FLYING

I've finally done it. I spent a ridiculous amount of money on a flashy little sports car. Now what? Sure when I drive it, it's quicker, faster, and corners a bit better than the Escort I just traded in, but is it really that much better? How am I going to justify it to my wife? Where am I going to put the kids? the luggage? How am I really supposed to drive it? Why do the auto mags like it so much? If all else fails, read the directions. Open up the 3000M Owners Handbook (it's the only literature that came with the car) and it should tell me. Here we go, page 15 "Driving the Car." Now we're cooking. Hmmm... "To Release Steering Lock and Start Engine." "To Stop Engine and Engage Steering Lock." They forgot everything in between.

The auto magazines tell you what to drive, where to drive it, who's driving it, but they don't provide much for the enthusiast who wants to improve his or her driving. In the following series I will cover some of the techniques which will help you get the most out of any car, particularly those things of passion we call sports cars and our spouses call toys for large kids. This series is a primer and is not definitive. There are finer points which I am not going to cover, but I will cover enough to make every car more enjoyable and more in control. I hope that you will pick up the concepts and practice them every time you're behind the wheel.

First some words on the underlying techniques for screaming down the roads. Smooth, smooth, smooth, and smooth. Steer smoothly, throttle smoothly, brake smoothly, and shift smoothly. Unfortunately, the fastest driving is the least flamboyant. When you watch racing you generally don't hear tires squealing. That means chirping tires is out. Sliding through turns is out. Kicking the rear out is out. As is what a friend calls controlled skidding. I'm still not sure what that is. Scrubbing is allowed, but I'll explain that later. However, we're driving for fun, and I'm not trying to take that from you. If you like chirping on each shift, do. All I am discussing is the way for someone to take winding country roads as fast as possible, which is what TVRs are best at.

For lack of a more organized way to cover driving techniques, I am going to split this series into three topics: preliminaries (not really techniques), car control techniques, and road handling techniques. Since these topics are interrelated it will appear that I am missing some points when discussing others. Read on and hopefully by the end of the series the whole picture will be clear.

PRELIMINARIES

Before we take off, we need to cover some preliminaries. If you have mats which move at all, leave them at home. Everything which floats around loose should be secured. That includes you. Nothing beats being tied to your seat with a harness. Seatbelts provide crash protection, but they don't hold you in place when you drive. It's hard to make fine steering adjustments around a fast corner when you are holding on to the wheel to keep from ending up in the passenger seat.

Harnesses come in three basic types. The street harness which Luke offers has two pieces and is the least expensive style. You slide each shoulder in like a backpack and buckle the standard style seatbelt buckle. The other two styles are racing harnesses. They only differ in buckle style from each other. The least expensive of these uses an aircraft style buckle in which you thread the two shoulder straps and the submarine strap (optional) onto one side of the lap belt and then insert that into the other side of the lap belt. Some of these have adjustable clamp pressures. Others are preset. The most sophisticated style has a twist-knob buckle. The benefit of this is that you only need attach one strap at a time to the central hub. No threading is required. Whether you go for a harness or not is up to you, but they do allow you to control the car more easily than a seat belt.

Your driving position is critical to your performance. You should find a seat position, including placement and rake, from which you can comfortably reach all controls. Your torso should be fully supported at all times. Adjust your seat so that you won't have to lift your shoulders from the seat. Of utmost importance is your reach to the steering wheel. Do not get too close nor too far. Don't copy F1 drivers by sitting so that your arms are fully stretched. Your controls are placed much differently than those in a F1 car. From a comfortable, fully supported position within reach of all of the controls, you should be able to hold the steering wheel in the 9-3 position and turn it 180 degrees in either direction without having any part of your arms or hands touch your legs, the dash, the door, the center tunnel, or anything else. Your arms should also not bind on themselves. If, when your seat is comfortably placed within reach of the controls, your steering is hindered by something, consider replacing your steering wheel with one with a different depth dish. If your arms are straight and hit each other during a 180 degree twist, get a wheel with a deeper dish. If your elbow catches on the center tunnel, get a wheel with a shallower or no dish.

If you can, adjust your pedals so that, when fully depressed, your brake pedal is level with your accelerator. This setup will enable you to heel and toe. Also, consider a spot where you can rest your clutch foot next to the clutch pedal, or install a dead pedal for this purpose.

Next on the preliminaries is your car's sneakers. What kind you put on your car is your preference, but they need to be set at a pressure which allows you maximum adhesion and control. The suggested tire pressure is just that. Lotus goes one step further and gives recommended pressures for below 100 mph and above 100 mph. The fact is that no one can tell you the best pressures for your tires. The best pressures depends upon the road temperature, other road conditions, how hard you corner, how fast you go, how much you're braking, what tires and wheels you run, your suspension setup, the car's weight distribution, and other factors. The ideal pressure is soft enough to allow for the largest footprint and some deformation of the sidewall while being hard enough so that you don't rip the tire off of the wheel. How do you do this? Chalking. Or for those of us who work in offices with white boards and no chalk... bottled white shoe polish with applicator. Show buffs will want to use chalk since it is easier to get off. Mark each tire with three or four lines that extend from part of the flat tread, over the edge, and up the sidewall just a little. Let the car eat a little road and then check the marks. You want to wear off the chalk (shoe polish) on as much of the usable tread as possible, even if it goes slightly onto the tire's edge, because on hard corners you can expect to flatten the edge so that it is not quite an edge. Never, never let the line get worn past the edge. It is better to over-inflate and predictably lose adhesion than to under-inflate and rip your tire off of the wheel. At a minimum chalking should be done seasonally. However, it is better to do this much more frequently, particularly before some serious flying. My tires are always marked and checked weekly with my routine maintenance.

Next time we'll hit the basics of car control. Happy flying.

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