Left foot braking.

[canis]

I'm still confused.

If you brake, in a manual car, you *must* also be slowing the engine. So "keeping the revs up" can not be true. It's a physical imposibilty to raise the engine revs whilst also slowing the car down on a manual transmission. You can press the acellerator whilst braking until you're blue in the face - you're either slowing down, or speeding up, but not both. Whatever, the ratio between engine speed and vehicle speed is unalterable.

So, how are you doing it?

[Waynedance]

Originally Posted by canis

I'm still confused.

If you brake, in a manual car, you *must* also be slowing the engine. So "keeping the revs up" can not be true. It's a physical imposibilty to raise the engine revs whilst also slowing the car down on a manual transmission. You can press the acellerator whilst braking until you're blue in the face - you're either slowing down, or speeding up, but not both. Whatever, the ratio between engine speed and vehicle speed is unalterable.

So, how are you doing it?

Your confused, no matter how many people tell me they do left foot brake and for whatever reasons in my eyes it ain't right.

[Waynedance]

........

[biggbn]

Originally Posted by canis

I'm still confused.

If you brake, in a manual car, you *must* also be slowing the engine. So "keeping the revs up" can not be true. It's a physical imposibilty to raise the engine revs whilst also slowing the car down on a manual transmission. You can press the acellerator whilst braking until you're blue in the face - you're either slowing down, or speeding up, but not both. Whatever, the ratio between engine speed and vehicle speed is unalterable.

So, how are you doing it?

You balance the load against the throttle, hard to explain, easier to do. Enter a corner in say third, tuck the nose in on the brakes, balance the throttle against the brakes to ensure the car stays neutral, smoothly release brakes, less weight transfer as transition.betweeen brake and throttle is smoother and power is again instantly available. Watch a rally drivers footwork, pedal box if you get a chance. They have dancers feet!

[tt82]

Tried it a few times and like others, nearly ended up head butting the windscreen. Finese has never been an issue when I've been go karting though. I also find that the pedal arrangement means it would not be a comfortable driving position to have the left over the brake all the time. I also drive an automatic due to breaking my left ankle over a decade ago. On long journeys it goes stiff and I had issues operating the clutch after a long motorway drive. The same would be true with the brake.

[MikeGMT]

+ YouTube Video

Don't try this at home

[biggbn]

The one I remember is Walter rhorl, or ari vatanen, memory is clouded, throwing an early ur quattro through a crowd that parts like the red sea, feet dancing hither and thither as he balances the car, flat out, at the edge of control.

[1monkey600]

Canis is correct in terms of engine speed v driving wheel speed in a particular gear but left foot braking is used for a number of reasons in rallying (in normal road driving it should be simply about keeping one foot for each pedal, if that is your thing):
a/ for setting the balance of the car, primarily in a fwd car. The engine power overcomes the braking at the front wheels while the back wheels feel the effect of braking and therefore become 'lighter' and helps the back of the car to rotate around the front more, so as to reduce understeer ( a bit like using a handbrake but much more subtle). This was used to great effect in the 60s, 70s in cars like the mini coopers and saab 96s. In rwd cars like the escorts left foot braking was replaced by POWER to 'lighten' the rear of the car
b/ in turbo cars, particularly back in the days of the mighty quattros, the biggest problems for those cars was turbo lag. In this case, as there were no centre diffs ( on the early cars) left foot braking would affect all four wheels similarly so it didn't have a huge difference to stability. What it did do was allow the engine to continue working very hard even if the driver wanted to slow down - this basically put more load on the engine so more fuel was pumped in and turbo lag was decreased when the driver needed the car to speed up again.

In later years with turbos everywhere, and active diffs and things,the reason for left foot braking was both the above in four wheel drive and fwd.

Canis - Just for the record you can see plenty of youtube videos with american muscle cars doing full burn-outs, with the footbrakes fully engaged to stop the car rolling forward. However, the driver is overcoming the effect of the rear brakes on his driven wheels with the massive engine power - needless to say a lot of the smoke and flames is actually from the brake pads and discs rather than the tyres!

[canis]

Thanks for that highly detailed explanation, it makes a lot of sense.

I've seen some cars fitted with a brake valve lever thing, allowing a driver to hold the car stationary with the front wheels but leave the rear wheels unbraked, enabling perpetual wheelspin. RWD of course, because FWD is just plain wrong. I suppose it does look cool, but it must absolutely cane tyres!

[1monkey600]

You are correct, dragsters and people who compete at burnouts tend to have a lock-out where the rear brakes are disconnected from the circuit by some sort of valve but the occasional nutter just does it against all four brakes - don't see the sense in it personally!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oYod1Z0kPY8