Sideways

Your best bet is obviously to get somewhere thats off the public road. You could do it the naughty way and find an abandoned airfield or large car parks or long gravel roads that aren't close to anything, I can recommend a few in the New Forest ;). Or do it properly and either go on a trackday, or get in contact with your local motorclub and see if they have any autotests/gymkhanas going on locally. Or try and find a skid pan course - you wont spend the day in the SX but sometimes they'll let you have a play at the end i your own car.

I still havent got the hang of it, as I do what you do and want to lift off especially on public roads. But the autotest I did last week was great fun, just kept my foot in and used the steering which worked a treat. Although when i tried it in the 325i I ended up in a right state :)

Probably. Got even more by being held up in the twisty stuff by bigger, more powerful machines. :)

the first time i kep the pedal down and the back end came round smootly until the grass caught the front end the second time round i lifted off and the back end snapped round and left me facing the wrong way into the traffic coming towards me at roughly 70 mph oops :)

I'm thinking about going to Elvington on the first of Oct. £99 plus £10 helmet hire seems pretty good value and the track has big run-offs too :-)

Elvington is top but you'll need brutal braking at the bottom of the straight.

I must admit I'd love to take the volvo but the fragile bearings and bushings (and the high cost of repairs) put me off - now if I still had the sierra...

I did this a few years back and was very impressed with it.

It's particularly good if, e.g. you can turn off driver aids and learn how to actually brake / steer / etc. A eurobox that also came on the course had TCS / ABS / etc and frankly, you can't learn much when the car is in charge. I guess you are more in my end of the scale there, though, and it's well worth while if you are.

£200 and you could have one again.... :)

I'll save that one for next time you have a dig at Alfas.

Time for some fast road pads then.

That looks well worth investing some time and money in. Thanks for the link.

Roundabouts are NOT GOOD. They have a shed load of expensive street furniture around them and quite enough 200SXs have been lost by the uninitiated to lamp posts and kerbs already.[1] + drifting on the public highway is about as legal as doing wheelies.

A big empty car park with no lamps or decorative vegetation with kerbs is best. Or track with big run offs.

and search in the drift forum for a practice day with instruction.

If the back end is really lively it may need rear wheel camber setting

- done on a full laser alignment jig as can't be done by tyre shops with laser tracking kit. Or DIY with sprit level or plumb lines and a lot of grovelling under car.

[1]+ one to that ugly bug Herbbie - Fully Loaded is a horror film. She had sussed the naffness of the yank tank V8 and was going to save the sleek SeXy SX, giving it the TLC it deserves when the bloody bug jumps on it. I think I need counseling, I wore black to the cinema.

200SX really does need 280mm discs and 4 pot calipers from S14 or ZX. (says me still running 257mm prefacelift)

The Sierra is cheap to fix...

Or my old Sierra! It slid and spun all over by mistake.

Yeah but I seem to recall that had a diesel engine...

.. oh no, it was big nitrous V8.

Too much torque with the diesel, it would have moved this little island rather than itself.

Found in the out box.

Jedi training. Stop being Numb and learn to feel the force. When the back end goes wide the steering wheel will try to self centre in the right direction. Just feel it pull, turn the wheel way the way it wants to go, maintain throttle with neutral steering and it will hold the slide, then steer into it bit a further to bring it out of the slide. If it hits the lock stop then it's lost but as SX has near world best lock with 9.6-9.7m turning circle it can go a lot further than most other cars that have a sadly limited lock - typically 11m. Newer Noble's have been re-engineered with an extra 0.8 turns lock to avoid this ignominious event other super cars will still just spin out when they try to run at yaw angles like the SX does out the box. About the only thing to be done when at full lock is full power and spin it to lose speed like you see on Top Gear etc but that's not an option on the road.

The sideways launch needs massive opposite lock as it goes, when it's pointing in the right direction a lift off and stomp will regain traction, let go and the wheel will self centre in the right direction automatically. Depart leaving all around to recover their lower jaws from the floor.