You know what drifting is - everyone who’s a fan of anything auto related has by now. This driving style is fascinating to gear heads, and when you have a car like the BMW E36, you’re pretty much guaranteed an awesome drift car platform — so how do you get started? Here’s the skinny on drifting your E36.
Before You Get Behind the Wheel
Instead of darting out to your first drifting event thinking it’ll all come natural, there’s a few things to keep in mind before getting started. Here are the main points of preparing to drift:
Prepping Your Car
Be considerate of your car. You’ve got a good head start as a E36 owner, and no mods are *required* to drift but most people at least opt for a good coilover kit if they plan on really getting into it. The sway bars are also another huge point to upgrade — one that many drifters neglect. Otherwise, worn body bushings should be replaced, fluids should be changes, brakes need to be inspected, and tires, well, they’re going to be our biggest expense, obviously.
Adjust front wheel camber. 3 or 4 degrees of negative chamber is ideal — it helps put the tread on the ground when under side load.
Adjust rear wheel camber. With a drift car, as close to zero as possible is key. This will give you the best bite moving forward.
Front toe out. You’ll want to run a little amount of toe out — around 1/8” in total, helping to car to initiate better through sharper turning.
Be conservative with rear toe. On a drift car, you’ll want to be conservative with rear toe-in — doing this will help the car straighten out faster.
Positive caster. The more positive caster you can get without hitting the fenders, the better — for most cars this means around 7º.
Watch your offset. Don’t go crazy with the lip and wheel spacers — a low wheel offset increases scrub radius too much.
Driver Prep
As a driver, getting ready is just as important as getting the car ready. Don’t expect to wake up as an expert in drifting your first time on the track — drifting is actually really hard. A good way to easy into it is trying out some auto cross first. Trying auto cross out first will give you a good idea what your car responds to the best and how to control it on a track — it basically allows you to drive your car to the limit. Beyond that, practicing things like donuts and figure 8s on a closed course before you join an event will give you the fundamental skill of drifting.
Common Drifting Mistakes
Don’t make these mistakes when drifting your BMW E36:
Keeping your hand on the shifter. You can let go, it’s not a handle. It’s important to understand that you’ll need both hands for quick transitioning — keep them on the wheel until it’s time to shift.
Letting your wheel center itself. Never let the wheel slide to center itself while driving — this is a common beginner’s mistake and huge no-no.
Counter-steering late. You have to counter-steer early, waiting too late will result in a spinout!
Giving it too much gas. Beginners seem to stay in the gas too much without much steering, this is incorrect. Learn how to modulate your throttle to advance your drifting skills.
Now go forth and drift to your heart’s desire — or at least until your tire budget runs dry!
