Damn Morris, glad your okay, your blessed dude, it could have been HELLA worse. And those vultures are beasts. They got me.

 

Yea you can probably count on it.

 

Yea Bro no doubt about it, I figure my testimony was meant to keep someone else from messinng up llike I did.

The shop called me today, they say its about 4K worth of repairs so not too bad, but it is really iffy if I make the dragon. But to tell you the truth I'm not sure I want to make it now.

Can you say Skeeerrrrd

 

morris, I appreciate the public safety announcement. The LSD definitely changes the behavior of the car when acceleration is applied in curves. Let's look at what's happening and maybe this will help explain what happened to you.

Without the LSD, when you gas it hard in a curve, let's say with VSC off, the UNWEIGHTED inside wheel is able to slip (spin) easily, and thus no power is going to the outside wheel because it's an open diff. Because the slipping / spinning inside wheel isn't delivering actual power to the ground, the result is actually fairly mild - lots of noise and smoke maybe, but little impact on over/understeer.

WITH the LSD, when you gas it hard in a curve, let's say with VSC off again, the UNWEIGHTED inside wheel is going to start to try to slip and the LSD will immediately TRANSFER power to the outside (non-slipping) wheel, power you've never had available until you had the LSD installed. Because the LSD keeps both rear wheels applying power as much as possible, you can MUCH more aggressively accelerate in a curve, causing the car to spin out if you're really into the gas, and this is really oversteer at that point.

So bottom line is you can now put MUCH more actual power to the ground in a curve than before. Excess power in a curve means oversteering skids.

From posts I've read of your mountain run and having been in front of you on the road, I know you like to drive the car hard, at high rpms in lower gears. Now you've got a supercharger and the LSD, you're putting HUGE power to the ground (not just wasting it like before) and you've still got the wimpy stock 17's.

I hope this all makes sense to explain what happened. You need to get in a huge deserted parking lot or something and play around with the LSD and the MUCH increased abililty to put power to the ground in a curve.

 

I agree with what you've said here and would just add another .02 to the discussion:

~ Different types of LSDs can cause the car to behave differently in different circumtances and conditions. For example, most of us are refering to the Torsen LSD in our cars and morris has the TRD clutch type LSD which works differently (although the goal is more or less the same). Some types of LSDs work better than others in low traction conditions or while off-road driving. Some swear by certain types of lockers, LSDs etc. and don't care for others. Try driving a 4x4 truck with a Detroit Locker in the rear on rainy roads for REAL excitement!

~ I haven't experienced any squirrely handling with my LSD at all-to the contrary, the cornering performance and ability to put down the power is awesome! Of course I don't have a supercharger under the hood, and I DO have 275s on the rear to grab the road! "Power on" oversteer can be fun if your ready for it and know what to do (trailing throttle oversteer is just plain scary!)

~ morris, with the gearing and FI power you definitely need some serious rubber on the road. This is probably the biggest factor in your handling problems. You know this by now of course, but just wanted to chime in...

~ We've all made our share of bad decisions while driving-some more dangerous than others! I'm sure glad you were able to get away no worse than you did this time!

~~ New rule for all CL members:
NO DRIFTING IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD!

 

very good info, bit and future. these are some very good read, and i definitely applaud to morris for telling the story and warn people too. it's only going to make all of us drive safer.

now come to think about it, i got some more questions and wanna see what you guys think about it. bit you mainly talked about the scenarios when the vsc is off. makes total sense and the explanation is clear as a bell.

now what if vsc is on? i know (coz' i have it, haha) if you have the stock open diff, when the inside wheel start to slip, vsc detects it and start to cut power or even brake for you. got that experience a lot of times already

what if you have the lsd and you take a turn hard, and both wheels start to skid? would the system be able to detect the skid and start braking for you too?

 

Yep! In fact today, I accelerated hard out of a driveway with water in the gutter (to make it across a busy intersection) and both tires spun, the rear end slid just a bit and then VSC cut in to save an embarrasing-and possibly dangerous- manuever! It worked beautifully when needed, just don't need it as often with the LSD.

 

I wanted to chime in here for Kudos on the VSC also. I used to always turn this off in my Vette but I have found that in the GS it seems to be a lot more effective. It has definately saved me from sideways embarassment when coming out quick into traffic a couple of times. I only turn it off when playing in a straight line now.

 

Bit thanks thats waht I needed, its obviuous that I need to figure out how to drive the car in the corners all over again. Now I just need to find a parkinig lot or someting where I wont get arrested



Also as an FYI I have the stock gearing still in the rearend, we just transfered my stock gears into the LSD.

 

Glad you are OK.

I had a very similar experience with the first left hand turn I took in "anger" after having the LSD installed. I had a lot of room where I did my testing though and simply got a good adrenaline boost when it oversteered like it did. You really do need to get used to it but once you do it becomes second nature and cars without a LSD seem to understeer like pigs (assuming pigs could steer. I thought steer made for good steak. anyway...)

 

Yeah, you definately need some 19X10's with some meat on the back!!!

You have a SC'ed GS, you can get some wheels right?

What were you telling people in the neighborhood? I would have been quite embarassed!

 

He has stock gearing, he put the clutch TRD LSD 'thingy' inside the diff.

 

thanks for clearly that up man, it's good to know that when my wife drives teh car (once we can get the lsd) it's still going to be safe

 

Thankfully it was early enough that there was no one in the neighborhood, thats sort of what got me acting stupid in the first place. You know you see a real nice S curve, no one is around, well I really dont need to say more do I

 

Thankfully it was early enough that there was no one in the neighborhood, thats sort of what got me acting stupid in the first place. You know you see a real nice S curve, no one is around, well I really dont need to say more do I

And wheels were in the works before this unfortunate event, but they are next on the list, no doubt.

Iforged evolutions, I even picked them our already.