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I was just wondering how many of you guys actually try this, whether if its rainy or snowy conditions.

It was raining yesterday while I was going to a friend's party. I approach her house and said WTF, so I pull the ebrake and start sliding a bit. That was fun. Then I make my way down to the cul de sac so I could turn around. I try to do a 180 but I didn't have enough room to b/c of the cars, so that sucked.

Then I'm on my way to take my friend home at night and the road is still wet. I have to make a right turn on a wide road so I say WTF. At about 30mph, I pull the ebrake and turn my steering wheel right, then countersteer left, but I forgot to hit the gas... Oh well, I guess I'm not Colin McRae or Richard Burns...

Anyway, I was wondering how many people actually do this on a daily basis. It was my first time and very fun.

It doesn't do any harm to our cars does it? I guess what I mean is that Civics weren't meant to have their rear wheels drag everywhere, but if its in rain or snow, how much exactly does it hurt our cars, if any at all?

~Don't worry, I'm expecting the flames... Flame away guys...

 
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Dosn't hurt any, Till you eat a tree. Personally I like to do all my "Hard" driveing at the track, that way if I over drive the car, the hardest thing Ill hit is a cone.

Autocross, Its whats for dinner.

 
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or eat a curb, did that in my old civic, 2300 in damage

 
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u cannot drift in a fwd car.. what u are doing is an uncontrollable slide

 
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it's not really drifting... i guess you can say it's ummm... "sliding" lol

what i do is: go at least 35 - 60 mph, judge the distance i have to slide, then pull the ebrake while holding the button, then when i know that my car is pretty much sideways, i put the ebrake down, downshift to 2nd and hit the gas... keep in mind that you wanna do this in an open area and go fast enough to where you actually get semi sideways and still have enough speed to pull out...

doing 180's are boring... find a place where you can practice "drifting" and once you get good and confident enough, try it around local streets when theres nothing around... suspension mods would help too... like a rear anti sway bar and tie rod... keeps the back end firmly on the ground...

 
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You can mess up your car doing this. If you think about it you are putting torque on the wheels trying to pull the outside wheels off. Think about it, when you turn sideways but continue to go straight you are putting the force of how fast you were going straight, now that force is being put on your tires, you drift at 30 mph that means that when you turn the car sideways that is the road at 30 mph trying to rip your outside wheels off of your car.

 
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but of course in rain or snow conditions, there would be less friction on your tires than on dry pavement right? I mean i would never do this on a dry road.

and yes its not really drifting, its a slide... But I wouldn't exactly say uncontrollable... I've seen FWD Rally Races too.

Anyway, I was just trying to try a new thing on a boring rainy day, thats all..

 
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lol, 'burn-out' until all your tread is gone. Then on a rainy day, go nuts!

haha

 
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its not drifting, its power sliding.

ya its fun, i tried it before in the rain.

 
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i think the term for drifting is in fwd cars are "power slide" i think..

 
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Yes, true, when the roads are wet or slippery your friction coefficient will be less, therefore causing less force to be pressed against your tires in the opposite direction of travel, but there will still be some

 
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i slide quite a bit while racing, but its always controlled. guess you cant call it drifting though

 
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I can't wait to hear about some kid who tries this, running across a dry patch or raised cement while sliding, and rolling his car over. I can just imagine that all in slow motion.

 
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Wow...what fun, I'm going to go try it now...

 
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SAME HERE!

 
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the only way you can drift in a civic is to get a nice little ek or one of the U.S. hatchbacks and pump in as much torque as possible. youll only be doing a power slide but atleasts itll be something.

i reccomend getting a nice little fc rx-7, or a simple datsun (maybe 510), and drifting the godamn fu ck outta that thing till u cant drift no more.

 
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i do this sometimes when there is snow or ice, but not rain.
i dont do it in my civic as much as i used to do it in my old car, wich was like all the time.
just DO NOT jokingly pull the ebrake, even for a second, while your going down the highway! NOT GOOD

 
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you can still get our car sideways and slide through turns without the ebrake, but it's a bit tricky... i find open on and off ramps the best place to do it, so if you can't correct the slide you just run off into the grass (though i've never had to do that luckily). just got a great one the other day, the outside of the turn was still a little wet while the inside was dry, somehow i managed to keep the fronts on the dry and the rear on the wet... great slide, very controlled, for a couple seconds. haha, i was laughing the whole way around the turn, but the people behind me must have thought i was nuts.

