I am starting to get the hang of drifting, improving my angle, extending the duration of the drift, etc, but smoke eludes me. I guess you have to build up a certain amount of heat in the tires to get smoke. What's the deal?
There was a guy running the same crappy Fuzion ZR-1 tires as me, and he said they worked great for him. A guy with a non-turbo KA20 was getting smoke. One of my friends with an NA 350Z was getting smoke, albeit les than others.
Do I need a high entry speed or something? More HP?
on a side note, it seems like this forum is dying off.

 

smoke comes from multiple things, such as tire choice, air pressure, ect. the biggest thing you can concentrate on is throttle commitment. the longer you can keep your foot in it from beginning to end, the more smoke you can make. this comes from alot of practice, ect. you can also of course up the hp, be in the correct gear, ect.

here is a pic of me putting up some smoke on a road course. i was just running about 35 psi, which is nothing crazy at all, 3rd gear, about 350whp or so at best that day, 255 falken rt615s tires.

and please don't concentrate on smoking tires so much, smoke doesn't make good drifting. concentrate on the basics or line, angle, speed.

 

raising your tire pressure can do wonders for more smoke.
try it

 

left foot brake,

or try different tires.

At willow springs an s14 was smokeing the place out like a cheech and chong movie on feirce tires. I have never heard of this brand, but they sure smoked more than my coopers. I think the compound of the rubber has the most to do with the smoke being made.

2nd to rubber compound, is the rear wheel speed. When I run the budwieser balcony at willow springs I upshift to 3rd goning only about 40mph and my wheel speed shoots up to 70 or 80mph(smokey time!) and I can make it to the back j-turn about 400ft away in only one switchback. Tons of smoke comes out the back when your wheel speed it that much faster than your cars speed.

But the more smoke the more tire your burning and wasteing.

don't worry about smoke too much unless you competeing or really just wanna look cool.

lots of smoke means those tires won't last long. I like tires that last because you get more track time.

high tire psi will get smoke but only because high psi bows the tire makeing your contact patch smaller. Kinda like runing a skinnier tire, so save some money and just buy a skinner tire!

just my 2cents,

don't take it too seriously.


If you really want to make some smoke, run your windshield wiper sprayers to your rear tires and fill the wiper fluid resivoir with water and some bleach. Bleach will make smoke come off a golf cart.

 

I was just going to mention that you could make bleach sprayers.

 

Bleach sprayers? OK, now that's ricey, in a Hollywood stunt kind of way. But it would create smoke
My next drift event is in a parking lot so I'll have room to experiment. Seems like it's all about overheating the tires, so revving high in 3rd gear on a slow turn should work, along with initiating sooner to increase the duration of the wheelspin.
Thanks

 

12autox, i think you answered your own question. also tires like everyone said....and 3rd gear yes indeed.

 

Just slap a turbo or supercharger on your car, thats what most people do.

it's a kA24 btw