that pops us.

=====[Table of Contents]=====

A. Basic information.

- (A01) What is a drifting?

- (A02) Can any car drift?

B. Drift Motors

- (B01) What motors are good for drifting?

C. Car setup

- (C01) Tyres

- (C02) Suspension

- (C03) Differentials

- (C04) Bodyshell

D. Technique

- (D01) Braking Drift

- (D02) Feint Drift

E. Useful Links

- (E01) Manuals, setup sheets etc.

- (E02) How to Skim a motor

- (E03) TT01 and TL01 Essential Upgrades

- (E04) How to waterproof your electronics

- (E05) Brushless Information and Guide

- (E06) Getting sideways in your driveway

F. Update notes

- Created July 15th 2006.

- Made available 17/7/2006.

========================================================

A. Basic information.

- (A01) What is a drifitng?

In the most basic terms, drifting is being out of control, completely in control. Don't confuse drifting with skidding or sliding.

Drifting = getting the car sideways before the corner, during the corner, and out of the corner (good thing)

Skidding/sliding = getting the car sideways during the corner, but not before or out of the corner (not a good thing).

Drifting is also about linking corners together as one fluid movement, and being as sideways as you can be.

In the real car world, the D1GP is a championship where high power cars and skilled drivers compete at drifting, and and are judged (like figure skating), car control, corner entry speed, and apex clipping. Get all of these right and the drift will look great!

Drifting is considered a huge sport in Japan and America, and its now moving around the world to become a world class motor sport. It doesn't just look cool, its even more fun doing it!

- (A02) Can any car drift?

Techinically, yes, but some will be miles harder than others. In the real world, almost every drift car is RWD, but as RC cars don't have as much weight to move around, RWD is a big no-no. You need 4wd to drift, as the front wheels pull the car though the turn, whilst the rear wheels push the car sideways.

B. Drift Motors

- (B01) What motors are good for drifting?

For drifting, you need control in the bottom end of the powerband. For this, you can choose with a high-turn brushed motor (19t to 27t), or go brushless. Both will have loads of low-down torque, meaning lots of easy to control slides. Faster or lower turn motors can be used for drifting, but you'll have loads of wheelspin, so there's no point.

C. Car setup

- (C01) Tyres

Tyres are one of THE most important aspects of car setup. For drifting, there are 3 main types of tyres and tyre preperation for drifting with.

1. Pipe.

This is where you use 2in diameter ABS or PVC plastic piping on wheels. These are really slippery when cornering, giving lots of great slides. The hardly wear at all, but can be hard to control, so practice makes perfect.

2. Tape.

This is there you wrap electrical or sellotape around a hard tyre, insert and wheel to create a slippery contact patch. Its a great method to learn to drift, as most people have sellotape, and is easy to repair. The downside is the tape doesn't last more than 20mins of drifting.

3. Rubber, Rubber/plastic.

This is where you use tyres specifically designed for drifting. HPI and Pit Shimizu make tyres out of a very hard rubber compound, which offers very little grip. Yokomo also make very hard rubber drift tyres, but use plastic 'drift rings' as the contact patch to get the car side ways. Both methods are fine, but can be expensive.

All of the types of tyres listed above are great to drift with, but some say piping works better than others. Try each one and form your own conclusions!

- (C02) Suspension

Your suspension setup will be dependant on your car adjustability, and should be used as a 'fine tuning' point for you. A setup for taped tyres won't work with piping, for example. Pick a tyre type, then have a go at setting up the car to suit your drift style.

With taped tyres, you will want a hard setup, so the car loses grip initallyto crate the drift.

If you run piping, or rubber tyres, you want a softer setup to get grip, as both types of tyres offer hardly any grip.

To change the setup of the car, generally you want to be changing the springs for harder or softer ones than kit. 'Silver' springs tend to be medium rate ones.

Camber is the name of the angle the tyres lean at when static. since the suspension isn't so critical when drifting, camber is pretty constant.

For piping, you want your camber to be at 0 degrees(flat). For tape or rubber, 2 or 3 degrees is a good startng point.

- (C03) Differentials

In full-size drifting, the cars competing use LSD's (limited slip differentials). When the car is sideways, it feeds the power to the wheel under load, which is the outside tyre. For 10th touring cars however, there isn't a LSD available, but we still beed to feed the power to the loaded wheel. In general, you lock the rear diff only (so the car can still turn at low-ish speeds), and leave the front diff open (or fit a one-way, that locks up on power, and opens off power).

Most cars today come with either ball diffs or gear diffs. Although these are fine for bashing, they feed the power to the unloaded (inside) wheels, which stops the drift. Not good! Ball diffs and gear diffs have different ways to getting round this though, but both have the same aim of locking the axle solid.

