coppermine18

YES - THAT was the term that was used to describe my cars problem!

I put my TRD swaybar to street and it fixed it. If your swaybar is set stiff it can cause the shock to to compress enough and cause a high springrate and make it tail happy! I kept spinning my car high speed in slalom. Unstiffening the swaybar fixed it.

I dont' have adjustable shocks so that was my fix.

TimmyT

Its the Nature of FWD cars. During aggressive turns. Just letting off of the accelerator is the worst thing that you can do.

It is caused by engine braking in FWD vehicles.

When you let off the gas, because of engine braking, the front end slows down, but the rear end is still travelling at the same speed.. and sense you are turning it starts to slide out.

It is a FWD thing. Not so much rear wheel drive. It happens on rear wheel drives.. but for totally different reasons.

When you let off the accelerator in a rwd car. The rear wheels slow down and not the front wheels

5GeorgiaBoi5

If you really want to feel it just go around a corner at some high rpm levels until you feel slight understeer then let off of the throttle and no bueno after that its happend to me twice just make sure you got those jackie chan hands when u counter steer!

yesti

I have my front tires 5psi higher than rear, might add 2-3 psi to the rears or even switch them so the rears have 2-3 more than front and see if that helps.

3min3m2

my only over-steer incident resulted from too much armor-all on the sidewalls....the rear end came, went, and continued going out till i had to turn back sharply, where it finally planted(this was at like 40 MPH)....

need less to say, armor-all goes on light now....

otherwise, i only notice understeer, unless u hit the e-brake(not a suggestion)

RollTide

Are you guys actually concerned that you'll lose control of your car on an offramp due to oversteer?

3min3m2

ok, tried it again today, without any armor-all...

i have an auto, so engine braking is less, but i did notice when i was taking a turn that was about 270degrees(turns around, plus 90deg) if i let off the gas whenit was in a lower gear, the rear end would want to go out...nothing i couldn't control, i am used to slippery RWD, so oversteer is no prob for me..sometimes...

but yeah, i have a bone bone stock car susp wise, aside from a spoiler, which doesnt do much at 30 mph

yesti

hehe, I came from an 85 civic hb and no matter what you did, short of pulling the ebrake, you couldn't get that car to rotate bone stock. the tC, however, is an interesting animal as you can experience oversteer, unexpectedly and quite abruptly, if you do something stupid even if it is in reaction to an unknown situation. the old school thought of FWD=understeer is valid only while on the throttle as once you let off you'd better be pointed relatively straight or you might get some kickout that you weren't counting on.

I experienced oversteer recently, nothing that caused me to spin out or slam into the wall, but there is no warning when it will happen - it just snaps out.

05 auto, trd rear sway bar on 'street', RE92s

3min3m2

my vehicle before last(first one) was a 92 s-10, that i dropped 4 inches. it only had a 2.8l v6, but it would go pretty quick, b/c it had no rev or speed limiter

it rode rough, but thats because the back end had 1 inch of susspension travel, unloaded(non with a small bicycle in the back), but it handled like a dream.......only thing stopping it were the all-terrain tires(i was dating girls in rural areas then...the tC barely sees gravel now that i'm single)

sorry, was remeniscing

mfbenson

Quite a few people have wrecked their tC due to the problem, and for everyone willing to admit that's how it happened, there's another 5 saying that it is wasn't their fault but some sort of design flaw.

First time your car gets going sideways, with no warning, and at a high yaw rate, you'll be "concerned" too.

If the tC transmitted plenty of warning that it was near traction limits, that would be one thing, but the fact that it oversteers (and understeers) with almost no warning comes as a surprise to those whose previous driving experience was in more forgiving vehicles.

yesti

The best 'cure' that people seem to have come up with is to get stickier tires and/or change springs and shocks/struts. Leave the sway bar modifications for later once you have a feel for the limits by doing either or both of those.

The design 'flaw' seems to be more so of a design 'side effect', and the fact that the initial reviewers of the car point it out shows that it is not a subtle one.

kyle1745

This is no flaw... Its pushing the limits... If you do not panic you can get a nice 4 wheel drift out of it and keep on going.

3min3m2

personally i still dont see a problem..i just tried on an old country road(its like 12 midnight here, so no traffic) and i didnt notice it, but as mentioned before, it only seems to be a manual problem....i notice the rear end seems to go out if i hit the brakes, but thats the only time...nothing severe enough to cause a wreck(even at 50 MPH)

yesti

not sure what you mean by 'it only seems to be a manual problem'. do you mean manual transmission? i have auto and i slid (but i also have trd rear sway). manual would conceivably be worse.

if you are going in a straight line and brake hard the rear becomes very unloaded. people (even with trd shocks/spring) have noticed this behavior at the track. the slightest twitch of the steering wheel in that situation could be quite a handful.

if you are entering a turn at 50mph, or any speed fast enough to induce understeer, then let off the throttle while still in the turn, that may also be quite a handful. people have lost control/wrecked their cars going 30-40 mph.

bottom line is that people have to know that the oversteer possibility is there (and that there is no warning) and how to handle it if it happens (wide shoulder and 4-wheel slide), or try not to make it happen in the first place (slow in, fast out). bigred pointed out that with the rs1 package she has yet to get the car to behave badly. she has the strut bar and the yokohama tires so either or both has greatly increased the stability of the car (i'm gonna put my money on the tires, although the strut bar could stiffen the front a smidge promoting the tiniest bit more understeer).

this topic isn't meant to say that our cars are unsafe, or flawed, or have a problem, just different from 'conventional' thinking about $16k 4-cyl FWD econocars.

sciontc_mich

i agree, the tires for stock are good, but pulling that move and expecting STOCK tires to help? that's laughable! Want to drive like that, you better put your faith in much better tires. (aka STICKIER tires).. and the move about the rear sway bar? too stiff, that back end will come around and say HELLO.. and not be nice about it.. lol