Thanks!
Not to jump all over commasense’s thread, but I heel-toe on the street, too, no big deal. Do you have feet wide enough that you can reach both gas and brake pedals at the same time? If so, you can use one side of your foot for one pedal, and the other for the other. “heel-toe” doesn’t literally have to mean using your heel and toe.
Thanks. I drive a Saab 9-2x (Saabaru) which I do intend to modify as soon as the two years of full waranty expires.
I think the problem is that my gas pedal isn’t the same height as my brake pedal. It’s tiny and almost 2 cm lower. hence why I want some adjustable pedals.
I can’t use my wide foot to hit both unless I’m braking REALLY hard.
do you visit I-club, RS25 and Nasioc? Those are the 3 biggest subaru forums. You’ll find alot of information that should apply to your saabaru.
Also, do you drive a manual? Are your brake and gas pedals the same height? I was thinking about swapping in the WRX set (probably the same as the 9-2x)
If you take the car on track, definitely. There, knowing what your car is doing at every moment can be very useful in improving your performance, and using the car to the limits of its capabilities.
Off track, having that information is good, but not as critical.
Rarely. Usually only if I feel like practicing the technique.
I believe there are pedal adapters that you can clamp to your existing pedals to make them wider.
I have a pair of Simpson high-tops with Velcro closures to make them easy to get in and out of. This is important, because I always take them off when I get out of the car. I’m a cheapskate, and I wore out my first pair of driving boots in less than a year by wearing them around the paddock. The thin soles of the $100 shoes cracked after only 7-8 track days. So now I wear a pair of loafers to the track and slip out of them and into the boots at the start of each track session. This is especially useful if it’s damp, because the soles of the boots never get wet and slippery.
I’ve seen some people save money by using thin-soled wrestling shoes as driving shoes. The only problem with this is that the wrestling shoes aren’t fire retardant, and most real driving boots are.
With all safety gear that you wear–helmet, gloves, boots, suit–it’s essential to actually try them on before buying to make sure they are completely comfortable. Never buy one of these items sight unseen over the Internet or by mail order unless you’ve confirmed that that exact model and size fits perfectly. When you’re on track, you don’t want an article of clothing chafing or pinching or otherwise distracting you from the main business at hand. If you don’t have a racing store near you, most tracks have one on site or in the nearest town. It may cost you a few extra bucks to buy there, instead of finding the hottest deal on the Web, but it will be worth it.
While we’re on the subject, safety is definitely not the place to save money, especially when it comes to the most important single piece of gear: the helmet. When you get started in HPDE, you can usually use a motorcycle helmet, but once you move past the newbie level, you need an SA (Special Applications) helmet with the latest Snell Foundation rating. Most sanctioning bodies and schools require a helmet with a Snell rating no more than ten years old. (The Foundation issues new guidelines every five years, the most recent being the 2005 standards.) Some schools and clubs don’t allow M-rated (motorcycle) helmets. See the link for details on the differences, but in short, SA helmets offer greater fire protection, and can handle multiple impacts.
A decent helmet will cost between $250 and $1,000. The upper range provides additional lightness and advanced features that most amateurs don’t need. But it’s better to spend a few extra bucks than to get a crappy helmet that doesn’t do the job when you need it. And don’t you think your head is worth it?
My rule is never to let the threat of weather keep me from the track. First, there’s a good chance it won’t be as bad as the prediction: many’s the time I’ve gone to the track on a day that was supposed to be rainy only to have little or no rain at all. That was the case for my last two or three events. Second, if it does rain, you’ll learn something, too. One of my best track days ever was a late fall Seat Time last year on which it poured for most of the day. I practiced the “rain line” looking for grip, and since the whole track was a skid pad, got a lot of experience in car control.
Too many guys feel that the only reason to be on track is to go faster, and don’t realize that a wet track is perhaps the best opportunity to become a better driver, even if you don’t set a new lap record. Driving on a wet track shows you, at a relatively slow speed, what your car will do in the dry at a much higher speed, and allows you to learn how it behaves at the edge of adhesion, and how to react.
The other benefit to going to the track when they’re calling for rain is that the prediction will inevitably scare off lots of other guys, so regardless of the conditions, the track will be less crowded than usual. At that rainy Seat Time, only seven cars showed up. So instead of 20-minute sessions for each group, we had open track for the whole day, with an hour lunch break. It was great.
So if you happen to (cough, cough) call in sick tomorrow, I’ll be there, rain or shine. Bring a raincoat, in case.
This is a common problem with Friday at the Track. But think it over. I guarantee you’ll have a good time, even if you don’t drive, and if you’re first in line when registration opens, your chances are pretty good.
Don’t tell them I said this, but even if you don’t get into the class, in addition to sitting in on the classroom, you can probably drive in a skidpad session. They use two of the track’s cars (Crown Vics or Caprices), and take three students in each. If there’s an empty space when they’re about to head out (which is pretty common), anyone can just jump in. Skidpad is the most fun you can have at the track.
And, as I said, you can probably get an instructor or advanced driver to take you for a ride.
The best way to make sure you can get off work for FATT is to bring your boss.
Great! See you there.
Very nice. When you are ready to modify, post up and I can definitely help you out. There is a pretty well-defined upgrade path for WRXs and derivatives, and I have quite a bit of experience modding Subies.
