is it bad for your max?

i've been doing it quite often and it's fun. but is it bad for the max.

2k2 6-speed.

 

also when i break hard in the snow and my car starts sliding, i hear some really bad noises and alot of bumps are felt through the brake pedal.

is this normal?

 

uh yeah, its called bad tires. also, its not the smartest thing to "break hard" in the snow or in the rain. believe me, i got out alive in an accident.

 

not like i wanted to. but it was a freakin huge hill. had me shook pretty bad. my car slid down sideways but luckily, it was at 1 in the morning and no other cars around. when i reached the bottom of the hill, it just stopped on it's own.

 

it could be the ABS

 

Wouldn't the bumps felt in the pedal have something to do with the ABS trying to engage to stop the sliding. Pulsating???

 

This bumps you heard and felt are NORMAL. It is not bad tires. It was your Anti-lock brakes kicking in. Had they not been there, you likely would have crashed as you would have spun out of contol.

ABS can only help so much, it can't compensate for poor judgment during adverse conditions.

Drive safe and take that hill a lot slower next time. Oh yeah, new tires would help because the stock ones don't have that good of traction. Not that yours were 'bad' meaning old.

 

If you drive in the snow\ice a lot, consider getting snow tires or getting your tires "siped" (they cut small lines into the thread to increase edge grip).

 

ah yes..Gravity.

What you felt in the peddle is normal. It is the ABS kicking on. ABS has been proven to shorten stopping distances on dry and wet pavement. In snow and gravel ABS may actually lengthen the stopping distance. The best thing to do is that on a snowy road going down hill, put the car into neutral and be easy on the brake. Leaving the car in drive causes the wheels to work against the brakes and could cause you to loose traction. You'd be surprised how much the nuetral thing helps.

 

i have a third gen and it's been snowing here (manhattan, ks) for a while now and i'm pretty accustomed to the snow. once in a while on an empty road, i slam on my brakes to test stopping distance and fully expecting to slide. I DO slide but I also feel bumps not from the pedal like abs (cos my car does NOT have abs, believe me, i know) but feels like it's from the road. I have assumed it's the rough nature of the snow that gives that feedback...

 

First of all...the real drifting is done on DRY surface...

if you do it on wet surface like on rain or in snow...that's actually called losing-control.

 

aww man...so i really havent drifted... So-3 are too expensive anyway..

 

if you're really into drifting, you don't care about flat spotting $200 dollar tires. in fact, you live to see them.

besides..it's kinda hard drifting a FWD car without yanking on e-brakes.

 

yes i love borrowing my friends Ae86..but he has junkyard tires....I would live to see my so-3 flat spotted....BUT...i also wanna live and have a GOOD credit rating, or a nice healthy bank account..ya kno?! Im not rich like YOU! Mr. Moneybags

 

do you know any more specific info on how that neutral thing works? does it prevent ABS from engaging?

 

It doesn't prevent the ABS from engaging. It just prevents your wheels from trying to drive against the brakes. Think of this. If you are on sheet ice in nuetral, you likely will just roll right across, but if you gas it, or brake it, you run the risk of losing control.

Nuetral just allows the car to brake without the wheels being driven.

 

Allow me to disagree . . .

What you refer to as "real drifting" is nothing more than what some of us have been doing on deserted snow-covered parking lots for at least 35 years. The only thing that the new "drifting" crowd has done is given it a name along with smoke and noise instead of snow and near-silence.

And if you're going to throw around the term "losing control" you need to apply that description to ALL pavement conditions.

Actually, doing a little drifting in said deserted snow-covered parking lots represents a useful "refresher course" in low-grip driving. Even if all you get out of it is a lessened tendency to panic when your tires become "unstuck" in your street driving. Not to mention that it's a lot of fun (yes, some kinds of 15 mph driving can be fun). I still do a few loops and slides after most every snowfall; having a normally empty swimming pool parking lot less than 200 yards from my house is really convenient .

EddiexAhn - The part that's kind of hard on things is when part of the pavement is bare and part snowy/icy. You develop impact loads when the tires suddenly grip again on a bare spot that go all the way back through your powertrain to the crankshaft and ultimately the conrods & pistons (which aren't the weak links, BTW). This is probably worse with a stick, since the automatic's torque converter will absorb some of this load.

Norm

 

That "bad noise" IS the ABS. Scared the crap out of me the first time it engaged for me, but I'm used to it. But whatever you do, don't let off on the brake pedal... its gonna vibrate and all sorts of other things... you take your foot off the brake pedal, and the ABS turns off, and your car will obviously not stop where it could have. Be safe.. don't drive so quick... if your ABS engages once, start braking from a further distance. And stop as far behind the car in front of you, cause you know some dumba$$ that doesn't have ABS or doesn't know how to use it could end up slammin' into your rear.

 

my drifting is only done in parking lots at 20 mph or less so i would say that it is controlled. sometimes on wide open intersections but i'm scared since my friend drifted into a pole.
and since my car is FWD, i use the e-brake extensively to do my drifts.

but thanks for all your posts. if it is the ABS, it's not working to well. haha.

i found out that sometimes by pumping the brake i stop sooner than with the ABS.

 

ABS does pump the brakes, but faster than you can. "Pumping" the brakes went out with drum brakes on all four corners. Anyone who tells you that pumping the brakes works well knows nothing. Either you let the ABS do its thing or you threshold brake.

 

the abs does pump fast, it pumps TOO fast for my car to get traction in the snow. when braking with the ABS kicking in, my car slides side to side causing me to lose control.

i believe someone mentioned in a post before that abs actually might lengthen the stopping distance in snow or gravel, and i agree that abs is really of no help in snow.

by pumping the brakes manually, i was able to let the wheels roll long enough to regain traction and to steer my car back into my lane without causing an accident.

pumping the brakes might be outdated, but u gotta do what u gotta do to prevent an accident.