This thread is for beginner drifters, there are some steps to begin rc drifting! So here are the steps.

Getting a car

•It is recommended that you use a shaft drive rc car rather than a belt driven transmission for your drifter. The shaft drive provides good throttle response, where as the belt drive cars might give some backlash due to the belt design.

•Good news is a lot of people use belt drive cars for drifting without problems. But if you are starting from scratch, shaft drive cars may be the best drifters.

•Also, use a 4 wheel drive machine if you want to go drifting. 4x4 is easier to control and drift.

•For drifting, electric rc cars sometimes are better than nitro models, when you are just starting. It is easier to control the throttle of an electric car during a drift. Nitro rc cars would probably burn out the clutch and overheat the engines if used for drifting.

•There are many great rc cars for drifting, but you need to know what type of car you!
Do some research, now almost any rc car can drift. Some great cars to start out with are, Yokomo, Sprint 2, Sprint 2 Drift, Tamiya TT-01d, Cyclone S, Team Associated TC3/TC4/TC5.

Putting Together your car

•Some cars require you to add things like a Transmitter, Receiver, Speed Controller, Servo, Motor, Batteries, and sometimes Paint.
This can add up to a lot of money.

•The motor start our with a 35t, then as you get better move over to a 27t (Little bit more powerful), then once you get better move up to a 19t, this is a little more powerful and give you a little more battery life. You need high torque. A lot of people also use 19 turn motors. Also gear your car for acceleration rather than top speed.

Drift Tires

"The only item you need to convert your touring car into a drift car is to change the tires."

Making Your Very Own Drift Tires!
This is a cheap way to make your car drift better!

You can use:
ABS
PVC
Spray Paint Caps
Electrical Tape

•ABS & PVC- ABS is a black piping that is stronger and softer then PVC, just to give you an idea of how strong, go get some ABS & PVC, Get a hammer and hit the PVC (it will shatter) Hit the ABS (the hammer will bounce back.) Anyway! Take the rim you are going to use, and go to your Local Hardware Store and try seeing if it will fit snugly inside the piping. If it does the buy it! It should only cost like five dollars for 10 feet! (That's a lot of tires!) Then take it home and cut it with a table saw, then fit them over your rims if it slides around on it, wrap electric tape around the rim until the ABS or PVC fits. Then you have great drift tires!

•Spray Paint Can- These will work! You can find them every where! These normally fit over rubber tires, Just cut them so the are like little rings, Here's a image

•Electric Tape-Wrap electric tape around your wheels, I personally dislike this, mainly because you can only drift on very slick surfaces; like In-line hockey rinks hardwood floors.

Pre-made Drift tires

•Drift Rings- but you have to buy special tires that they fit over, they work pretty well. But are way to expensive.

•Drift Tires- I have never used these because of the price (Around $40), so if you want to spend $40 tell how it goes

Learning To Drift!
Finally The fun part!
There are many was to drift, now that you and your car are ready to drift, time to get started!

• Goto a nice open place with a smooth gravel free surface.
• Set up your car.
•Use around half gas, then turn and floor it, let go of the gas, then quickly adjust the amount of gas to fit the turning situation the car should spin out, find the point when when it is about to lose control then counter-steer*.
•Try different types of throttle, turning, and counter-steer.
•One thing is that using more gas with less counter-steer with make the drift tighter.
•Practice Drifting it different directions, so you can drift in more then one direction with easy instead of only being able to drift in one direction.
•Once you practice enough make very simple tracks like a Figure 8 then make more complex tracks.
•Have fun, no fun will make you gradually get "bored" with it.

Initial Settings
Now that you have the most important part on, the tires, some minor adjustments to suspension will help if the kit you bought has the option to adjust.

Some technical terms clarified:

•Understeer-Put simply, understeer is a condition where your car does not turn at the degree the driver wants, but follows a straighter line.

•Oversteer-
Just the opposite of understeer. When the rear of the car overtakes the front too much, oversteer occurs and the car spins out.

•Camber
The angle made by the wheels on a vertical axis. If the top of the wheels is further from the bottom (wheels pointing away from the car) it is called positive camber. If the bottom of the wheel is further from the top (wheels pointing into the car), it is called negative camber. Negative camber helps improve grip and control in corners. Camber is adjusted by the camber rods on a car, turned by a wrench.

•Toe
The degree at which the wheels point inward or outward from the chassis laterally. Increased toe in the rear of the car gives it more oversteer and straightline traction. Toe settings are adjusted by using different toe plates pre-set to the desired toe degree or toe rods on certain cars. Front toe can also be adjusted on some cars by purchasing steering arms preset to a degree of toe, and to a finer degree by toe rods in the same manner as camber is adjusted.


