Anyone attend Bay Area control clinic today?

[Jon97]

Just trying to place faces with forum names. I have a stock Cosmos 97, and was in group A, which started on the skidpad. (Yee-HAW! ... I think I lost enough traction to last 10 lifetimes of spirited daily driving.)

I'll just say this: BobM3 is absolutely right about proper steering wheel grip. All three exercises were enough to convince me that I will never use sloppy steering wheel grip again.

[pete]

:D sounds like it was a blast man. Anyways, this is just my little tidbit... by sloppy, do you mean relaxed, or just not in the proper positions... White knuckling it sucks man, after a long day, your hands get sooo sore... In my kart, its about 1/2 turn lock to lock, and the wheel takes a fairly good amount of presure to turn, especially during high g force corners, and i have this problem... if i try to relax hands on the wheel, they slide on it, which is no good, and hooking my fingers into the spoke just bruises them. So, i am finding that i pretty much have to white knuckle it, and so right now i'm trying to build up hand strenght, its really painfull to come into the pits, only to find that one hand won't come off the steering wheel, because its so stiff. :( any body on here have any knowledge to share? oh oh... maybe i should try taping them... hhmmmmmm

[C.Yang]

At the Auto X's, my favorite working groups have been the porsches and the carts. Those things are hilarious. No Limited slip, so they just power"wiggle" through all the corners. And when they spin out, which is quite often, they spin in place. No cones hit over. Its the easiest and most hilarious work groups I have done. Those things fly like none other though........

[Jon97]

I meant keeping the hands in the proper positions (BobM3 wrote a detailed explanation of why he believes this is so important), and being relaxed as well. During the slalom and skid pad, I noticed how much more control I had over my vehicle with proper hand positioning at 9 and 3, wrapping my thumbs into the little indents that BMW so wisely provides. In short, the proper positioning required much less steering effort, and quicker, more direct input from driver to steering wheel to tire contact patch.

A half-turn lock to lock? I wish our M3s were a little more racy when it comes to the lock to lock ratio. I remeber reading this little blurb about a Japanese market-only S2000 that had a bunch of performance upgrades, including a tighter lock (2.0 or 2.2 I think). Awesome!

What do you mean by hooking you fingers into the spokes? My guess is you don't want to do anything that ultimately restricts movement ( even if you never have to put one hand over the other). More than one lowrider has caused an accident by getting his fingers stuck in his chrome chain-link steering wheel. And guess what happens to those fingers when the car rolls!

Besides proper hand positioning, the clinic shared a number of other good tips for daily driving:
- Don't drive with one hand, with that one hand casually placed on the top of the wheel. When your air bag goes off, it will slam your hand into your forehead at 200mph.
- Sit up-right, not all slouched and pimpy; this position affords us the most car control.
- Don't sit too far back: If your legs and arms are fully extended, they'll bear the brunt of the collision in the event of an accident; this is where drivers blow out their hips and shoulders.

[pete]

ah, my kart has a 3 spoke wheel, so you can sort of slide hand down till fingures hit it, and then it won't slide any more. Hurts like hell after a while though... A good kart chassis, set up right won't hop like that, it will lift the inside rear tire, and turn smoothly. they are slow when you run'em in parking lots, unless you run the super stickey bridgestone's, in YGA compound, which are so soft you can peel rubber off of a new set and strech it, and it will snap back. this is because there isn't enough rubber on the track... a few kart facts... about 3-3.5 g's lat accel, depending on conditions... 125 shifter has higher power / weight then a champ car, 250 p/w is higher then an indy car. both 125's and 250's have 4 wheel disks, new karts have digital, reprogrammable ignition, some now even have traction control. A good kart data-acquisition system keeps track of speed, g-forces, (lateral and accel/deccel.), and will even print you out a track map after the event. We run mostly magnesium rims, hubs, and the chassis is chromoly-tube. oh, a 125 will top out around 100mph, and a 250 will do well over, of course... no seatbelts. :) blast to drive though, but don't bother with the auto-clutch stuff, not half as much fun.... Plus, a shifter will do donuts if you want. :) except this burns up tires like no tommorow.

oh, and it is spelled with a k. :) all good tho