Road Tuning: Left Foot Braking
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Left Foot Braking
02.21
| 00:00 | As I've just explained, out on the road we don't have the benefit of a dyno to apply load to the engine, and the more throttle we apply the faster the car goes. |
| 00:09 | This is okay when we get to the point of tuning at wide open throttle, but tuning the middle of the map at part throttle can be difficult. |
| 00:16 | What we need is a way of applying load to the engine so that we can move around the maps more accurately, and the technique I use to deal with this is called left-foot braking. |
| 00:26 | As its name implies, we're going to use our left foot to apply some light braking force to counter the increased engine power. |
| 00:33 | This allows us to increase the throttle opening while maintaining a constant rpm. |
| 00:38 | There are a few considerations though before you start left-foot braking. |
| 00:42 | The first is that most people don't ever use their left foot on the brake pedal. |
| 00:47 | You either use it to control the clutch or in an automatic, it spends its life sitting on the footrest. |
| 00:53 | What this means is that our brains aren't programmed to operate the brake with our left foot with the kind of smoothness and finesse that's required for left-foot braking to be effective. |
| 01:03 | This simply requires some patience and a little practice although you might find your first few attempts are jerky and uncomfortable. |
| 01:11 | Once you've mastered this technique, you can very accurately control the brake to vary the load on the engine and control rpm as you increase the throttle opening. |
| 01:22 | There are a couple more important points here though. |
| 01:25 | Firstly, you need to understand that left-foot braking will put a lot of heat into your brakes particularly as you try to hold more and more engine power. |
| 01:34 | You need to be aware of this and use short periods of left-foot braking followed by some extended periods of cruising to allow the brakes to cool. |
| 01:43 | If you can smell your brakes, or they begin to fade and become less effective, it's time to lay off for a while and let the temperature stabilise. |
| 01:53 | Secondly, if you have an engine that's making a lot of power, there'll be a point where you can't hold this with the brakes anymore. |
| 02:00 | You risk overheating the brakes, or the car may even begin to wheel spin. |
| 02:06 | I use left-foot braking to fill in the cruise and transition areas of the map. |
| 02:12 | All the full power tuning can be done in wide open throttle pulse which we'll look at a little later. |