I won't discuss droop, ride height, slip angle and caster as they don't need to be toyed with at this stage. It does help to have a camber gauge which can be bought at most hobby stores.

If you put on a set of ABS, then you'll want to give your car at least 1 degree of camber. If you mounted Drift Rings, the single ring tire will need more in the front than the rear, maybe 2 degrees negative and 1 degree negative. With the double rings, 0-1 degree camber all around should be good. Rear Toe settings should be 2-3 degrees with the front at neutral.

If you find the car is spinning out (oversteering) or not turning fast enough (understeering) the first thing to try is to adjust the trim setting, and steering dual rate on your controller. This controls the range at which the servo moves. Increasing dual rate means your car should turn faster. If you still feel problems, then you may need to adjust camber or front toe to different settings.

If you have different tension springs, changes to the front and rear will also limit oversteer and understeer. A harder spring in the rear will give the car more oversteer, while a softer in the rear more understeer. Front and rear settings can be mismatched between the same tension all around, and different tensions for front and rear. Generally a rougher surface with more grip calls for a harder suspension, while a surface with less traction, a softer one.

These settings can be played with later once you upgrade parts and develop your own driving style.

Hop-Up Parts

After you have gotten the feel for drifting, theres quite a few option parts out there you can upgrade to. The price and parts vary by chassis but here are some you'll most likely find. Some kits already come with some hop-ups.


Front 1-way differential
This is something once you try you either hate, or love or both. It makes the front of your car closer to an open type of diff. This is good for tight course or turns, but can be difficult for some to control or get used to. Installing this option makes the car more sensitive in steering meaning added control. It also allows for E-Brake induced drifts which isn't possible in a full ball differential setup.

Solid differential
This diff is similar to a welded or totally locked differential. It can be installed in the front or rear of a car. It helps in getting both wheels to drive at the same time without slipping.

Center 1-way shaft
Similar to a 1-way diff, this allows for E-Brake drifts and isolates the front differentials from the rear. A little less aggressive than a differential, and keeps the tunability of ball differentials. When used in combination with a 1-way diff, it allows for more speed in turns.

Oil filled threaded shocks
These are highly adjustable in that you can fill them with different weight oils for more or less response, and you can adjust the spring compression manually. Compression can further be tuned by adjusting the rod height.

Springs
There are different tension springs from various manufacturers ranging from soft to hard. Playing with spring tension in the front and rear of the car greatly affects drift handling. Having different tension springs is one of the best ways to tune a car to a certain surface.

Anti-roll bars
Like springs, there are different tension anti-roll bars that help to control sway for enhanced control.

One piece CVDs and Universals
The parts that transfer power from the differentials to the wheels. The best ones for these are the hard type. These won't come apart or break as easily as stock types. Plus, they offer less friction.

Ball bearings
Many basic low end kits come with bushing instead of bearings. Upgrading to these allows for less friction and thus, more speed and efficiency.

Gears
The area of gearing is another FAQ worthy topic. You can buy different size Spur gears (the large gear) and pinion gears (small gear) and adjust acceleration and top end of the car. Be sure when buying a spur or pinion to know what pitch your car is at (64 or 48).
A Smaller Pinion Gear or Larger Spur Gear = More Acceleration
A Larger Pinion Gear or Small Spur Gear= Higher Speed

Graphite parts
Super lightweight parts. You can get just about any part of the chassis in graphite such as lower suspension arms, steering hubs, steering arms, differential cases, receiver platforms, and the chassis itself.

Titanium and aluminum parts
Very lightweight metals. Used for Allen head screws (won't strip), motor cams, turnbuckles, differential hubs, wheel hubs, and toe bars.




Hope this helps!

Hopefully this will help you if you have questions...
Feel free to add to this thread anything I missed please add!
I found some stuff on the internet, and from friends teaching me!
* CounterSteer- Corrective steering used to balance and maintain an oversteered condition. (turning the steering wheel in the opposite direction of the turn once the vehicle starts to oversteer)
This took me along time to make!

Thanks!
, DAND

Great write up... You might want to spell the Title correctly though.

This should be a sticky!

This is a great guide, I think you should include a little more on gearing, just the fact that smaller pinion or larger spur = more acceleration and larger pinion or smaller spur = top end

I was going through and thinking what else should I add and I forgot gearing!

If you say something like this then please say IMO or similar because this is not fact but only your opinion as you obviously have not tried nitro drifting...

