the re070's really aren't that bad in the rain. Giving the car gas mid corner is going to give you oversteer no mater what tires you have.

Sounds like you wanted to get the tail out a bit and you just messed up. You're right though, stepping on the brakes in an oversteer situation transfers weight to the front of the car making the rear come out more.

 

the re070's really aren't that bad in the rain. Giving the car gas mid corner is going to give you oversteer no mater what tires you have.

Agreed.

AWD is not invincible in the rain, slow down.

 

pay attention to speed as well as rpm in the turns(don't try 90 degree turns going faster than 30mph, those tires will usually break traction). on a main road, even on dry pavement i rarely downshift to 2nd, usually in 3rd. i mean if you really want the instant boost after the turn, be in 2nd, but i wouldn't do it in the rain.

 

I've driven in really hard rain on the RE070s without any problems, but then again i'm used to driving RWD muscle cars in the rain, so the STI is a breeze, lol.

+1 to above poster, its a bad idea to put your car at the onset of a non-linear power band and then give it gas in the rain while turning. Loosing traction in that situation isnt really the tire's fault.

Glad you didnt wreck your car though :tup:.

 

i think what evil said, u wanted some backend action and over did it

lucky u didnt crash

 

it had to have been more than 4k haha.

 

I've actually found my car to be considerably easier and more predictable to control when the DCCD is set to full open, as opposed to auto. I've gotten the pendulum effect as drastically as you're experiance (actually a couple times, i went from 45* to the right to doing about 225* rotation to the left and pointing backwards) when it's in auto, but in full open, it usually snaps back straight pretty easily after getting some oversteer. You might find a big parking lot and play around with it a bit to learn the car.

I think you did fairly well after you lost traction. It takes a good bit of practice to keep you from over correcting a little when it first happens, but if you practice you'll get there. The biggest mistake was hitting the gas too early.

 

Sounds like a pretty wild ride! I think the 070's are pretty good in the rain. I only had one big time loss of traction, but it was just me experimenting by hammering down in an open parking lot.

 

yep, a friend of mine did a track day in his STi at limerock in the pouring rain with the 70's and they did extremely well (for a ultra high performance summer tire). Everybody in the paddock watching him couldn't believe how fast he was going :lol:

 

only almost lost it once getting on the highway in the rain, got scared pretty good.

 

(flame suit on)

So this past week I almost wrecked my car.

On that day it was raining. I was approaching an intersection where I was going to take a right. The light was green in my direction so I just downshifted to 2nd which got RPM up to ~3k and proceeded to take the turn.

I turned into the road which had 3 lanes all empty; when I was coming out of the turn, before the car straightened out I gave it just a bit of gas and that shot the RPM up to 4k (still in 2nd gear). My car instantly lost traction and the car rotated 45 degrees to the right.

I counter-steered to the left but I over-corrected it. In a split second my car now faced 90 degrees to the left (135 degree rotation) now looking directly to the telephone pole and the sidewalk on the left side of the road. I counter-steered to the right again, but this time I got it perfect and the car straightened out without pendulum effect or jerkiness. The whole time I had my right foot on the gas (not pedal to the metal). I didn't brake whatsoever because I heard people saying braking is the worst thing you can do while sliding.

When this was happening all I can remember doing is just turning the wheel like mad until the car straightened out. I know I screwed up the counter-steering the first time but I didn't know it was that bad; I was thinking I got the car maybe 45 degrees to the left. Friends in my car (also WRX/STI drivers) told me I was actually facing the left sidewalk and thats when I realized I really screwed up big time. I was also glad that I didn't mess with DCCD before I took the turn. On that note the fat whiteline sways I have on my car probably didn't help the situation at all.

Now what could I have done to make the situation better once I lost the traction?

I knew RE070 and rain was a bad combo but didn't know it was "this" bad. (to be fair my RE070 has 19k miles on it but still good amount of treads left since I don't autox)

Ive done the same thing but i striaghten mine up on the first counter turn.......because i didnt have my foot on the gas! while counter turning. Let up next time and she'll come back

 

From my experiance, this is bad advice. Whenever I let off the gas in a situation like this, it snaps back twice as fast as it would otherwise and makes it about a million times harder to keep it from acting like a pendulum. don't floor it, but don't completely let off either.

