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Left Foot Braking
- Thread starter kkchan
- Start date
Yeah you drive around as normal then instead of taking your foot off the accerator you use your left foot to brake. Thats it really. Used for keeping the car in line around bends so you can balance it on the throttle and brake at the same time, especially useful in a turbo cos you can keep the turbo spinning
Ben,
Heel and Toe is done with the right foot on the brake and accelerator simultaneaously. Used primarily to match revs on downshifts. Easily done in the Willy, not sure about the others.
Left foot braking was probably pioneered by the Scandinavian rally drivers, apparently first in the old freewheeling SAABs in which the drivers often would not use the clutch once underway. It is used in almost all forms of racing where the clutch isnt used and a few where it still is. Watch any in-car footage and your bound to see it in action. Especially useful on loose surfaces whilst rallying front wheel drive and four wheel drive cars to get the rear to come around in turns. Also as previously mentioned to keep turbos spooled up.
A great way to slow a guy down for a while is to teach him left foot braking. It takes a lot of practice to actually gain from it.
coolspot007007
ClioSport Club Member
Seat Leon Cupra
i have trouble any foot braking, big feet, balls
clio 20v
it is very hard but uve got to try it havent u
hardest bit is changin ur left foot from heavy clutch foot to light brake foot
adi
Left foot braking is awkward, id advise just keep practising, make sure you do it on empty roads in case you make a mistake though!
Left foot braking is very useful for FWD..when you keep accelerating and steer with FWDs you understeer, if you use the brake and throttle at the same time you can neutralise this, even going to oversteer. This is because the weight transfer changes to the back (road cars are biased to most braking at the front, hence bigger discs & pads and dirtier wheels at the front!).
For a real world situation you might be going into a corner which is getting tighter, so your understeering. So what you do is increase the brake pressure against the throttle, so youll go into oversteer.
This is also an answer to BenR. I have my cars set up to understeer because i can adjust it anyway, with driving skill.
Hope this helps guys
Heel and toe is a different matter. I think everyone should learn this, but takes a lot of practise.
When your going fast into a corner, your brake, and put your foot on the clutch to change down gear, making the revs go to idle, then you release it forcing the engine to be in time withthe rotation of the rear wheels. Changing gear normally (with this up and down of revs) causes transmission wear. A simple solution, and something to try initally is to give some throttle as your clutch foot is in. This gives less transmission wear as the revs will be roughly equal for the gear youre about to be in.
Now for all you wannabe racers heres how to do the full on heel and toe:
Brake with your right foot (angled to the right to give you room) ,then put your clutch in and put it in neutral, now roll your right foot over to blip the throttle whilst braking. Now change gear and let the clutch up. The difficulty is obvious, doing all this in a few seconds is very hard! And you dont even use left foot braking which you will use in other corners! A lot to take in!
Its worth the effort though, its better for your car and will give you more enjoyment. It would also help in an emergency where you have to react quickly. When you pull it off youll do it all the time, such is the satisfaction, and then youll realise that its more worthwile spending money on brakes and suspension instead of engine mods!
left foot braking is totally unneccesary on public rd and in road cars. The brake setup and teh amount of travel/pressure needed means its just not worth jerkin your car about with. and in what circumstances are you goin a corner so fast that you actually need to start faffing about with left foot and throtle adjustment, obviously youhave completely misjudged teh corner from the offset.
Left foot braking require an extreemely stiff pedal with almost no travel, ideally, a pressure plate that doesnt move, but you just press harder.
The point where you match input and output shafts is double de-clutching and is nothing to do with heel & toeing, BUT, you can combine it on a car with a weak or no synchromesh. But its more of a bus thing nowadays.
Heel & toeing is quite simple really, and after about 3-5 days youll get the gist of it fine. Just practice comming down through the box comming to the lights etc.......then when you feeling up to it, use it before a corner, start skipping gears etc etc. Nothing too taxing.....but dont practice when right behind another car......or taht could end up witha higher premium LOL.
Rob: Only problem is, you say skill......then how come you cant adj oversteer.....especially from your karting background!
Dont get me wrong, im not taking a stab at you and itll take a while for you to get used to my humour, youll notice i really jump on some silly comments. But i dont like to get on the bad side of anybody. peace out.
lol, tried it yesterday on the way to guildford, was goin about 80 at the time, bit stupid really, and fast approaching a slow moving car, anyway totally missed the brake and hit the clutch lol, when i finally did hit the brake i hit it so hard that i had to make an exscuse to my mate that i was simply testing my brakes in the icy conditions, lol
Matt
Ben, i can adjust oversteer, im just quicker at adjusting understeer. We might as well stop there or this will carry on as im a stubborn b*****d.
