My normal drifting job is setting up the chassis to make Dai Yoshihara’s Discount Tire/Falken Tire S13 do its thing on the Formula D circuit. For the pros there are a lot of tricks and engineering going into making those cars go sideways, changing directions and maneuvering with lighting-fast precision. Quite possibly the fastest growing motorsport, drifting is getting more and more popular on the grassroots level. Although your local drift day can sometimes attract hundreds of enthusiastic beginning drifters, the scene is mostly lacking even a basic knowledge of how to properly set up a car for drifting.
We do some extreme high-dollar secret tricks on the pro cars, but the grassroots drifter can get 80 percent of the way there by getting the basics right. Proper setup will make the car easier to handle in drift and speed up your learning curve. Unlike most grassroots motorsports, many people in the drift scene are seemingly oblivious on how to make their cars work better, being more concerned with things like stance than a properly functioning setup. For those who care, we decided to write down some basic low-cost guidelines on what it takes to set up your car for drifting.
A grassroots drift car will have a setup that’s somewhat different to the high-powered, high-grip cars that are prevalent in pro drifting events like Formula D or even the semi-pro Formula D feeder Pro-Am series. The main difference is that grassroots drifters have much less power and don’t have an endless supply of high-grip tires to burn through. We’ll put an emphasis on a low-cost, easy-to-drive setup that’s well balanced so it will be simple to learn different drifting techniques. Surprisingly, a good drift setup is much like a grip driving setup used in track days or even autocross: you want to have a balanced car that has little understeer, good turn-in and not an excessive about of oversteer. Let’s get started.
Suspension
A good set of coilovers is a very wise investment — they’re the heart of what will make your drift car handle well. It can be a stretch for your budget, but if you can’t afford a good basic set of coilovers, then try to save your money to get some; TEIN, A’PEXi and KW are good coilovers for a lot of popular drift cars. If you’re an advanced drifter, some of the best basic coilovers for the money are KW Clubsports. Their double-adjustable damping gives enough flexibility to see you all the way up to pro competition.
Be wary of the cheap Chinese coilovers. Some of these may be decent, but many are really bad, and there are so many fly-by-night brands that it’s hard to keep track of which ones are especially bad. Remember that cheap Chinese coilovers often have adjustment knobs that do little to actually vary the damping, and some are actually only there for looks! Don’t skimp — buy the best coilovers you can afford.
Race car stiff is out — for drifting, you want to use spring rates that are only a little stiffer than typical high-performance ...
For spring rate, you want to choose something that will give pretty good balance while not being too stiff. Race car stiff is out — for drifting, you want to use spring rates that are only a little stiffer than typical high-performance street coilover spring rates. For the super-popular 240SX, something like an 8kg front and a 6kg rear are good. For other cars, you might want to use what people are doing for track days with street-based cars. Typically, you want a wheel rate — or spring rate at the wheels — slightly stiffer in the front than the rear. This is important because many cars, especially multilink ones, have different motion ratios that put different leverage rates on the springs.
To determine what your wheel rate is, you can jack your wheel up through the stroke after removing the springs and measure how far your wheel travels over its stroke. Then measure how much your shock moves over the wheel’s stroke; after that, divide the amount your shock moves by the amount the wheel moves. The resulting number is your motion ratio, which you can multiply by your spring rate to get your approximate wheel rate.