Harmonix, you’ll very rarely find cars where the brake and gas pedal are at the same height. If you want to just use both sides of your foot, you need to get used to slightly rotating your right foot clockwise to be able to blip the gas pedal. It’s a little awkward until you get used it it, but nowhere near as awkward as actually twisting your heel over to blip the gas.
As a side note, if you don’t have good experience with double-clutching, practice this a lot, so that you have one less thing to worry about when you do decide to start learning to heel-toe.
If they were calling for just some rain, and/or if I were going to be driving, the weather wouldn’t put me off. But I think I’d rather not chance heavy storms (plus a 1-hour drive in the heavy storms) my first time there.
You could be using “guys” in a general sense, but this seems as good a time as any to mention that I’m a girl.
Ha! That’s actually not a bad idea…
It’s on my calendar. I’ll see if my co-worker will be going that day, too … it probably won’t be hard to talk him into it. <grin> A cool thing about that date is that I can tell all of the DC-area Dopers about it the next evening, when we meet for a drink downtown.
I didn’t think about the fact that enrolling now would mean paying now, so it’ll be a few days before I can sign up (obviously, the sooner the better). Either November date works for me – hopefully, there will still be novice group openings when I finally enroll!
Sorry, Miss Nomer, I should have realized. But of course, 99% of the people who sign up for track events are male, so it was a pretty safe assumption.
Thanks for mentioning the Dopefest. I’ll be there, too.
No worries! And no, you shouldn’t have realized: I didn’t pick “Misnomer” because of the “miss” sound. I don’t care if someone assumes that I’m a guy, I just figure there’s no point in not correcting the misconception once I’m aware of it. And you’re right that it’s a perfectly natural assumption to make in this context – I probably should have mentioned my sex earlier, for just that reason.
Nothing will be different for me at the track because I’m a woman, right? Are there any instructors at FATT who prefer not to work with women? Have you ever had a female student?
I’m suddenly reminded of my last car-buying experience: The salesman and I were in the car, fastening our seatbelts for the test drive, and I jokingly asked him, “So, is this the scariest part of your job?” He replied, in all seriousness, “Nah, women drivers don’t bother me.” :rolleyes:
You won’t have any problems. If there are any old timers who don’t care for women drivers, I haven’t met them. For the most part, guys–instructors and students–like having women at the track. (And if you happen to get an instructor you don’t like, for any reason, you can always ask for a different one in the next session.)
I’ve had several female students, and they’ve all been good. In general, I think women are less likely than men to be wild and crazy, are more willing to accept instruction, and find it easier to make smooth and subtle control inputs. Guys want to manhandle (har!) the car, smashing the throttle, jamming the brakes, yanking the steering wheel. Women are gentler, and this can often make them faster.
Happily, more and more women are participating in track activities. A woman friend of mine is racing in Spec Miatas, and at an event in California I attended last March (I wasn’t instructing, just driving), one of the students was a Jewish grandmother, about 75 years old. Anyone can do it!
I just signed up for November 3rd, and I feel like the little kid in that Disney commerical: “I’m too excited to sleep!”
(Though 4 months without sleep would suck… ;))
Great! See you then.
And if you can get away from work for the August 4 Seat Time, I’ll see you there, too.
For a variety of reasons (didn’t sleep well, had work that needed doing, etc.) I broke my own rule about not going to the track because of the threat of rain last Friday. Athough I don’t know what the day ended up being like out in WV, here in Columbia, which had pretty much the same forecast, there wasn’t a drop of rain the whole day. I shoulda gone! Oh, well…
Yep, I’m definitely planning on the August 4th Seat Time: I already have both that and the November 3rd FATT on the calendar at work as days when I’ll be out of the office.
I was so excited about signing up that I had to go share with my co-worker who’s also an instructor, and he’s going to try to make the same Seat Time and FATT, too. And, when I mentioned FATT to my friend on Saturday she asked me for the info, because she thinks a friend of hers (who I also know) would be interested. I sent her the URL to pass along, and hopefully he’ll come out to the same Seat Time and/or FATT, too.
November seems so far away!!
A followup on the engine-braking = don’t do it statement.
Does this also mean that if I were to overtake a car going 65 on the highway, maybe going from 70 to 80 mph doing so, that once I’m ahead I should use the brakes to return to 70 or should I just wait for my car to slow down to 70 by easing off the accelerator. Would that also be what you call engine-braking?
No, that’s not what is generally meant by engine braking, and it’s perfectly fine to do on street or track. Engine braking is downshifting and letting the engine, which is running close to idle when you lift off the throttle, slow the car as you engage the clutch.
Thanks, I thought so from a commonsense sort of way. I had be taught to allow the engine to slow the car, but not by downshifting to do it. So UK driving instruction wasn’t teaching something so bad as engine-braking (shouldn’t that be called engine-breaking? )
It looks like I won’t be able to make the August 4 Seat Time after all. I’ll be moving less than 2 weeks later, I’m planning to take 2.5 days off for that, and the two things are in the same leave period – 3.5 days would be too much.
The September 29 Seat Time seems to be at the Shenandoah Circuit – where is that? Depending on the location I might try to make that one, but worst case I’ll plan to go to the one on October 5.
I’m still registered for the November 3 FATT, and am still psyched about it.