 
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You can do it without the e-brake, it just needs to be icy, I did it sometimes in the winter, or a couple of weeks ago when we got like 2 feet of snow. All you do is when your going around a corner you give it a little gas, let off so it slips then gas again and back end swings out.

 
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I love it how people have all of these various definitions of drifting that don't allow a FWD car to drift. Bleh. Drifting is... "Sliding your car through a set of opposed and grouped turns without having rear wheel traction as your car moves laterally through the turns." Where do you see in this definition anything about FWD or RWD? Do you think this definition is wrong? I don't!

I also do this every single day coming out of my street. Accelerate to about 40mph and turn hard to the right. It's almost a 90 degree turn, but it's a little less. Maybe 100 degrees? Anyway, nice and wide. Nice and smooth. Slide across all the way and gain traction again. You steer hard to initiate the drift and then you use the steering and throttle to keep it going. No e-brake!

You can use the e-brake too, but this is for low speed "drifts". I use it almost every day to point my car towards the entrance to my driveway. I approach it perpendicularly and then I use the e-brake to orient the car. No turns! Just a slide and I keep going straight. Haha!

So... Yeah... I do this all the time. I have alignment issues (but most were from a previous run in with a curb). I have balding tires (but most of that was from burn outs). I have a cracked spoke in my rim (but that most likely was due to a nasty pot hole). I can't really vouch if it's damaging to your car as my car is constantly being beat up. I am working on fixing these things though!

 
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i've done plenty of perfect 180's in the rain and on a completely dry surface thats easy but a controlled slide thats good enough to call drifting is almost impossible.

 
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very true.
you have absolutely no control.

i tried it with my civic in the snow .. it's fun as hell ... but really , you have no control .. your just basically turning the wheels mad ... and sometimes it'll work and sometime it won't.

 
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I think the control comes from experience. I "drift" "powerslide" er whatever all the time ( we should meet up sometime grey). Whether it's wet or dry. Snow is easier of course, and much better on the car, but easier to lose control. Ran (with those crappy stock tires) is about the same as snow. With dry though, I love coming home from work, going about 40, pull e brake and sliding the back end around as I turn onto my street. The control factor always comes from the appropriate counter steer. And by the way, as far as damage that I have, none at this point except for a scratch from a freakin shopping cart. And bald front tires from burn outs, back tires are fine (can we say "time for rotation"?)

 
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Hehe, yep. If there's ever a big ole meet down South and I've got the time, then I'll come and visit. Yeah, I rotated my tires once already. It helped to even things out. No damage on my side either (well, at least not from drifting itself).

 
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LOL, from the beginning of the post I was waiting for you to prove 'em wrong haha. I did a nice powerslide this afternoon, just got my all seasons put back on after the long winter.

 
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i cant slide on dry with my paradas

on snow with the paradas however... uhh.. lol.. lets just say: to slide i only need to be going about 5mph and no ebrake is needed



oh.. btw, i was in my friends car when he was doing some sliding in a snow covered parking lot

we were sideways when we hit the dry pavement... it nearly rolled the car.. lol.. pretty lucky on that one

 
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lease: @this whole thread

 
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Iv'e drifted my car just coming into a turn way to fast befor

 
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thats not a drift thats called not knowing how to drive

 
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Well hell if Grey says that its ok to do it, then I'm doing it... My only concern was if the e-brake line is gonna snap or get weaker or anything... Other than that I have no worries at all. I have total control of my car when I do this. I'm not a dumbass driver that goes 60 while trying this in a neighborhood.

Hmm, I'm glad the majority of this thread is biased and agreeing with me. Not as many flames as I had expected.

I guess some people prefer driving on dry pavement doing 0-60 street or track races. Others, like myself, enjoy turns and curves and all that crazy Initial D madness!! haha