these photos got me wanting to put the street tires back on ingrid. the snow tires make her handle very strangely at speeds above about 70MPH. then, i looked at the outside temps today: 30F right now, with a high of 44F. if it is only 30F now, there is no way we are even going to get above 40F. the upshot is that i can't get too excited about swapping the wheels in those temps and i know i'll have to put the snow wheels back on in a week or so.....

i really need something to do.

first day of bleh work of the year is past me, first meatless monday , almost done as well, and dropped off a pint of blood at the red cross... not bad for one day.

If the damn UPS man will bring me caliper kits and rotors I can have my car back on the road this week.

???

first work day
and also the day that i skipped eating meat
and i went to the red cross to donate a pint of blood

are you saying that you left foot the brake while cornering, throttle on to keep the turbo spooled? if so, how the hell do i practice that?! i can see how that would vastly improve my autocross times, for sure.

start on a straight road, slight , gentle taps with left foot when nobody is around.. sensitivity training so to speak.
It's not that difficult to left foot brake.. the tricky part is coordinating that you have 3 pedals, and the middle one is shared by 2 feet :D..
Cause you can't left foot brake everything, you still need it for clutching..

Or go drive a kart.

I don't see Kart driving as being good training for throttle control on a car.....

Karts are great for getting a line right....

But you have to left-foot brake.

I disagree that it's not good for throttle practice.. Karting is good practice any way you look at it.
But it won't help with pedal coordination, for obvious reasons.

Pedals are seperated, you have no choice about which to use, and most of the karts you can rent don't have a lot of range in the throttle, its stop or go.....

My first car as a teenager was an automatic transmissioned MBZ. So after I got my license, I decided to left-foot brake 'cause I figured it would lead to a faster reaction time (and because that's how the some race car drivers did it, I read). So I naturally left-foot brake in an auto car. It's not that hard to pick up. But I haven't really done it in a manual-tranny car, yet.

It's pretty easy to control the finesse of your throttle if the pedal throws very long and soft. and a kart throttle is anything but long and soft.

Because there is so little range, and generally a hard spring, it helps to be precise about it and it works up the muscles that do it.

And as for seperated pedals...Dunno Sid, but Throttle control : i never left foot throttle myself, dunno about you. If you left food gas it, something is not well setup about your 44.

Wow. Them's fighting words. Where's that popcorn-eating smilie?

:)

Listen. This isn't Penske Racing. You learn in whatever is available. Even if it's a 1976 Mercedes 280 as was in my case.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1325534864.gif

oh, Sid wouldn't come fighting with me, he's a boy scout and i got kicked out of the boy scouts for fighting dirty

Instead he's prolly looking for some asccii art to copy paste, and express his emotion about the 44 bashing. But unfortunately, Ascii art doesnt' translate well on PPOT, cause when you post it, it goes all garbled.. like so:


| |
| |
|_|
_| |_
| |~|_|_
: | | |_|
( --\`-' |
/ _ \ `-'
| `-' )
\ _ ' )'
| V |
| : |

I was talking about other turbo drivers telling me I needed to left foot brake to keep the throttle on and thusly turbo spooled. That is NOT a good reason to left foot brake.

The first advantage of left foot braking is no off throttle transition in the brake zone between throttle and brake. You go deeper into the corner because you don't have to lift then brake.

The second advantage to left foot braking is that you more control of the speed through the apex of the corner. With right foot braking if you brake too much, there is that transition time to get back on the throttle to make speed corrections. You are limited to bumping the throttle to control the corner speed. With left foot braking you are using both brakes and throttle to control the speed so if you over brake you have throttle there to compensate quicker. Or more accurately if you are going too fast you are braking to slow instead of coasting.

Here is a very good comparison between Schumacher (left foot braking) and Barrichello (right foot braking).

I've tried to learn left foot braking and frankly I can do well into and through the corner. My problem comes after the corner as I am upshifting. I forget to move my left foot off the brake and bang my head against the windshield pushing in what I think is the clutch.

The big thing to remember both when learning left foot braking and right foot heal/toe is to plant your heel on the floor. This forces you to use your calf muscles to control the pedal pressure instead of your thigh muscles. While your thigh is great for the on-off pumping of the clutch, it is not very good at the control required for threshold braking.

There are some great rally car videos out there that show the driver's feet dancing between left foot and heel/toe braking.