Also I would say that IMO with plastic tyres (no matter what type) you should stick to 0 degrees of camber, or you will find them only contacting on the edges.
The purpose of camber is to keep the tyre flat during cornering and as when you drift you are sliding there is very little body-roll and very little force trying to deform the tyre, (this only happens during a corner when the tyre is grippping), adding to the fact that there is NO tyre deformation, so adding negative camber is pointless because your tyre will stay flat with an even contact patch with 0 degrees.

The thing is I have not drifted nitro. But I didn't say they can't drift. Electric is just preferred and easier to maintain...

ditto on the camber thing keep it level for better drifting [8D]
as for the nitro/electric debate well they both drift well as long as they have enough power to spin those wheels
a good write up tho [sm=thumbup.gif]

Definitly a good write up, should be a sticky with a few revisions. Thanks for taking the time to write this though, I'm sure it'll help a lot of new R/Cers from asking the dreaded "I'm new, what car will drift for me?"

I know, but we were all there at one point in time

also the lower turn motors give u less runtimes i think thats what you meant right??
and ive never heard of drifting with a 35turn motor?thats better for crawlers put start at 27turns and move to 19turns when comfortable in drifting.
hope the mods do sticky it though

you could start at 19t cuz they give u the power to hit sweepers. Also with the yokomo ringed tires u have to run camber to increase your speed and grip.

This needs to be a sticky NOW, loads of info in here that are asked in different threads 3-5 times a week. who do we need to talk to too get this sticky-ed? (i think thats a word lol)

Nice write up. Should help out the NEWBS!

Yeah I hop this thing gets turned into a sticky, and GTB I appreciate how you said NEWB instead of Noob
I'm going to see how I can get it turned into a sticky, I bet it has to do something with a Administrator promoting it or something...

It should defenantly be a sticky! It will save this forum alot of useless posts.... like the "New to Drfiting, what car to get" thread that is asked about a million times a day!

MODS PLEASE MAKE THIS A STICKY!

40 bux for Yok Rings....ouch

I run the single rings, and the camber is set to catch just a little of the outter rubber for some grip, finding the sweet spot is usually somewhere in the middle depending on the surface. Also, there are a few manufactures making Drift tires, in the end I think tire choice will depend on motor power and track surface...examples are

brushless w/ Yokomo HG's, Rings or HPI super-d's - any drift radials
or
19-27 turn with ABS, Odyssey's or any hard compound tire.

just my few cents tho, great write up

[:'(]

I will have to back DanDthekid on the Nitro Comment...
I have Drifted Both Nitro and Electric and for Pure ease of Sliding, Less mess and Less expense the Electric wins hands down every time.

Nitro can slide, they just dont like it as much as the electrics due to the Basic mechanics of the Nitro Motors and what happens when you drift.
An Electric Motor has Instant torque and Generates less heat with the lack of Air flow..
A Nitro motor just by its design alone, needs to generate RPMS before it reaches its Torque Curve.

And since this is a RC Drift guide for noobs, then Noobs are not going to be looking for a HPI RS4 to learn on in the first place.

We should all PM some of the Admin's and get them to sticky this.

Sticky! Great stuff, the rest of us had to learn it the hard way!

Can someone elaborate on the differentials? Particularly the effects of locking either the front or the rear. I suppose it would be preferred generally to leave the fronts open for tighter turns, and lock or tighten the rear for better traction. What da-ya-say?

I'm going to add that!
Thanks!

Locking the rear diff is a must for drifting, it ensure that both tires will spin at the same rate whether it has the full load of the car or not. With an open diff, it will transfer more power to the wheel with less load. So say your drifting around a left turn, the rear right tire will lose a lot of speed because it becomes harder to spin, causing the differential to transfer more power to the left one. As for the front, Locking it helps with turning. (You don't necessarily need to lock either the front or the back, just tightening them will do the job. But locking is better, only problem is if you want to use it for racing or rallying or something else, you will need to unlock it which is a lot of work.) Hope I'm right and I hope this helps!

Nice, I like the way you included that info in there. While there is plenty more details about gearing, that info should be more than enough for a beginner to R/C imo.

Dude how tight your diffs are really depends on your car setup and driving style and tires. I have found that for abs having my front tighter than my rear like a racing setup helps to eleminate that slop, and the car also drifts really well with rubber based rp-d drift tires. I used to run my rear tight with the front loose but i like this setup better. it all depends how u drive.

yeah, it definitly depends a lot on your drift style, but the general population locks the rear