No drifting/handbrake turn

[FatGuyInALittleCar]

Takes me back to the days of high school and college, using the handbrake nearly exclusively to go around corners when driving a FWD car in the wet or snow. It used to amaze my uninitiated friends!
My Mustang on the other hand seemed to always want to go around corners... it was keeping it straight that became a problem! I remember in '91 driving back from the Detroit Auto Show to Grand Rapids 2 1/2 hours away. I had the steering dialed in at 30 degrees to either side of center just to crab straight... It took nearly 5 hours to get home. I was 16. Never should have been on the road.
Anyway, now that I'm older, I tend to think if you need the handbrake to turn a corner, you were going too damn fast. Holy cow... did I just say that?

 

[15Fist3rST]

Yes, it's an old thread. But I was playing games around with the idea of installing a hydraulic handbrake for the fun of it. In the wet, snow, and dirt it would be a riot. Then everybody mocks OP. I got the idea from the octane academy... a certified racing class specific to the ST cars installs and encourages you to do this.....why wouldn't you want to? Hell, they put the idea in my head...... I just miss having the option of yanking that lever....purely for Fun! Which is why I bought the ST in the first place.

 

[RAAMaudio]

I have always used the Scandinavian Flick to rotate the car into a turn and the throttle combined with counter steering to keep it where I wanted it to go and have done so a bit on FWD cars. On the 1st 1zz turbo Matrix ever built I added more aggressive front calipers and a Wilwood adjuster to tweak the brakes for autocross/street and used more front bias and a bit of the flick to rotate the car, worked very well and was fun sliding into the turns and scaring passengers then spinning both front tires out of the turns and also making very fast times against "superior" cars in Street Mod class

As for the Fist I have been considering using the Octane trophy into the parking brake handle and having a switch to enable it to not lock pulled or lock depending if being used for turns or parking the car. The Wilwood 4 piston rear calipers I have that I was lucky to even learn about as fairly rare and not on their site have little ears sticking up from them to allow hooking up parking brake cables which I still need to design the part to do so.

 

[C. love]

With the right technique you can easily get the Fiesta to rotate and slide it sideways. Flick it like RAAM said then you control with countersteering, but being FWD this lasts mere seconds though. If you want to ebrake slide it you have to flick and yank the ebrake. Thing is you do this on dry pavement too much you run the risk of screwing the ebrake up and stretching it out (If its cable...I assume it is).

My favorite part of this thread was peoples ignorance about drifting, the only thing that made sense was people saying FWD's cannot drift which is 100% truth

 

[Nevo187]

URGENT. HAS anyone figured out how to e brake drift this car. May seem juvenile but hey it's important. The handbrake seems way too weak and I've been trying for a while. My friend with a brz showed me his and the handbrake was way stronger. Has anyone been able to do this?

Continuous drift. no.

180's and 90's - pull it harder. It works like a charm... on a closed course

 

[M-Sport fan]

^and upsetting the balance of the car, even rally drivers don't specially rely on thier e brake... Unless it's a hairpin

Yes, about the only time it is done for any real competition contest is the above scenario, and usually when the radius of the (hairpin) turn is almost less than the length of the car, and of course they also have a STRONG hydraulic hand brake.

With a FWD rally car, some of the above turns are so tight that they almost cannot be negotiated in one motion (without stopping and backing up, there goes any chance of a good stage time!) without using the hand brake to get around it on gravel.
This is because they do not have any drive to the back wheels to power slide their way around a tight 180* (or more), decreasing radius turn, like the AWD monsters do.

BTW; Isn't our stock, factory parking brake (I doubt it will stop you in an emergency, so I will not call it an e-brake!) setup a cable actuated, drum inside the rotor hat deal??

If so, this is even weaker yet than a disc caliper actuated by a cable, let alone a caliper which is hydraulically operated.

 

[reinsport]

Go to an In-and-Out, "borrow" two red plastic trays, go to deserted parking lot, place trays under rear tires, apply parking brake, and... you can guess the rest. Do not do this...only joking. Like mentioned above Octane Academy uses separate dedicated Wilwood calipers and handle.

 

[RAAMaudio]

The stock caliper has a cable attached to use it for the parking brake which could work pretty well on gravel but less likely so on tarmac I would imagine unless the surface is wet.

I expected a drum brake setup inside as seen on many cars but they saves a bit of weight this way and the rotor hubs are so small there would be little room for it anyway.

I have a DIY 4 piston WW rear BBK with litter ears that engage the brake pads and even though a revised cable mount for more leverage it is still not a very strong parking brake but does help to keep the car from rolling if in 1st or reverse on a hill and meets race rule requirements that call for a parking brake in some cases.

 

[SonicDeathmonkey]

Lift off oversteer is lame

Can we start a competition for Idiotic Quote of The Year so that I can nominate this as the winner?

Back when I was racing formula cars this was just about the most ideal way to tighten a line mid-corner. It sounds to me like learning a thing or two about the finer points of weight transfer would be beneficial. The rear of the FiST gets so light under hard braking as it is I would be surprised if you couldn't get it to rotate with a combination of e-brake and proper weight transfer and steering input.

EDIT: Seriously... Lift off oversteer is lame?! Isn't that what separates the FiST from every other hot hatch? Just, wow, man. Lol

 

[M-Sport fan]

^^^ FVees, FF, Formula Contis, Mazdas??

 

[SonicDeathmonkey]

^^^ FVees, FF, Formula Contis, Mazdas??

Most recently Formula Mazdas, the older pre-carbon tub cars. But the FiST is SO much more practical. Lol

 

[Brickell FIST]

Is there a way to improve the e-brake? To make it lock up??

 

[RAAMaudio]

Unfortunately if there was an easier way to lock up the rear brakes the Octane Academy cars would of likely had it done to them instead of adding a separate system.

It would of been nice to have little drum brakes for parking as I have had a couple of cars with rear disks and that type of brake and could lock up the rear if I yanked it good and hard.

 

[Zak757]

Have you considered blasting Super Eurobeat while delivering tofu? I guarantee the rear end will step out at every turn.