Mog

What happens when the back end kicks out, crosses the white line and whacks a car coming the other way..........................

Jza

Im no expert - but the 4wd has a nasty habit of being a nightmare on the edge.

DONT lift off
Dont enter corner to quick and brake hard!!!

The car will break lose at the back and you'll then want to correct the oversteer - by applying opposite lock.

Thats when the fun begins...

You'll over correct/back off and wham - the rear will catch grip and send the back OVER THE OTHER SIDE 10X's worse than the first slide. That one usually gets you in trouble!!

The general advise seems to be DONT back off, and apply a little lock - not masses like on a RWD car. Oh - and you should ACCELERATE as the car slides - so the 4wd sorts itself out!!!

All that in .1 secs!!!

Good luck!!!

Theres a few websites that someone will doublessly URL for you.

Best to slow down - and get driving coaching from someone.

Jza
Jza

Scooby Dooby Blue

Jza
Now you mention driving coaching
UK300 No.174 R.I.P

FLAT ERIC

iTrader: (1)

Get yourself to an airfield quick sharp young man & practice your slippy slides where there is plenty of safe run off.

Know your car. Know your & its limits.Sorted.

miggs

www.drivingtechniques.co.uk

hth

FLAT ERIC

iTrader: (1)

Yo Miggs,

If bumcrack wasnt so far away up north,he could get along to a Scooby City track day at Bentwaters. Would be ideal.

Mark

Jolly Green Monster 2

Well the problem is when they do let go you are going that much quicker as they stick like glue...

This is what happened to my Scooby after I went a bit too quick :



I now drive my Scooby slow in and fast out of corners!



Take it easy!

JGM

gareth

Roadcraft: "drive at a speed where you can still stop in the road you can see to be clear".

Scooby cornering ability makes it v easy to forget about the above and the consequences of meeting the back end of a queue, or a cyclist/pedestrian/horse, or (in my case) another car turning across your path...

Maybe save it for the track?

G

DavidRB

I would disagree that the Scooby "lets go" suddenly. I think it's more along the lines of gareth's post, that the Scoob's cornering limits are so high. When you do lose grip, the car is moving so quickly that it requires good reactions and the knowledge to control the slide.

4WD cars don't slide like FWD or RWD. Opposite lock (combined with lifting off) can correct the slide much quicker than the driver expects, which is why so often they leave the road spinning the "wrong" way out of a bend.

Jolly Green Monster 2

Agree.... mine let go with warning but was going that much quicker than a RWD or FWD that I had less of a chance of recovering.. I then had lots of warning like trees, road, trees, bank, wallop!

JGM

Paulo P

iTrader: (42)

what you have to remember is that a 4 wheel drive is only a 4 wheel drive when you have the power on the rest of the time it will handle like a front wheel drive really and you will get lift off oversteer due to the weight transfer onto the front tyres and the transmission drag slowing the rear wheels that have no weight on them to push them into the tarmac. Take my advise and find a quiet preferably wet car park and have a "play" hopefully you will learn to sort it out before it goes **** up one day and catches you out dont own a scoob but I found the old legacy turbo dodgey in the wet for lift off oversteer and found it best to keep off the pedals on just feed in the lock (didn't want to stack my mates car when teaching him how to drive it ) then build up gradually Hope you get it sorted because its lots of fun when you know what you are doing

DTurn

As well as Driving Development for tuition, which is on-airfiled rather than on-road, try some of the on-road instructors, such as HPC (www.high-performance-course.co.uk) or Paul Ripley (god knows). Driving Development is good for teching what to do when it goes wrong, but HPC and Ripley are very much about stopping it going wrong in the first place. John Lyon of HPC got a good write up in Evo this month and Paul Ripley is an ever-present face in the media.

gareth

I read the John Lyons piece in Evo... does anybody else think his ideas are a bit anachronistic by modern standards, e.g. double-declutching, engine-braking etc? Sorry, this is old ground really.

I remember some ancient thread about the guy's "interpersonal skills" as well that would definitely put me off buying that course...

G

DTurn

As a satisfied customer of HPC (I hate to think how much I've spent with John Lyon over the years), I don't think double declutching or engine braking is anachronistic. It is true that you don't have to do it, but it makes your driving so much smoother when you do.

As for John's interpersonal skills - he doesn't have any. His teaching method is to destroy whatever style you have and remake you in a clone of his style. This is why you feed the steering throug your hands, and John uses double declutching. You just have to remember that there are two people with you on the lesson: JL and JL's ego. If you do a little bit of pandering to the second, the first is much nicer! (Sorry John).

If HPC isn't to your liking, there are plenty of others out there - even try the IAM or ROSPA, where the tuition is a damn sight cheaper, although not necessarily to the same style of driving.

It all depends what you want out of the tuition. If you want to drive smoothly, quickly and safely, then I don't think you can beat HPC, although it does make driving Scoobys a bit boring.

fivepint

please excuse my ignorance, but double declutching is:
clutch in-shift to neutral-clutch out-clutch in-shift to gear-clutch out... am I right or VERY wrong, can this be done quickyl? sorry to go off topic but its something which has confused me.

Cheers

joni

fivepint,
Very nearly. Just add after " neutral clutch out" blip throttle to match new gear engine revs. Yes it can be done quickly with practice

whip

Can someone explain the point behind all that then? Sounds like more of a hinderance to me.

