This question is filling up my Instagram message box on a daily basis. It’s definitely one of my favorite tricks as of the rest of the stunt world probably. Some riders even build bikes specific for drifting with extended swing-arms and nowadays also with a turbo, for the extra punch.
I’ve built myself a drift bike out of a RC 390, but the engine and the swing-arm are stock, I just added the Rok Bagoros Parts to protect it when crashing and we also updated the cooling system, since the bike doesn’t have enough air flow while drifting.
My precious.
Drifting is such a rad thing to do. When you hit that sweet spot and you somehow feel the grip on your tire… almost like the tire is slowly ripping and everything happens when you fly sideways…
It’s really addictive.
Mitas tires on the limit, but still gripping as hell, believe me 😀
Enjoy some raw drifting with the RC.
KTM RC390 drift sesh – RokON Raw session
I'm getting comfortable on my lil drift beast, what the KTM Official Fanpage RC390 definitely is :DEnjoy the raw session – RokON!
Objavil/a Rok Bagoros – stunt rider dne 21. marec 2017
As mentioned, we recently made an upgrade on the cooling system. The issue at drifting in general is that the machine, car or bike is moving slow and the RPM of the engine itself is raving quite high and that produces a lot of heat. Everybody makes some changes to the cooling system in the wish to reduce that.
We went from one fan to two fans (we got a lot of fans on social media but as you can see not enough on the bike haha) and we also prepared an ALU plate in which we cut two holes for the fans. For some this wouldn’t make sense so close to the radiator if it is already overheating. But with this system you create a vacuum effect and if your bike is moving slow, your fans are still sucking the air through the radiator.
Before we applied this system my bike needed a break after 10min of throttle punishment but now… I couldn’t believe it, I was drifting for 1, 5 hour without even noticing it and the bike didn’t show any signs of power loss.
Check out our new VLOG where we show how we tuned the air cooling system.
OK, enough of technical preaching, let’s get back to –
How to do it?
The first thing to have in mind is to increase the pressure in your tire. The harder the tire, the more constant the grip and therefore the drift. I’m now riding with 3.0 bars on my rear tire. The front doesn’t matter, it can be at normal pressure, approx. 2,0bar.
Before I start to drift I always make some rolling burnouts to overheat the tire, so it’s easier to drift.
When the tire is “overheated” you start to drift. My style of drifting is power brake into the drift, just before I completely stop with the locked tire, I rapidly release the clutch so my tire starts to spin. Damn, that explanation was way too easy. Ok, I’ll give it another try 😀
You accelerate in the 1st gear and after the rev limiter appears you start to do the power brake slide with a squeezed clutch and you lean into the way you want to drift. When you feel ready, you release the clutch and control the drift with the throttle. If you get some grip on your back tire, you add more gas. In some cases this doesn’t help, so you need to correct it with you rear brake.
RokON raw drift sesh – French line nr.2
Enjoy the lil drift rage. Squeezing every bit of HP out of my 690 one cylinder engine ✊💨
Objavil/a Rok Bagoros – stunt rider dne 17. december 2016
Easy right? 😛
I know it’s not. It’s so hard to explain by words but maybe it would be better with a VIDEO tutorial, what do you guys think, should I do it?
And one more thing, I know only true rockers are reading this blog but just in case some duchebag is reading it and tries this out and crashes and has an idea to sue me – no way Jose. You do this on your own risk. This tutorial is just trying to explain how it works and it’s still a dangerous thing to do.
Ok, enough of typing, I need to go try out a new style of drift, just got the idea while I was typing this blog 😀
Photo by JANEZ KOCBEK
