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Alright, so after reading posts of people saying they would post up a video of whether the water would spill from the cup or not, and not seeing anything. I went out to see if I could do it. No surprise tho, that I spilled the water everytime I tried to drift, but then again, my drifting is pretty crappy. And I thought it was better than nothing being ever posted. I did find out however, that even driving at speeds of 40 mph and hitting speed bumps at around 15 mph, water didn't spill out, hooray!

Here is the link to the video of my crappy driving

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YKNTPrmUOo

BWAHAHAHAHA

Good job Takumi.

Bunta gonna whoop yo' ass for killin' that tofu.

Ah man now that I think of it, I should have been like "SORYAAA" and "DORYAAA", or whatever crap hoshino says in the anime, lol

Damn, beat me to the joke.

Anyway it makes sense in theory since guys in the 50s would do something similar with a ball in a bowl on their hood and they couldn't let it fall out, but the water thing is probably even harder to do, if not impossible.

i think there's to many different variables to pull off
1. the car you are driving is a factor
2. the road (Takumi was never shown to do it any where else but akina)
3. the kick back of the gear shift (if to hard its going to spill)
etc.

wow, so many on this thread are a full sack of sh*t. So many people claim they know how to drift, and say they will post a video of themselves attempting to drift with a cup, and yet ONLY one person actually goes to attempt it.....kudos to you @rysabi, and thanks for actually posting a vid, unlike any ungrateful ppl on here who takes it for granted and don't even say thanks for posting a vid out of the unnecessarity.

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The cup of water....in reality.

http://www.autoblog.com/2010/07/24/a-glass...sumption-at-ba/

Ahahaha, so Toyota finally took a cue from Initial D. That's awesome, thanks for posting.

Theoretically it should be possible to drift without spilling the water. However, I am not yet in a position to confirm this myself.

For everyday driving, yes it is possible to not spill the water and drive fast. All you have to keep an eye on is the water's movement during a weight transition moment and your steering input.

I find that when doing this my concentration is completely taxed. By this I mean that I use up more of my concentration compared to driving without the water cup.

For bumps, as long as you have some ground clearance, your suspension should make the water jump up a bit, but not enough to spill water out of the cup. Then again this depends on how your ride is set up.

I've noticed that when I drive fast the main factor for the water cup is how the water is rotated, that is your steering input. If you don't delicately adjust your steering input, the water will easily spill mid corner.

For driving fast with the water cup, the only time I might run into problems would be consecutive low speed corners such as hairpins. Because I immediately accelerate out of a turn, I'll need to adjust my lines or my habits in order to keep the water from spilling.

There's no reason you can't do it IN THEORY, but the problem is that he's doing it on a mountain road with a car that has McPherson struts in the front and a solid axle in the back, and the car has been modified with a racing suspension probably at least twice as stiff as the stock one, so every time you hit a bump the water is going to go flying.

I have been to the actual Fujiwara Tofu Shop in Gunma Prefecture where they filmed Initial D The Movie, and I'll say it's not even possible to leave the driveway without spilling the water. The road conditions are just too horrible.

The sign is from the movie... the actual shop had a different name and closed down years ago because the owner died (and because you can't make any money selling tofu any more).

I've used this technique many times. First was in a chevy caviler(Yes weird chocie I know) which was the car I learned to drift in despite it being front wheel drive.
Second was a pontiac firebird with a lt1 engine swap done. That was hard due to the the fact cup holders where huge and car had so much torque. To put into prospective my friend had a 94 corvette of the same year and engine and couldn't touch my fire bird. Oh how I miss that car...

Third in a v6 ford mustang . Easy to do in it. But lack of power kinda helpped that fact.

I haven't done it yet in my eclipse. But being front wheel drive and power not near where I want it yet it's not a priority to me. Plus due to my health I haven't been doing much driving lately.

