Drifting places in Portland

[m.box.design]

Lots of empty paved open spaces up in the mt.hood area. Snow Bunny or the truck stop/turnaround at Frog Lake immediately come to mind.

[wrohdejr]

Don't know how well it is patrolled but Chinook Marine park landing off of 223rd and marine dr out in Fairview/Gresham has a huge parking lot. Might be able to get away with a few minutes of late night drifting if the park isn't locked!!

[OTOC]

I have been to Pats Acres. The day I went there was every kind of skill driver there from noob to very experienced. I need to go back out again. There was a a FRS with a PSI plate on it. Looked like he was trying to figure out the car to the track. -Adam

[BRZPDX]

Yea I am notorious for making bad decisions so excuse my advice. I go out there like once a month on a Sunday usually when everything is closed/no semi-trucks and what not.

I think growing up, watching "Bosozoku" 80's Japanese drift VHS videos influenced me when I hear the word "drift". Practicing in open parking lots, 2:00AM country roads, etc., was what we used to do, but I'm glad now days there are specific places for drifting in a controlled environment with instructors.

Any hooligan, sub-culture type sport will eventually end up as a business model and be open to the general public so most people that wanted to try, will be able to in a safe environment, for a cost.

I've literally been out of the tuning game for like 12 years so my philosophy is probably outdated. Now that we are mostly adults here, obeying public road regulations and quenching our urge for racing only in a controlled environment such as Auto-X, tracking and drift school (?) is the right thing to do.

[BrzRacer]

Originally Posted by SkullWorks

WAY OFF TOPIC

What year is your Malibu Wagon?...I haz a '79

It's a 2007. Yeah my first car was a1987 Chevrolet Celebrity station wagon.
I had so many stories with that car in my high school days.
My brake pads caught on fire once and I had to stop and ring someone's doorbell to ask for a water hose. Pretty fun stuff...

[oblivion2k]

Originally Posted by BrzRacer

Yeah which is the reason I was looking for an open space place. Bobs place seems like a good place to just go once and test the waters and see how well or bad I can drift. Jeremy Clarkson made it looks so easy on tv when he test drove the twins on that episode.
I guess If I feel confident after attending one of Bobs drifts events then I can attempt a more advance day at track at Pats.
Thanks for the info Chris!

I drift this car here and there around town, and this car truly is laughably easy to drift. The best advice I can give to inexperienced drifters here in the FR-S/BRZ is to first of all keep the speed down. This car will pull the backend out at 30 MPH or even less, there's no reason to start out going faster than that. The second piece of advice, which ties in with the first, is to turn off traction control all the way by holding down the trac off button for 5 seconds, instead of using sport mode or any of the other sporty features. Sport mode will make it safer at higher speeds, but can also give you a false sense of security. If you try to slide it with traction off the same way you do it in sport mode, you'll slide the car all the way around and into a wall if you aren't careful.

tl;dr, keep it slow, turn off all driver assists.

[NickFRS]

I learned how to drift up at meadows/timberline in the snow while driving imprezas n what not.... + Open industrial lots in the FRS.... I'm guilty of that.... @DarrenDriven is a pure pressure drifter!!! ahahaha. I hear pats is nice and you can learn there... Not to hard. Never been there before but plan on going sometime soon. You can only run water/water wetter in your radiator though. No coolant/antifreeze.

[Entropy]

Bringing thread back to life. It looks like north-east area (east of the airport, off airport way) may have some decent wide-open spots for a fun rainy night. Any experience with this area? I may go experiment tomorrow night.

[Drift-Office]

Originally Posted by PERRIN_Chris

You might want to check out Bob's events at Pacific Raceways. They're pretty cheap, I think around $50, but you're going to spend more time and money on gas getting up there. $100 is pretty normal for a drift event, most of it's covering insurance and rental of the track.

Thanks Chris!

Well, IF I'm going to be doing it again, it *might* still be at that price. I do it for free, but I think the track has been hinting at more $$$.


Bob @ Drift-Office, LLC

[Rio]

I had no idea Pat's Acres hosted drifting! Looking forward to the 2014 drift schedule :-)

[PERRIN_Chris]

Originally Posted by Entropy

Bringing thread back to life. It looks like north-east area (east of the airport, off airport way) may have some decent wide-open spots for a fun rainy night. Any experience with this area? I may go experiment tomorrow night.

I would not recommend drifting on the street. Cops know people like to mess around there, and not only that, it's dangerous.

[Entropy]

Originally Posted by PERRIN_Chris

I would not recommend drifting on the street. Cops know people like to mess around there, and not only that, it's dangerous.

Agreed. However, I don't really consider drifting in a wide open deserted parking lot to be street-drifting. Illegal, sure; dangerous, doubt it.