P.S.B

hmm.. i was just watch the drift bible and one way to drift or get some overstear in a car with a lot of understear was to simply turn a little in the opposite direction of the bend and then turn in .. this apperently throws the weight infront and due to inersia you will overstear ..

BetterMakeWay

Yeah...old school! Some kind of Scandinavian flick...

PoleApart

Since you're looking at getting different opinions and before you all piss yourselves laughing - the MX-5 or Miata is a 50/50 front/rear weight distribitution RWD car with a reputation for fantastic handling. I don't know to what extent the alignment on our E60's can be played with and finding an alignment shop that knows its stuff is also a challenge - one that sets up rally cars is a good place to start. Basically you need to play around a bit with the camber settings and the difference between front and rear camber. More camber on an axle equals more grip. So the more camber you have on front and the less on the back should get you into oversteer land. Over about -2 degree camber (i.e. top of the tyres leaning in like this / \ ) you will get uneven tyre wear and your E60 will start looking like a "tuningmeister E30". Somewhere below is neutrality. On my Miata -1.4 degrees front and -1.8 degrees rear is close enough to neutral with very light oversteer that me be happy.

Like I said - I have no clue how and whether rear camber is adjustable on an E60.

Good luck with your quest.

--
Przemek

skaffa

That is called "vastaheitto" in Finnish. In english it's something like "against throw". That is made to take speed down before curve and to make sure that car can drift trough tight curve. Of course it is done mostly on slippery surfaces like on ice/snow and on gravel.

Skaffa

juliann

"If the car has understeered I have tried to get the power down and bring the back round and if it has oversteered I have put on the opposite lock" -- Heikki Kovalainen

skaffa

Understeer can be also corrected by "pumping" accelerator, but used wrong it can cause violent spin.

Here is example how e60 goes in fast corner with full throttle. Notise the oversteer.

BetterMakeWay

Of course, as i've read the scandinavian flick is very hard to do on good and grippy tarmac, only with a good set-up on the car (race car) and with a good pilot then it's more likely to turn in this way.

BetterMakeWay

Of course. I agree with that and it seems the natural way to do it...but as i've said at high speed cornering (over 100km/h) it's quite hard to put that power down asap to get the back out because of the lack of lsd, and probably the first thing you'll do is to smoke the inner tire to oblivion, until the exterior tire lets go.

needforspeed

I pushed my car a bit yesterday to try and provoke some understeer.

I honestly couldn't get much and the handling seemed very 'neutral'.

I think I tend to do something a bit like the 'scandinavian flick' just for fun anyway - approaching a corner slightly wide and then turning in slightly harder than necessary whilst accelerating hard.

This starts the back end slipping at which point you can just ease of the steering input and accelerate around the corner in a balanced way. I don't need a soft surface since the torque in the 530d is easily enough to push the rear wheels beyond their limit of adhesion.

In some instances I encourage this by deliberately steering the wrong way then the right way HARD (to accentuate the 'oversteering' input. I think is basically the flick technique. For me this seems really intuitive as it is very similar to what you are doing to correct a skid using opposite lock.

As an 17 year old boy racer in my RWD ford cortina I did this just about all the time to provoke a skid in order to have fun correcting it - but then the cortina had 185 tyres and so didn't have much grip to begin with so this was very very easy.

The only hint of understeer as I see it comes in a gradual tendency for the car as a whole to move outward - but this is (I think) 'balanced' in effect cause all 4 tyres are working at their limit and all 4 are starting to let a little bit of outward force push the car away from the inside of the bend (neither over or under steer).

At this point there is likely to be a bit of squealing and this is where I would hold on the accelerator as pushing beyond this point will de-stabilise the car.

I should mention I have only done this sort of thing at a maximum of 60mph.

Personally - for road use I still think changing your wheels will sort out any hint of understeer. On a track at very high speed it'll probably still be there, but if you are seriously tracking your car - you can look at the suspension, damper settings and brake balance to nuetralise this.

This is what I love about RWD - which is why I have stuck with BMW's for so long. It is so intuitive, natural and safe to slide a little round bends. However, in a fast FWD car the slip point tends to come later and is MUCH more sudden.

I had a Vauxhall Vectra GSi which could scare the pants of you when the understeer kicked in - one second your going round the bend nicely - the next your going straight ahead and the only way to control it is to ease of the gas long enough for the car to get some grip back - nasty.