What would you do?

[Heath Vogt]

Josh,

A good driver can drive both FWD and RWD alternately
without issue.  I do it all the time, and when the two
cars were a 2wd Tacoma and a Saturn SL, the behaviors
of the two were day and night.  I autocrossed and
rally crossed the Tacoma, and drove the Saturn alot
harder than you would imagine is possible on curvy
roads.  My wife had a little trouble with the truck in
the rain as it was very tail happy when wet.

I'm wondering what you did wrong going into the turn
to bring the rear of a FWD car around in the first
place.   I don't know about the new Spec. V, but the
wife's Sentra SE definately has the industry mandated
understeer at the limit (thanks to that pug Ralf
Nader).  What did you do to upset the rear?  Usually,
unless you've played with the suspension, it'll take
doing something like braking into or during a corner,
or purpousfully setting up with a little left right
wag before hand to get the arse end out.

Point being, I'd look at what driving technique got
you into this situation as much as what driving
technique would get you out.

I wouldn't give up on the FWD just yet - even though I
prefure RWD - it's hard to find a good RWD car anymore
that isn't either more than 10 years old or more than
30 grand new anyway.  You just need to learn to drive
it.  When your at the auto cross see if one of the
experts will ride along with you and see what you're
doing.  That helped me out a bit with rallycross.
Even more it helped to ride along with an expert while
he drove.  Not to mention it was alot of fun feeling
just how much faster my truck could be if driven
properly.

Just my humble .02

Heath

--- JOSH GARY <ewraven@hotmail.com> wrote:
> I'm going to my first auto x on Sept 1st. I think
> maybe I should strictly
> drive the Sentra until then. That way I'll be used
> to it; hopefully."

> I've even considered selling the Spec V; I have
> trouble driving it hard; the
> car just doesn't fit me very well.  I think I could
> go much further with
> rear wheel drive.  But, I'll wait and see how I do
> at auto x.

> Thanks,
> Joshua

=====
Heath Vogt BSME
'69 Baja Bug - Brutus "the wonder bug"
'01 Isuzu Trooper
'98 Nissan Sentra SE