5 Things You Should Never Do In A Rear-Wheel Drive Car

Rear-wheel drive is the preferred layout for most petrolheads, but for the inexperienced it can prove dangerous. Here are some of the most common mistakes people make, and how to avoid them
5 Things You Should Never Do In A Rear-Wheel Drive Car

1. Don't mash the throttle while turning

5 Things You Should Never Do In A Rear-Wheel Drive Car

This is especially common for people who’ve come out of front-wheel drive cars and suddenly find themselves with a lot of power and no idea about how it deploys differently. In FWD cars, if you give it too much throttle you’ll understeer - fix this by lifting off the throttle and you should pull back onto line without much fuss.

If you’ve got any sort of lock on, you’re pushing the car’s weight to the outside of the tyres. If you then mash the right pedal the amount of grip available will be lower than normal, and you’re going to lose traction - in a RWD car, that means the back end is gong on an adventure. That’s when you need to start feathering the throttle to bring the car back under control, and that’s not something most people do instinctively. What most people do do is snap their foot off the throttle and then brake, which is an excellent way to lose control. Which brings us nicely to…

2. When breaking traction, don't brake or lift sharply off the throttle

Image via YouTube/Gumbal
Image via YouTube/Gumbal

Remember when we talked about ways to initiate a drift? Most of those techniques involved un-gripping your rear tyres and shifting weight; here, again, we’re talking about working with the weight of the car to keep it under control.

If you’re pulling a burnout or have found yourself oversteering, lifting sharply off the throttle might be your natural reaction, but it’ll lift the weight off the rears and provide even less grip than you already had. If you brake you’re just exacerbating this issue, and you’ll find yourself spinning out before you even know what’s happened.

Instead, you should avoid hitting the brakes until you’re straight, instead easing off the throttle to minimise the effects of the weight transfer, and bringing the wheels back to grip in a manageable way.

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This is kind of a given for any car you care about, but it can have particularly disastrous consequences in a rear-wheel drive car. The idea of heel-and-toe downshifts is to match the engine speed to the wheel speed, which in turn keeps the car stable by removing any jolts from the transmission.

If you downshift too early, the rear wheels will lock up, which has the same effect as yanking the handbrake. Want a visual representation of that? Our very own CTzen Chris DedicationBlog accidentally shifted to 2nd at 90mph, and caught the whole thing on video. Heel-and-toe probably wouldn’t have saved him here, but use this as an example of what can happen, even to experienced drivers like Chris.

4. Don't pull the handbrake without depressing the clutch

5 Things You Should Never Do In A Rear-Wheel Drive Car

This one’s extremely important for all-wheel drive cars, but it certainly ain’t a healthy thing to do in rear-wheel drive cars either. It’s quite logical really, but if it’s never crossed your mind you could unwittingly be putting a lot of strain on the transmission and engine by not disengaging the clutch when you pull the handbrake.

Obviously, the handbrake’s job is to slow the rear wheels, so if you don’t depress the clutch then the transmission and engine will be under heavy load trying to fight the handbrake to turn the wheels. You probably won’t break anything unless you leave the handbrake on for extended periods, but it’s not good for your car.

5. Don't go out in the snow without suitable tyres

Image by Singler/DeviantArt
Image by Singler/DeviantArt

Again, this should be a general rule no matter which wheels your car sends power to, but you’re most likely to be stranded in rear-wheel drive. If you don’t fit winter tyres to your four-wheel drive vehicle, at least you have the power evenly distributed to scrabble for whatever grip is available, and with front-wheel drive, front-engined cars the weight tends to be over the front wheels, aiding grip.

Rear-wheel drive cars typically have less weight over the driven wheels, meaning you’ll just end up doing pretty pirouettes without going anywhere near where you actually want to be going.

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Comments

VöxTypeX

What kind of numbnut yanks their handbrake without depressing the clutch first? It’ll smoke more than That Dude In Blue’s review on the Celica Supra, because fried brake pads yo!