Whip

joni

1. Kinder to the drivetrain
2. very satisfying in a nerdy type of way when done a) for the first time and b)when done smoothly.
3. Older cars had crap syncro and this may have been the only way to avoid crunching on down shift.

any more anyone?

fivepint

cheers joni, thx for the info. I presume the balance of the car is less likely to be upset if the gearchanges are smoother, ie on thight twisties with alot of gearchanges, less weight being thrown about than with abrupt power shifts, I'll give it a try on the way home...

thx again

900t16Aero

Sorry but i would have thought that Double de crutching was virtualy redundant now with syncromesh gearboxes today, i just dont see the point of it, i do however see the point of heel and toe downshifting as this reduces weight transfer when driving hard and is easier on the gearbox and associated drivetrain components, however with most cars nowadays you need to have three feet to do so as the pedals are all over the place!

DTurn

The point of double declutching is not just to smooth the shift (in dog boxes, you have to do it), it also ensures that you match the engine speed with the road speed. This is very important in high performance, lightweight RWD cars. I dealt with an RTA a few years ago where the young driver of a Lamborghini Diablo let all the revs die off when changing from 2nd to 3rd. As he brought the clutch smartly in he fed around 250 bhp in engine braking to the rear wheels, which had roughly the same effect as pulling the handbrake on. He was doing about 50 mph and he made a mess of a lot of trees, not to mention writing off the car.

In a Scoob this won't happen, but it does stop jerkiness when changing gear

gareth

I'm by no stretch of the imagination a highly-skilled or experienced driver of performance cars. Just playing Devil's Advocate really based on my limited experience of 3 years of scooby ownership...

I've tried double-declutching on the downshift but have never found it any smoother as a result - still do it as often as not, but only because it has become a habit. It's easy enough to blip the throttle to match the revs to the lower gear without the need for double-declutching. In fact I'd rather spend less time in neutral when the car is not strictly "under control".

As for engine-braking, doesn't this counter-balance any de-stressing of the drivetrain you might have achieved through double-declutching? If you're planning a fast getaway and want to keep on-boost, then fair enough. I think the roadcraft way is to use the brakes only, then select the appropriate gear when you know what you're doing (i.e. 5th to 1st at a stop sign, as an extreme example).

I'd rather not get flamed for this opinion by the way. I'm just following up my comment re the John Lyon/EVO piece.

G

ian_sadler

Anybody who realy wants to learn what a scoob is like out of the real world of traffic & speed cameras shoukld do a day with Andrew of 1st Lotus.

Did a day on North Weald airdrome with Matt, Phil & Chris. Bl00dy hell what a day.

Learnt more in 5 hrs then in a year of scoob ownership (had to put new front boots on )

Slow in fast out & keep the power on.

Ian

whip

I'm with Gareth on this one, sounds like a waste of time to me - give me heel-n-toeing anyday. I got quite good at it in my 205GTi but haven't yet got to grips with it fully in the scoob, partly as I rarely get chance to drive it with any gusto.

I also think the roadcraft view of gear selection is a load of sh1te. The reason behind it seems to be that you should be doing one thing at a time (ie braking, accellerating etc) rather than braking and changing gear at the same time. I would argue that if you need to brake to such an extent that you cannot concentrate on anything else at that particular time, you've failed as an advanced driver. The roadcraft stance on biking for example does not encourage teaching how to correct a bike when things go pear-shaped under braking. Their view is that 'if you ride our way you won't need to heavy-brake in the first place'. To me, that goes against their 'concentrate on braking, no gearchanges' method.

I also don't like the idea of being in, say, fifth gear (with little/no available power, hence technically 'not in control') in a 20mph situation. Not all emergencies can be solved with the brakes.

Whip

bumcrack

Lately I been giving my Standard UK Turbo some stick round the bends, both long sweeping bends at speed and sharper tighter bends.
I've always been used to front wheeldrive cars, and is it true that you drive Fwd,rear and 4WD different?
I've noticed that my car seem's to drive like it rear wheel drive.
IE. If I'm going round a fast sweeping bend(60 mph+) and I put press on the fast peddle it seem's to let the back end hang out a bit and front just seems able to hang on abit better, like it alters the position of the car a bit. If you didn't have your foot on the accelerator it wouldn't hold you choosen line as well.
If I go too fast the front goes wide and I have to back off(slowly though).
It's sort of feels as if the back end swings out,but it feels progressive and not scary.It feels even easy in the wet, like it wants to do it.

Is it likely to just let go and I'm going to end up spinning it?
Any advice on my technique and what's likely to happen?

Regards the crack


[Edited by bumcrack - 3/11/2002 8:14:58 PM]

Katana

Of course not, we all know that AWD is immortal and will stick to the road. Now does anyone have the link to the 22b that crashed recently?

[Edited by Katana - 3/11/2002 8:19:40 PM]

bennetm

The trouble with scoobs is, they will stick like glue, but when they do let go, give little warning and do it in a BIG way.

I like to think that i'd never get insured again if I stacked it and that usually slows me down a bit!

Nothing wrong with power slides though!

MB

http--www.drivingtechniques.co.uk



[Edited by bennetm - 3/11/2002 10:22:56 PM]

juan

Nothing old fashioned about engine braking surely?



Heel and toe is wicked fun but you don't half end up going into corners / roundabouts quickly at first until you get used to it

[Edited by juan - 3/12/2002 4:12:46 PM]