Right, let's be HONEST, who can drive their supra with confidence in the rain/wet?

[k9l3]

good tyres obviously help I only got zz3 and I can still take bends pretty quick.

[Chris Wilson]

Living in one of the wettest parts of Europe ensures that I get plenty of wet weather driving practice and I find my stock(ish) JDM TT auto is secure and planted in the drizzle, light rain and torrential downpours that we get in Argyll. My car wears Falken FK452s, not a top brand, but a good budget tyre.

 

I think that there are a fair number of Supra drivers that are not used to rwd cars. My own driving history started with Hillman Avengers, Mk3 Cortinas, Imps and Morris Marinas, back in the 80's. If you didn't master rwd pretty quickly, you'd be climbing out of ditches on a regular basis.

 

The 'children' who have driven little but Corsas, Clios and Fiestas, have little concept of rwd behaviour and consequently drive powerful rwd cars in the same carefree way and suffer the consequences.

 

Fwiw, I'm a great believer that serving some time riding motorcycles helps you read road surfaces like your life depends on it - generally because it does!

 

Totally agree. Most of the time I believe the blase way you can drive a FWD car is the reason so many people then come to something like a Supra and have issues. People of my generation were brought up on knackered RWD cars, and believe me, a knackered leaf spring suspended 3 litre Capri is far more skittish than a knackered Supra TT I have probably driven over 100 Supras now, and good, correctly sized tyres make a big difference, but so too do stupidly stiff and low "suspension" set ups. I had the rare pleasure of driving an un-messed with TT on original 16 inch rims and decent stock tyres, in the wet the other day. Bliss. Why people forego these wonderful wheels for use during the winter, brake clearance aside, I don't know. They may not be fashionable and your mates might laugh, but not as heartily as when you are backwards into a hedge on your ultra low profile bling wheel and tyre set up, with some Bulgarian or Korean ditch finders on them

[Lude]

I am confident in the wet,

 

i simply dont let the boost come on suddenly, or make sure the steering wheel is straight when accelerating.

[Abz]

I like to have the same brand and model of tyres front and rear so I know they behave the same in changing road and weather conditions. For example a Sessanta and Eagle F1 combo may be very similar in the dry but the Sessantas will displace more standing water so you'd want to "pick which end of the car you prefer to autoplane first" in that example. That's an oversimplification due to widths and tread depth but the same argument holds true for hot vs cold roads. My Eagle F1s GSD3s were not very good on very cold roads at all, mixing those with a P-Zero or Sessanta (in my experience) does give mixed grip levels on cold roads. On a hot road there's not much between them and any oversteer vs. understeer was always predictable.

This could be preference but this is my line of thought as I ran different tyres on my previous Supra.

 

The front were Dunlop Rain Sports, which were excellent, my rear I changed from the soddy Conti to Verdestein.

 

So the front will drive through the water causing the break in the water which means the fronts need to be really good at displacing or going through standing water. The rear will be going through less water as the front will have cleared out a load more so here is where I need grip, though still need to be decent wet grip.

 

Maybe it is all in my mind, but this is the logic behind my decision

[Dnk]

Soddy Conti ?

 

Best to have 4 matching tyres end of story

[James]

I made a mistake and had a bump in the wet due to a lapse of paying attention to the traffic (I was approaching on a wet, cobbled bridge. I was looking in my side view mirror to get moved into the left lane and looked forward to see cars backed up a little in front of me at a set of lights). It would have happened in a 1.0 Micra if I was in one of those, rather than being fault of the Supra in my instance (in my opinion, of course).

 

Apart from that one time, I'm happy enough driving in the rain. Obviously the conditions change the way in which things can happen, but an assessment in advance of attempting anything stupid prevents problems from arising. At the end of the day, I could put the foot to the floor in the dry from zero boost to get a huge kick in 2nd, I won't in the wet as I know it won't go smoothly like it does in the dry.

 

You don't put foot to the floor when approaching a 90 degree bend the same as you do on a huge clear straight. You assess the conditions before acting, exactly as you should in the wet. It isn't a hard concept to comprehend

[supra_aero]

Glad to here you got some better rubbers on your supra fella. And that now you know how important it is to have a decent set of tyres on the supra. Enjoy!!

 

Tx loved my drive to work today .