 

I hear you on the over-correction bit. Just from my own personal experiences, I think AWD is harder to control AFTER you lose traction compared to RWD. When it snaps back in, it really snaps in. Whereas with RWD, I think it's more predictable once you've lost traction. Don't feel too bad, I actually did crash my car. When I get it back in mid-october, I'm going straight to auto-x and track events to re-learn how to drive. Definitely taught me a good lesson. You live and you learn.

Maybe AWD is better than everything else after losing traction, but IMHO it isn't in relevance to an un-trained driver. I'm came from a BMW E28 535i to this car......

 

I have never had a problem driving the STi in the rain, but then I came from rwd muscle cars (that I drove year round) so I am a little more sensitive about mid corner throttle modulation then most. Also, I don't run RE070s I run a tire with a much better rain traction rating.

As everyone has said, your first mistake was goosing the throttle mid corner in the rain. Your second was panicking and over steering. When in a skid it is important to stay calm, and carefully counter steer, sawing at the wheel will only cause your skid to continue (as you experienced). Also, don't feed in throttle on a rear wheel biased AWD, in a skid it will act like a rwd car and continue to get loose. Also, like everyone has said, when the tail gets loose, hitting the brakes will cause the car to transfer weight forward and the tail will get looser.

My suggestion is to gently counter steer and gently let off the gas, once traction is retained use your remaining momentum to straiten the car and CAREFULLY feed in throttle as needed to get out of the way of other cars on the road. Then park it till your heart rate returns to normal (wearing a pair of brown pants also cuts down on embarrassing questions).

 

Understood.

Yes I wanted the back end to kick just a little bit - in my infinite wisdom I thought it would be a bit more than dry pavement which was actually a LOT more.

And yes I was at 4k in 2nd gear when the car lost grip, no joking. As someone said I don't think it was the speed itself; it was adding throttle at the turn which was the problem..

I seriously need to take a driving course.

 

i hear you bro. i made the mistake of trying to drive on them in the snow. almost totalled the car quite a few times.

 

Idunno my RE70's look like they are bald and I only have 11k miles on them. I've only Auto-x's twice.

 

An inexpensive lesson learned. You'll know what to do next time. Just don't get overconfident! :lol:

Idunno my RE70's look like they are bald and I only have 11k miles on them. I've only Auto-x's twice.

A lot of STIs came from the factory with wacky alignments. I would consider getting one.

Unless you were scrubbing tons of speed through the turns, after 2 autoxs and 11k miles, your tires should not be bald. Or do you drive like a bat out of hell everywhere.

8k miles, 7 autoxs, 3 track days, and some donuts later, my 070s still have a little meat on them.

 

I want to go to track school and learn dynamics and stuff. Sounds like it woudl make me a better driver in Auto-x and more importantly, in real life. If you're good at driving in twisty high speed situations, you're good at driving at mundane daily situations.

 

I want to go to track school and learn dynamics and stuff. Sounds like it woudl make me a better driver in Auto-x and more importantly, in real life. If you're good at driving in twisty high speed situations, you're good at driving at mundane daily situations.

statistically, i've read, the opposite is true. they say because of overconfidence. you take more risks.

 

The trick with AWD is not to drive it like a RWD car. If you get oversteer, you don't steer into it and let off the gas. You keep the wheel pointed where the car should actually go and give it more gas. IMO the STI just doesn't handle that great when you try to drive it like it's RWD. But when you drive it like it was meant to be driven, it's much easier to control than a RWD car could dream of being. I've never owned a car that was more stable in a situation where all four tires are sliding.

 

The trick with AWD is not to drive it like a RWD car. If you get oversteer, you don't steer into it and let off the gas. You keep the wheel pointed where the car should actually go and give it more gas.....

I've never heard anyone tell me to steer into a spin. Everyone's always said to let off the gas slowly, and keep the car pointed where its suppose to go. I'm talking about RWD.......where's that coming from? I've just never heard of anyone being taught to steer into a spin, no matter what platform they're driving........