One thing I did end up using on the first bird as well was my own take on the gutter trick before I truly under stood it. I used the small edge off a red(Not a full on gutter) and dropped my front passenger side tire off the edge while taking a tight turning ramp to get on a interstate .
I had been on that ramp countless times and both myself and my now ex wife could tell a difference . She hadn't ever watched and refused to watch initial d(or any anime) so she didn't think it would actually work.

Earlier I posted a couple of pointers for the water technique, I'd like to add a bit more detail.

For bumps, you need practically no acceleration to clear them. Coasting through a bump at a low speed would be the procedure as a result. For cars with some ground clearance, this should result in no water spilling. However, I haven't tried it on my lowered car so I'll definitely update this if I get the chance to drive it.

Now for the water level. The water level will determine your "margin of smoothness." What I mean by this is how smooth (or unsmooth) you can be with your movements. A relatively high water level, such as 3/4 of an inch of cup space (the distance from the water to top of the cup) will mean you'd have to drive with insanely smooth techniques. As a result your margin of smoothness is extremely low as one minutely small error will cause the water to break.

On the other hand if you have 1 inch of cup space, then you'd have a large margin of smoothness. This would require significantly less micromanagement of your driving input with regards to breaking the water but you would still need to be extremely delicate with your driving, just not so much as the 3/4 of an inch.

With 3/4 of an inch of cup space, it'd be extremely hard to move through bumps as well, so prepare for some wet pants. It may be possible to do this, but I'd need to improve a bit before I could do this.

Now the correlation between speed and water level. The whole point of the water technique is to show where weight is being transferred. Any disruption that isn't delicate during the weight transfer would break the water. In other words, unless you stay within the upper limit of your margin of smoothness, you'll break the water. Vehicle speed is an independent factor that is separable from the water level so long as you're smooth with your driving.

However, despite this independence from the water level, one way in which speed can affect the water level is through an indirect effect on your "margin of smoothness." Cornering at a speed too fast will be a disruption in the transfer of weight and if the driver input is too aggressive, then the water will break.

Just my musings since I've been doing this as practice for a bit now.

I think may have just got that from a movie

I don't think this method is possible for drifting because the speed of weight transfer is just to drastic.
I can only see this helping in shifting, braking, and taking the proper line.

Usually when I have a drink in my cupholder I'm trying to not get pulled over with it... I usually also put a lid on it to keep it from spilling.

How about if we try it in a Formula 1 car from the 90s; after all those G's, yup, it all spilled, even after driving through the Monaco tunnel

[SPOILER]

I think that the cup-of-water theory is a 100% do-able thing in my opinion. For one, he's always racing on the downhill. When the nose of the car faces downwards, the water tilts towards the nose of the car. When he steps on the gas at any time, the water will move towards the rear of the car. So on the downhill, the water is always moving towards the nose of the car, and accelerating will balance it out. Takumi also mentions that he has to make the water 'roll around the lip" of the cup and he can drive at any speed he wants. The downhill's of Akina have to be fairly steep for a 150ish horsepower car to reach around 130kmh, so he'd always have to be on the throttle to stop it from spilling. When he goes into corners, that's where the rolling of the lip comes into play. He will steer slightly outwards from the corner before entering, to get the water moving in a circle. Then he can brake, sending the water to the nose of the cup and finally swing the car's rear end around. Keisuke first sees Takumi's "inertia" drift, which is when the velocity and uniform motion of the car is unchanged as he changes directions, whilst moving forwards in a straight line. This lack of unbalanced forces means the water will continue to roll around the lip, without being affected by the speed and direction of where Takumi is going. He also learns to use minimal counter-steer, and that means less movement when he corners, enabling him to drift without spilling any water. Also, in Bunta's interest of not damaging the tofu, he probably selected a route for Takumi to drive that wouldn't have any speed bumps or potential risks for him to damage to tofu on. Because a 7th grader would probably kill the tofu on a speed bump.

Now, I haven't tried this, because my vehicle is an FF and doesn't drift but it's just my theory behind the water in a cup thing.