Flooring it off the line at the lights with no wheel spin. Love it

Edited January 11, 2012 by supra_aero (see edit history)

[fastcar]

Totally agree. Most of the time I believe the blase way you can drive a FWD car is the reason so many people then come to something like a Supra and have issues. People of my generation were brought up on knackered RWD cars, and believe me, a knackered leaf spring suspended 3 litre Capri is far more skittish than a knackered Supra TT I have probably driven over 100 Supras now, and good, correctly sized tyres make a big difference, but so too do stupidly stiff and low "suspension" set ups. I had the rare pleasure of driving an un-messed with TT on original 16 inch rims and decent stock tyres, in the wet the other day. Bliss. Why people forego these wonderful wheels for use during the winter, brake clearance aside, I don't know. They may not be fashionable and your mates might laugh, but not as heartily as when you are backwards into a hedge on your ultra low profile bling wheel and tyre set up, with some Bulgarian or Korean ditch finders on them

 

I would totally agree with that although I have decent tyres on my supra I found it hard to drive a rwd car as I have always owned fwd cars even if they were powerful cars. Everything I had learned driving a fwd car ment nothing when I got in the supra so had to learn all over again

[Getrag]

Am I the only person who, ive got to be honest, loved driving my Supra in the wet and rain.

 

Yeah i loved driving it in the sunny dry days with full grip available but i also loved the particular enjoyment of driving it in the rain - hey if it was my chance to drive it i would. My driving was 100X slower but you know *exactly* where the grip level is and where it goes. I swear in that car i could feel the exact mm of pedal depression and angle of lock between grip and where it started to tail off. And in 7-8 years of ownership it didnt do anything I didnt want it to do (yes prob a wee bit of fortune thrown in there). It was great, come off roundabouts with lashings of rain and if you want you can keep it straight or you can have a bit of fun (god, how un-PC ) with the levels of grip. It just felt like the grip envelope was so much closer to you in the rain and you could explore it in the *safety* of much lower speeds.

 

Also, I think there is a difference in what some people mean by driving their Supra and DRIVING their Supra. A lot of people I imagine go hell for leather in the Supra in the dry, you simply cant do that in the rain and yes that would feel scary. However, if you drive it like an every day driver drives there Ford Focus to pick up the kids then the Supra isnt going to do anything silly in the wet or the dry, given you have decent tyres.

 

Edit, Just to reinforce that good tyres are essential, i only ever put good ones on. I did once let the rear tyres get a bit too worn down and it was UNDRIVABLE in the wet lol. So Im guessing that might be a big part of the problem...

Edited January 11, 2012 by Getrag (see edit history)

[Josh]

Am I the only person who, ive got to be honest, loved driving my Supra in the wet and rain.

 

Yeah i loved driving it in the sunny dry days with full grip available but i also loved the particular enjoyment of driving it in the rain - hey if it was my chance to drive it i would. My driving was 100X slower but you know *exactly* where the grip level is and where it goes. I swear in that car i could feel the exact mm of pedal depression and angle of lock between grip and where it started to tail off. And in 7-8 years of ownership it didnt do anything I didnt want it to do (yes prob a wee bit of fortune thrown in there). It was great, come off roundabouts with lashings of rain and if you want you can keep it straight or you can have a bit of fun (god, how un-PC ) with the levels of grip. It just felt like the grip envelope was so much closer to you in the rain and you could explore it in the *safety* of much lower speeds.

 

Also, I think there is a difference in what some people mean by driving their Supra and DRIVING their Supra. A lot of people I imagine go hell for leather in the Supra in the dry, you simply cant do that in the rain and yes that would feel scary. However, if you drive it like an every day driver drives there Ford Focus to pick up the kids then the Supra isnt going to do anything silly in the wet or the dry, given you have decent tyres.

 

Edit, Just to reinforce that good tyres are essential, i only ever put good ones on. I did once let the rear tyres get a bit too worn down and it was UNDRIVABLE in the wet lol. So Im guessing that might be a big part of the problem...

 

I must admit, I do like it when it's rained before I leave work as I take quiet back roads to get home, so I can't drive fast in the dry, but can have a bit of fun in the wet

[Purity14]

I drive mine in the sun, light rain, extreme torrential windy downpours, light snow, heavy snow.

Ive driven rwd cars for the last 7 years, and been driving a total of 10 years.

 

My Manual NA has no problems, handles how id like it do - and ive only been surprised once by an unintentional sideways indecent - and that was a manhole cover on a frosty morning on a sweeping left. And it was easily corrected.

 

I'm not a driving god, I just drive to the conditions; The ONLY thing I wont do, is ride a motorbike in the snow

[imi]

Am I the only person who, ive got to be honest, loved driving my Supra in the wet and rain.

 

no you're not

[mellonman]

this brother has got bottle in the wet

[video=youtube;yGZk5Afj7-c]

[Attero]

The Supra is the only RWD car I've owned. I've had it for 2 years now and I am quite happy to drive it in the wet and pouring conditions. To be honest, it's what you make of it. If you drive on boost round corners or simply ragging it around, what the hell do you expect?

 

Am I the only person who, ive got to be honest, loved driving my Supra in the wet and rain.

 

I love it too.