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Old 09-03-2008, 05:56 PM   #34 (permalink)
OfficeLinebacker
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CapriRacer View Post
Officelinebacker,

I'm afraid you've misunderstood, so I'm going to parse your post out so it is easier to understand my responses:

This isn't understeer or oversteer. This is no steer - in other words, loss of control.
Your handle has the word "racer" in the title, so I'll give you the BOD. So I'll just say that you are misinterpreting what oversteer and understeer are.

That, and you seem to be arguing with me when there is no argument. As I said at the end of my post, it's all about experience and preference. You seem to feel more comfortable with understeer (or "no steer" as you call it). You've clearly taken your car to the limit and beyond, and choose understeer. Great. More power to you. I'm not knocking your preference. Please don't knock mine.

Also, please don't separate personal preference and safety. (Unless once chooses to be unsafe.)

Let me end by asking something, along the lines of whitevette's post:

When your car is understeering, what can you do as a driver to fix it? In my experience, keep cranking the wheel and hold on. Maybe modulate the brake pedal if you don't have ABS. Yes, the steering may come back, but when?

When oversteering, what can you do? You can steer into the skid for one, and you can apply throttle for another. Yeah, it's scary as **** to push the gas when you're losing control, but you only have to regain control once for the light to go on and say, WOW! That works!

Finally, in the interest of full disclosure, upon further meditation, I have pulled one "Gordon Smiley." Please forgive my gruesome reference, but this is when you oversteer where there's a barrier to the outside of the turn, steer into the skid, and suddenly regain traction, only to go head-on into the wall/barrier. This happened once when I was really tired and exited a freeway on an off-ramp that was unexpectedly covered in stay dry (kitty litter type stuff used to soak up oil spills). Apparently there had been an accident or some kind of oil leak and the authorities simply scattered stay dry all over the ramp and just left it there. Judging from the skid marks in the stay dry, I made it much farther then most, and had a lesser impact (for example, there were pieces of broken brake rotor further down the ramp, whereas my car was still drivable). Also in the interest of full disclosure, some cars must have simply made it through.
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