[hwelvaar]

With a manual transmisison, when you try a drift but skid and the car turns 180 degrees, your car is then running backwards, and hopefully you have disengaged the clutch, because you are probably still in a forward gear while the car is going backwards. Otherwise, you would damage the clutch. (this is what the instructor told me when I was doing a training on slip and recovery)

Anybody knows how this is handled with an auto gearbox ? Does it auto-disengage, or does the clutch not care about this because the wet plates (or something ) can handle this, or how does this work ?

[ovekvam]

The F20 does not spin easily out of control. You can bring it back from quite dramatic slip angles. I do however like to pull the hand brake if I see that the car will swap ends. That way, the car will move in a straight and predictable line, and it will only rotate 180 degrees, and not totally out of control.

[hwelvaar]

Originally Posted by ovekvam

The F20 does not spin easily out of control. You can bring it back from quite dramatic slip angles. I do however like to pull the hand brake if I see that the car will swap ends. That way, the car will move in a straight and predictable line, and it will only rotate 180 degrees, and not totally out of control.

Ok, that's about your driving skill and the car behavior, but I want to know what an automatic gearbox does when it was engaged in a forward gear, and 'suddenly' (slip) the car is in fact driving backwards.

[ovekvam]

Originally Posted by hwelvaar

Ok, that's about your driving skill and the car behavior, but I want to know what an automatic gearbox does when it was engaged in a forward gear, and 'suddenly' (slip) the car is in fact driving backwards.

The torque converter will slip. Since it is basically just a propeller blowing oil on another propeller, I don't think it would do much harm. At very high speed, I guess something could go wrong.