03/08/2016 - 18:24 |
156 | 4

Would you like some fries with that?

03/08/2016 - 19:19 |
16 | 0
bingham123

but..,but…but i want to mash the pedal into the carpet and do sweet drifts bro

03/08/2016 - 18:25 |
66 | 0
SubbieScience

Probably a stupid question, but for the handbrake turn, disengaging the clutch meaning pressing down on the clutch. You would want the car in neutral when doing a hand brake turn, that’s what makes sense to me at least.

03/08/2016 - 18:26 |
4 | 0

Yes, disengaging means pressing the clutch pedal down. As long as you disengage the clutch you can do whatever you want, not necessary to go into neutral and is just an excessive step really.

03/08/2016 - 18:30 |
10 | 0
J Bennett

Not long after passing my test I took out the family e39 5 series in the snow…. I hadnt been told about number 5, and given my dad’s choice of tire weas ‘whatever the cheapest that fits’, it did not do well when i tried to go up a hill. Didnt help that i was s*ing bricks when i starting sliding because I wasnt actually insured on it, and if i had hit someone then I would have been royally screwed. Let that be a lesson to you kids!

03/08/2016 - 18:40 |
2 | 2

when you dont only leave skidmarks on the road it kinda teaches some lessons

03/09/2016 - 04:51 |
2 | 0

My dad is the same. But the other type. He just leaves winter tires on there all year. Which is terrible because they perform horrid compared to summer tires in the summer and really arent wide enough. Plus always buys used old tires that hardened out anyway and might break apart some day from old age. The previous owner of my car had 8 Year old tires on it. At least premium Brand with a price of 170€ per tire.. I started getting concerned if they would just break at some point so I switched them. Winter tires are useless where I live. Although its Germany, we didn’t have snow here at all so i bought all year tires.

10/27/2016 - 19:00 |
0 | 0
TheStig'sMexicanCousin'sBrother

“ the back end is going on an adventure” 😂

03/08/2016 - 18:44 |
118 | 0

When i had 10 year old winter tyres. My back end had a magical journey.. To a snowbank.

03/08/2016 - 18:55 |
36 | 0

back end be like

03/08/2016 - 19:49 |
294 | 0
Mk4Dude

All I can read is : Don’t drift

03/08/2016 - 18:46 |
12 | 0

Don’t drift if you have no idea what you’re doing. Learning to drift is different because I take it you probably have some theory done before you actually try to do it.

03/08/2016 - 19:03 |
14 | 0
AX53

Some of these things aren’t stuff you “should never do” in my opinion. Just things that might be hard to control for many people and which shouldn’t be done on public roads etc. Especially 1 but also 2 and 3 are things drifters do constantly

03/08/2016 - 18:49 |
4 | 0
Ben Anderson 1

Number 1 will be the hardest for me. I’ve had the back end step out on my present car (which is front wheel drive) both on purpose and on accident - EG: a sudden jab of the breaks on a roundabout because someone didn’t yield for me sent the back swinging like a rocket mounted pendulum! But its fixed by counter steering and mashing the throttle at hard as possible.

My new car will be rear drive, and I know for a fact if the back end steps out I’m going to spin because by way of habit I’ll slam the throttle as hard as possible.

Maybe I should go get skid-pan training.

03/08/2016 - 19:04 |
0 | 0

Odds are in normal driving you won’t be in the rev range to spin the wheels enough to spin out the car unless you’re driving some really big displacement car. If you are in the rev range, well then you are obviously out for trouble to begin with :) Nice PC btw, don’t change it before 2020 :)

03/09/2016 - 00:45 |
0 | 0
Jonathan 4

Yeah number 5 hurts!

03/08/2016 - 19:07 |
0 | 0
Konstantinos Tsotsos (Penguin R5)

Just change the title to 5 things you should never do in a rwd car if you ain’t got no idea of driving them 😁😁

03/08/2016 - 19:22 |
0 | 0