Handbrake turns...

[RMB-Racing]

Does any of you had experience with handbrake turns on the Q4..?

How does that affect on the 4 wheel drive, when the rear wheels are being locked by the handbrake?

Will all the power be redirected to the front wheels..?

[AlfaJack]

No idea but the 155 hand brake isnt known for being that strong for handbrake turns.

[Kai Q4]

My handbrake isnt locked fhen i?m driving, so no handbrake turns.

[T M Oren]

My hand brake cant do any handbrake turn.
You must try the "skandinavian flikk"

[juamin]

ajajaj yesterday i was changing my brakes, disks and pads and i asked myself the same question but then when i tried the handbrake realized that there is no chance to do that.

[RMB-Racing]

Okay - so some of your cant do a handbrake turn on your vehicles, because your handbrake doesn't work properly.

That wasn't quite the question..!

My question was - can we use the handbrake (if it works properly) to do a handbrake turn, or is it impossible because of the 4 wheel drive?

Anyone with a technical answer..?

[arjunior45]

Alfa, at the time 155 Q4 was in production line, used to claim that it is impossible to make any wheel spin, loosing grip.
I do not know if it is true or not but, why do you want to have handbrake turns? This car is a 4 wheel drive, not a front wheel drive, and giving more torque to the rear wheels you can drive it as a rear wheel drive car.

Did you try to give full gas on the turns? It will go in {almost massive} oversteering at the second half of the turn and ... you just need to keep the gas pedal down to the floor and 'correct' the oversteering with the steering wheel !!! Like a true old rear wheel drive Alfa.
The clutch though must be able to support all this pressure and believe me it is difficult to find one that did not start to slip after a while! And I mean it will start to slip the same day and not a month later.

If you want to try a handbrake turn in low speeds it's another story and to tell you the truth I never tried such a thing. I just love power oversteering and it has more fun.

Nick

[RMB-Racing]

The reason why i?m asking about handbrake turns, its because I maybe will use the car to drive rally with.

The rally I?m driving, is rally with many handbraketurns, and sometimes theres not enough room/space to powersteer around a certain point.

That?s why...! :smile:

[Evodelta]

You need a hydraulic handbrake to do handbrake turns.
As to what it will do to the transmission is a good question and one I don't have a good answer to.

If you can afford to break it have a go, if not don't!

[ecl]

get a subaru, so you don't have to abuse the few q4's thats left

[arjunior45]

long time ago I was thinking to move the frond disk to the rear, use 'small' 4 pot calipers and hydraulic hand break. Still thinking of it but had no the spare time to deal with this project.

Nick

[jimnielsen]

arjunior... I have just completed my 166 caliper upgrade (just waiting for the new wheels to be delivered before I change over...) But now I have the near new original front brake rotors and some wilwood dynalights so I was thinking how that would work as rears...

two problems - 1. handbrake. I NEED a handbrake - my trailer (that I made for the Q4 has a sloped back and the car rolls off too easily without one) Its just too dangerous otherwise, the car will either roll off on me or someone else.. so its gotta have a handbrake of some sort. Hydraulic? maybe but how to implement it on a Q4 and what parts to use? Has anyone done one?

2. will need to be able to adjust the 'bias' on the front to rear pressure ratio. am thinking of replacing the single "bias valve" with a pair of sensible manual adjustable ones that have been used on racecars for ever... has anyone done this?

..Only 3 days to go till sandown raceway - weather says cold and wet!! :)



regards, Jimn~

[arjunior45]

we had done this to a 75Turbo {manual adjustable bias - front disk on the rear axle - hydraulic handbrake with its own-separate caliper just for the handbrake and ...two {2} 4 pot piston calipers per side at the front wheels keeping the oem disks at the front too}. But it was long time ago and I do not remember the spare parts numbers we used. I believe the front calipers were from 75 V6 and the rear one the oem front one. The hydraulic handbrake was an aftermarket {not oem one} such as the adjustable bias. Later on we mounted double brake pistons too. No ABS was ever used. Quite impressive seeing double brake calipers on each wheel and incredible breaking power with this arrangement. Wish I had the time to arrange something similar for the Q4!

I think that the oem bias of the q4 is adjustable - not on the track though - but I believe it will be better to have an aftermarket pair of manually adjustable one located just next to the driver seat or just behind the gear knob.

Nick

[155q4-dk]

I have had a VW Golf Rallye, it is the four wheel drive G60 rally homologation car, and the four wheel drive broke when I tried the handbrake turns. The construction is a bit different than the one on the Q4, but I wouldn't dare trying the handbrake turning in my Q4!!