Someone once told me that if you drift an awd car that your constantly slipping the clutch. Is this the truth.

 

anyone?

 

Someone once told me that choosing correctly between "your" and "you're" will encourage people to take me seriously and, inter alia, answer my questions promptly and directly.

One of us was given good advice.

ps. when I am sliding, which is usually on gravel, my left foot is on the brakes and my right foot is on the gas; even if my wife tells her friends otherwise, I have no third lower appendage long enough to slip the clutch at the same time

 

you dont drift on 4wd. you powerslide.

 

Sorry about having to delete your hissy fit. But let me tell you this, as you seem to be rather confused as to what the clutch is between: slipping the clutch cuts power to both ends of the car at the same time, since it is between the engine and transmission. What you need to do in order to drift our cars in the manner of rear-tire smoke and fronts not being powered is to keep the ACD open, which you can do quite easily by lifting the hand-brake a little. Then, if you can break the rears free, almost all power will end up going to the rear to make the pretty smoke you desire.

While I might have only two feet, I still have two hands. While one steers, the other is usually on the shifter or hand-brake.

But the short version and answer to your question is No. The clutch is not involved at all when drifting an AWD. Well, some people use a high-rev dump-clutch (with the hand-brake pulled a little bit) to break the rears free, so maybe I should only say that slipping the clutch is not involved.

 

+1

 

It depends on the surface...but generally you need to get all tires loose, or have decreased traction using different tires in the rear...

 

The question is whether you slip the clutch in order to drift and/or slide an AWD.

Your answer is that it depends on the surface.

Seriously?

 

After reading your initial question. I imagine the car involved is allready sliding. If so NO the clutch is not slipping. If people say yes it is then it also slipping when your're hard excellerating and the tires have traction

 

Yes. I'm guessing that you don't know much about drifting or driving. In order to release traction on some surfaces, you may have to tap the clutch to get your tires to spin, giving you dynamic vs static traction. Once you've broken static traction, you no longer will need the clutch, on most surfaces. Again, it all depends on the friction coefficient of the surface you're driving on, and your tires.

 

While I agree (and already said) that some people use a clutch-dump to break the rears free, there's no way that tapping the clutch will have the effect that you are claiming on an AWD. In fact, tapping the clutch will have the opposite effect at first, as less power will be sent to wheels during the tap. Now, at the release you might manage to break a tire free, but that's just a half-hearted clutch-dump ... see my first sentence here and a previous post.

If this is going to continue as a serious conversation (which would be cool), then we all need to clear about whether we are talking about initiating a drift or slide vs maintaining a drift or slide. I believe (but could be wrong, of course) that the OP was suggesting that the clutch was needed to maintain the drift or slide. That's not true at all. But the clutch can be used (in a few different ways) to initiate a slide.

 

Everyone is so technical.

 

If you had an MR and did that the clutch packs do release and slip.

 

My deepest apologies. You see, over here in Iowa, MRs with clutch pedals are really rare, so it never occurred to me to include MRs in a conversation about whether one needs to use the clutch to drift an MR.

 

I was under the impression that Kartyman550 simply wants to know if the clutch is always being slipped while the car is in power sliding motion, and not because of the driver (input) working the clutch to make the car power slide. I would assume no, but what do I know.

On another note, I have been following EvolutionM for about six months now, and I can tell you that Iowa999 comments can be harsh at times, but he always provide good information. No I am not his stalker, but since he seems to be the most active Moderator here, I tend to see his comments more often.

Sliding through turns in the rain is fun, and I only need to tap the breaks to initiate the slide.