Speaking of karts im thinking of selling mine, its a yamaha 80cc with no restrictions, so faster than 100cc with mufflers. Im not sure of the output but its officially done 0-60 in 3.7. top speed must be over 100mph..better than myclio anyway. So any offers...
Otherwise im attaching nitrous! haha!
Its all nonsense on the road, the only thing you need is to blip the throttle on easy downchanges to match the revs and slide into gear quicker. Then a bit of heel and toe is a good idea to learn when youre coming into a bend fast and need to slow down and change down in a hurry. Left foot braking is not exactly essential on the normal roads!
i used to left foot brake just for laughs in my automatic beemer (sorry, yes im an ex w**ker), but to be honest ive never really felt the need for it since, especially since most of the time when you brake you have to change gear anyway.
Im learning to double de-clutch properly more as an educational thing than to gain any more speed, i just reckon if i practise it enough then it could just become natural, its a good feeling when you get it just right too.
I did explain up there pete:
...For a real world situation you might be going into a corner which is getting tighter, so youre understeering. So what you do is increase the brake pressure against the throttle, so youll go into oversteer.
You can adjust this from varying pressure on throttle and brake. This is only theory though, as ben said most road cars have too much travel in their pedals, however its not impossible. I can do it in my clio but youd need tight fitting trainers or racing boots. I wouldnt agree with saying its unneccessary , at the end of the day it helps people get to know how to drive cars well and learn their limitations which will hopefully turn them into better/safer drivers. I just do it out of habit.
-Rob
Steve: LOL....yeah....or my 20yr old XR2 4spd box which is habging on for dear life!.......haha.....soon to be replaced with quaife internals and a S1 RST LSD.
petes: left foot brakin on the road IS completely unneccesary and learning it on the rd, especially the way Robs inclining you too WILL lead to at least a spin, some very scary moments or at worst damage done to your car when it meets with another car/lampost......just be careful......have a go in a carprk with nothing in it....and youll see its dam jerky in a rd car and unnecessary.
RE how to adj for understeer........well, natural tendancies of a front engined FWD car is understeer plain and simple, sure you can adj geometry to make the tail lively rather than make the front end immune to understeer, but ona rd car this will make it a right handful under braking and in teh wet youll have to be a pretty good driver to even drive at a spritely pace.
Best thing is to drive it like a FWD car, and not to expect OR adj or oversteer as it greatly reduces mid corner speed. Best way to do it, is to set the car up upon entry rather than expect to adj mid corner. If you brake and use the brakes to get a tight entry, then you arent loosing any speed as you are in the process of braking anyway, then proceed through the corner as normal and not experience (as much) understeer .....mind you, if you do fluf up, you can do what Rob said to tweek the line tighter, but in most cases, a simple lift of the throttle will do it.
petes, the point of LFB is that you use the POWER to juggle the balance on the front wheels, effectively cancelling out any braking force, and you dont jump on it either, you use a little bit of brake more to trim than to slow. So, you are only really using the rear brakes, which is where the line tighning or oversteer comes from.
And rob was right in saying weight distribution is of more importance than braking force/bias.
The V6s run more rear brake bias, eventough i still find that hard to believe, weight shift should still lead to a + bias on tehf ronts, but whatever works best LOL.
its ok, but i hate to say it, its about as fast as a 172...sure its got power, but the subframes and suspension parts are HUGE HUGE HUGE!!!
and its quite soggy...the front doesnt inspire confidence and its a bit waallowy on the whole...but a gorgeous car and the sound...o the sound!
it would be too hard to cure the probs and ge more power...the heads worked, twing plenhams, and a new cam profile with valve train mods to suit would see at least 285 as per trophy racers and 300bhp if done right.
go rent a car from the Hertz and find yourself an empty carpark. Better choose smaller engine car, take away all unnecessary stuff before you start. LFB, good fun. the watchman may call the Police, so never stay in one carpark for too long. Keep moving.
hey Tony n Ben mate hows it goin
ahha i brake left foot its use in a FF car to kill off understeer a bit when u goin fast at a corner u brake n try to load up n then theoritcally it will kill a bit of under becoz the rear are lockin a bit n pushin it inside (ok ok i try to translate a long paragraph in to 1 sentence)
but left foot brakin is much quicker than right ... to me anyway saved my ass a few times now
i learnt it when i drove an auto. much easier in an auto compare to a manual though
In light of the recent weather i though id mention the positive of left foot braking! As i dont get out of first gear(!) I can use throttle and brake at the same time, which saves me from skidding as where i am acclerating even in 3rd gear is producing wheelspin!! My computer says i am averaging 3mph today. A record?