1. Ball diff.

This is fairly easy. You can do 3 things with a ball diff. The first is to simply tighten the tension screw inside the diff to lock it up. This can damage the diff balls and plates though, so the second method is remove the diff balls and replace them with thin pieces of card (like a bag header) to take up the 2mm gap the balls left. This will be fine, but if you still need your ball diff (for racing for example), you can buy a locked axle (sometimes called a spool). These are for the front end in belt drive cars, or for both ends for shaft driven cars. Not all cars have spools as an option, so do some research first.

2. Gear diff.

Gear diffs can become a bit messy! You could use blue tac or hot glue from a hot glue gun. Either will be OK and non-permanent so you can put it back to normal if you want.

Basically, you take the rear diff out of the car, then unscrew the plate holding the metal sun and planet gears in. Take out these gears, wash all the grease off, and put hot glue/blu-tac between the sun gear (big one) and the planet gears (the 3 small ones). Refit and use.

Standard diff:

Blu-tacked diff:

Basically, all the teeth-to-teeth faces on the inside of each diff needs blu-tacking. The more you put in, the longer the effect lasts. Remember to wash the grease out first!

- (C04) Bodyshell

This is down to personal preference. Most full size drift cars are RWD, so if you're looking for a scale appearance, go for a RWD body. HPI, Tamiya, Pro-line and Yokomo all make good looking RWD cars, so theres ahuge range to choose from. Yokomo even do accurate replicas of the real D1GP cars.

D. Technique

- (D01)Braking Drift

One basic technique is the Braking Drift, most often used when the turn is gradual. Approach the turn at a decent speed and, just before you reach the beginning of the curve, ease off the throttle or, if that

[audiobull]

so its totally different with a nitro engine with a stage d drift conversion or is it slightly the same? everyone does reviews/guides on electric rc but not nitro.nitro has the power behind although i havnt seen an electric in action so cant doubt them! any tips anyone? surely with the stage d it should just slide straight out then you countersteer...im awaiting stock of my stage d kit so i will try add to the guide but if anyone has any experience of nitro drifting please help?

[smithy1135]

This is just a guess but i expect that using a nitro for drifting will be harder than using an electric for one reason really, with an electric motor you have instant power, with a nitro, its a different situation. Thats the only thing i think will be stopping you, its always worth a try though.

[samij121]

i dont reckon it would be the same kind of feel with a nitro, cause drifting is also partly to do with the realism,

but nitro drifting would be cool, but hard due to nitro engines archaic precision, (clever words)

and great guide, so drifting isnt just turning

Edited April 5, 2007 by samij121

[creamsodauk]

my old schumacher fusion would drift on rubbers. with drifting u have to kepp the spedds up a bit more so that the clutch dosent kick in also locking the rear diff is a definate plus.

wen u emter the corner go wide the flick the steering power down and tuck the front end in and keep the revs high. proble is if u loose to much power the clutch will engage and unlike a real car u cant just raise the revs and dump the clutch again u have to go to the next corner lol

[rcmadness]

ive got a 27 turn motor in my car and it drifts!

Also i have normal tyres

But is it the sort of shell or car i have (porcshe? 911 turbo or my hpi sprint mk 1!)

rcmadness

Edited December 11, 2007 by rcmadness

[mardave drifter]

drfiting is fun and easy to learn but hard with a mardave v12 (thats wat i got) i started of with good batteries then i add tape to front and back wheels and i started to drift round the racing (carpet) track at our club it was hard at first but got easeir. But then i found out my motor was going so i brought a new now i keep buying second hand ones to use even though its so fun. I ts a mardave u can still do it even kids like me aged 15 rofl

[lewp91]

i dont blutac the planet gears i nget 2-3mm long pipe n put it on the outsides of the 'axels' of the planet gears which grips them tight

u can use less eg 1.5-2mm to get a lsd imatation which handles great i personaly use bout 2.7mm try it!

any feedback for my second post?

lol

lew

[midi-mania]

some links dont work

[AnthonyMcewen]

Just a note on diff locking...more ways to do it.

Perm Fit...it's gonna lock them forever!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/J-B-WELD-Metal-Repair/dp/B001CY107A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333895660&sr=8-1

Or you can do something that wont make a mess, is completely removable and all you need is a screw driver to take the screws out the diff!

Basicaly just remove one of the MA13, flip it and wedge between other two MA13, you now have a locked diff with no slip and no hassle, and if you want to unlock diff just put the MA13 back were you found it!

[Alexmcc]

Wrong thread

Edited April 3, 2013 by Alexmcc

[grampy]

_{so its fun but as a beginner to drifting what would be a good start car? I have got other rcs but not drift.}

[Inferno-Chris]

anyone know what happened to the rest of the post ?
its missing the last half