 

maverickar15:

Much of the problem could have been attributed to the tires, but maybe not in the way that you'd normally think of it.

When you're going straight ahead and the tires encounter standing water, they typically have adequate "void" areas in the tread to allow the water to be safely evacuated to the outside of the tire and thus allow the tread face to maintain contact with the road.

However, when you're turning, the tire (actually just about any tire) isn't as capable of evacuating water that builds under the tire. That's because the shoulders of the tread face don't have nearly the "void" areas that the middle of the tire does. Typically, the ability to evacuate water when turning is about 30% of the tire's normal ability to evacuate water while going straight ahead.

So in your case, you turn a corner (where water often pools or puddles) and with only 30% of the tire's ability to evacuate said water, you hit the throttle. It's not hard to imagine the tire hydroplaning and the car losing traction.

When driving in wet conditions....slow down, be smooth and look for standing water that can present big problems.

Gary

 

Here's a link to "spin prevention" technique.

http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Features/articleId=104165

It includes "steering into a spin".

Gary

 

ALthough an interesting article, it says nothing about steering into a spin. It's an article about gassing it in a FWD car. With this method, you don't countersteer, you point the wheels straight as you recover.

 

you can break traction on any tire in the wet with sti. That being said, i've used a few different brands and the re70's are horrible in the wet. Thats why on subies site they warn you the tires are summer only etc......

 

Bah, now that you've faced the "rain beast", find any open and safe stretch of wet road and learn to enjoy sideways. Snow is even more fun! WOOT!

 

Yeah sorta like everyone is saying. I've done this many a times cept it's much more fun in 1st gear. Anyway, most of the playing I've done has been empty parking lots in the rain. When I do it I slap the throttle and the car immediatly breaks loose. As soon as it does I steer in the direction of the slide for not but a split second. As I do this I never let off the throttle but I wouldn't mash it. The car should immediatly start turning itself the right direction and I crank the wheel back to center and it straightens out. The key is to turn it back to center, if you don't do this fast enough you will whip around into oversteer. It just takes fast hands and reaction. That seems to be what I do, if I recall right, and I've never oversteered.

 

upncummr & Rootus thanks for your responses. I learned a lot - now I need to practice it in safe environment.

So with an AWD car, in a spin -

1. Point the car to where I want to go
2. Give it some gas

and I shouldn't countersteer? Maybe thats why my car rotated 135 degrees counterclockwise after I countersteered AND held down gas pedal.

 

of course you steer into a spin, that means the opposite way. If you are fishtailing on a left turn you would counter steer right.

 

Great discussion all, I would just like to point out that the torque split on the early year STis was 40-60 front rear while the newer ones are closer to 50-50. What this means is that with the newer ones you can gas it in a turn with all 4 wheels sliding and pull yourself out as the wheels will accelerate at similar speeds keeping traction front to back constant while the 40-60 STis will over accelerate the rear end and over steer more. When the diff is in auto in my car it does adjust somewhat, but you can still, like in a rwd car, step the tail out or correct for under steer by adding in throttle gently. So some of the variance in technique could be due to the variance in torque split between the years.

 

When you're on the street, you're going that speed, and you're that out of control then it's going to be easier if you smoothly get off the gas. If you're off the gas the car should regain traction more quickly and be easier to tame. Some people will tell you to stay on the gas, and that AWD will pull you out of trouble. Well, it can pull you out of trouble but you still have to know what you're doing and exercise good throttle control.

If you want to practice your driving in the rain I'd suggest going somewhere where you can really stretch your legs. Autocrossing in the rain is pretty fun.

And I thought I'd throw a couple of tips out there:
1.) Either keep your hands at 9 & 3 on the steering wheel, or "pre-set" your hands slightly to the left for a right turn or slightly to the right for a left turn. The reason is that it's going to be much easier to control the car when you're using that ready-for-anything type of hand positioning. The idea is to prevent any situation where you're frantically grasping at the wheel.
2.) Check out the game Richard Burns Rally. If you have a good racing wheel it's such a realistic simulation that it makes for good practice. Believe it or not, my brother and I play this game all the time and it's gone a long way to improving our car control in real life. It's such a great game.