My name is Chris Forsberg and I'm a formula drift champion.
Now in this episode we're going to be moving to the back of the car.
We brought in Jason from Engineering Explained to help break down exactly what it takes to
set up a proper drift car.
To help me with the workload I brought in my friend Wesley Stramer, he is a UTI grad
that's actually worked with me on the Formula Drift program in years passed.
First step is to pull the old diff out and get a new upgraded rear end installed. So
we're going to take this factory, flimsy mount out, toss that away. Moving onto this nice
Billet piece that is going to be a lot stronger and keep that diff locked and loaded.
We've upgraded to a bigger rear end to handle all the extra power, and we also now have
a limited slip differential to make it much more controllable in drift.
The purpose of a limited slip differential is to send more torque to the wheels with
more grip. But in drifting this is important because you want to maintain both wheels rotating
at the same speed.
So as you come into a corner, the inside tire is going to have less load on it. With a limited
slip differential it's going to send more torque to that outside tire, and your going
to be able to maintain that drift.
I have a new carbon fiber driveshaft from The Driveshaft Shop. This will give us the
maximum amount of torsion out of any driveshaft available.
So torsion is the amount of twist that this driveshaft will have before it breaks, and
a carbon fiber one can get up to thirteen degrees of twist. Now that amount of torsion
will actually limit the amount of shock that goes through the rear end and the axles, which
will keep our mechanical failures to a minimum.
Because with our new ACT 6-puck clutch, we're going to be getting a little more shock than
our old organic disc. So now this carbon fiber drive shaft will help keep it from breaking
anything in the back.
Now moving onto the suspension portion of the rear, we have to get our mounts in place
first. This is the factory mount as you can tell it's a little bit of stainless steel,
real flimsy. We're moving onto this Billet aluminum, super reinforced, very rock solid,
to keep our adjustable arms in place.
This is our new adjustable rear control arm. What this does is allow us to not only change
the camber and the toe in the back of the car, which we did not have before. But I can
also change the wheel base by shimmying the upright on this shaft.
Well for toe and camber on a drift car: What you want is a little bit of toe in, and close
to zero camber.
Now in drifting the rear axle is going to have the tires fairly close to zero camber,
and the reason for this is because as the car accelerates you're going to have the body
roll and the back of the car is going to be leaning down onto that rear tire.
Now as that spring compresses in the rear and those tires move up, they're going to
induce an amount of negative camber. So that negative camber dynamically is going to assist
it in the corner. So that as your turning into it, it flattens out and you maximize
that contact patch.
With toe you always want it to be a little in, because it helps the car track straight
and drive forward when you're on the throttle. If you have toe out as you apply the throttle
it just wants to keep rotating the car and it makes it a little more difficult to drive.
Now with drifting a street car and a track car are going to be a little different in how
you set up the spring and shocks. For a track car you're going to going to the absolute
extreme with the softest spring possible in the back and a very stiff shock to control
it. On the street you typically will want a little bit stiffer of a spring to handle all the
bumps and the whoops, and then not as stiff of a shock so that the ride isn't so bad.
The one link that controls the left and the right side of your suspension is your sway
bar. We upgraded our sway bar with a Suspension Techniques piece that gives us a lot more
control to keep that front end planted on the ground.
An anti-roll bar, or sway bar, is used to control body roll. When you go into a corner,
and the body starts to roll over on this side, this is essentially going to be raising up
this inner tire. So as this tire goes up, it pulls on this section of the anti-roll
bar that forces to rotate. And as this rotates it tries to lift up that other side. Now the
reason you want to do this, is because it maintains the wheel geometry. You're going
to have the anti-roll bar which keeps the car level, and then you can maintain that
camber angle you set from a static position.
We actually do a really stiff front sway bar to keep that front end planted as the car
is going sideways. But we do a slightly softer one in the rear so that we can get that roll
to catch the car from going into a spin.
Well we finished the install of our new Techno Tuning adjustable suspension and Wilwood braking
system, and we wanted to bring the Datsun down to UTI Long Beach campus to get on their
alignment racks so that we can put the final touches on this kit to make sure that this
car drives like a dream.
Alignment is super crucial, it gets all your wheels pointed the right direction. You'd
be surprised that a lower horsepower, but properly aligned car can actually outperform
a higher horsepower car without a good alignment.
We're all lined up, last stop, everybody's favorite: Donuts!