This post has been edited by i3aac on Sep 6 2016, 07:52 PM

It's pretty easy making a rear-wheel drive car slide in the twisties, especially down hill & in the rain:

→ (AE86 + momentum) x (125-bhp + 2250-lbs) = dorifuto

Set a cup of water on a table with a sheet of paper underneath it; then quickly slide it off of the bottom of the cup without spilling the water. A similar mechanic applies to Tak's Hachi.

There's no theory ~ it's all physics. Welcome to the forums i3aac my friend ~ enjoy your stay ~ <3

http://www.speedhunters.com/2014/01/dino-project-car/

Maybe not drifting, but it is possible to drive fast with a cup of water.

★ I'd argue that it is very much possible.

★ My 3-ton RWD Jeep with a wobbly suspension & questionable horsepower can sustain a pretty smooth slide around a curve if I'm going fast enough & the roads are so crumbly there's no traction (which they are here in west Texas) ~ Now I've never driven a hachi-rolla but that car looks like a little hockey-puck. So I'd say it's explicitly possible even on stock specifications to not spill the water. ☆

★ Again ~ all physics.

But Takumi uses drastic weight shifting and inertia to start the drift, which are rather rough when we are talking about drifting with a cup of water. If he could make the car to slide using power, maybe he can drift without getting his pants wet but that car of his gives around 240 HP? Plus, its a NA which means he probably doesn't have lots of torque and power required for power over drifting.

Torque is good when you're sliding a car from a low velocity ... but if there's no torque ~ momentum & speed take precedence ~ he does a lot of heel & toe, meaning he doesn't lose drastic speed on the turns, therefore maintaining a smooth slide on Akina's curves~ ☆

This post has been edited by xiao on Sep 15 2016, 07:48 PM

Takumi stated in-series that he could drift with water in the cup on a good day. He doesn't drift every single corner like that and he's not even trying to drift most of the time, if he's trying to at all. It's safe to say there was some luck involved most of the times he managed it (at least early on in the series; for all we know he could've been pulling it off on a weekly basis near the end).
Just thought I'd get that out of the way first, especially now that newer Initial D anime have him drifting every single corner on the uphill at huge angles with water in the cup (even First Stage treated the tofu deliveries more realistically than that).

Anyway, to address that post about drastic weight shifting above: Takumi wouldn't necessarily have to brake the nose straight into the ground to get the 86 sliding. A little bit of braking can be just enough.
There are mainly two things to consider here:
1. Like with a lot of fun-oriented cars, the 86's suspension gives the wheels more camber under compression, and less camber under extension. Camber will (up to a point) increase the amount of sideways force the tires can put out.
2. The rear-differential on the 86 most definitely doesn't lock up completely when braking. When he's braking and turning at the same time, the inside rear wheel will want to slow down quicker than the outside rear wheel, and this can easily start a slide if the speed difference between inside and outside wheel is big enough.

So even if he's braking relatively light to keep the water in the cup, he's still got the 86 ready for oversteer thanks to physics and drivetrain stuff. The front tires will have a bit more camber and the rear tires will have a bit less camber. If he begins turning while keeping any bit of weight transfer on the front, the car will naturally try to oversteer, especially since it has a short wheelbase and is therefore easy to rotate. No roughness involved at all; the 86's front tires will just grip better on entry than the rear tires and smoothly pull the car into a slide (in fact, plenty of people with drifting experience will attest to it being entirely possible to smoothly start a drift without resorting to power-oversteer). As long as he didn't overcook the entry and get the car sliding at anything other than a very small angle, the water will (theoretically) stay unspilled for this phase of the turn.

As for the rest of the turn, this is where the explanation's going to be even more of a "theoretically", but if the corner he's on isn't too bumpy, then all he has to do from here on is maintain that very minimal drift, then smoothly exit the drift by using just the right amount of throttle. The rear tires can get more camber during the rest of the drift since there's acceleration (and thus weight transfer) involved, so it's possible to have them gradually grip more through the turn until they just naturally stop the drift without the driver needing to reduce throttle much. The driver can even not have to reduce throttle at all if the right amount of throttle was used throughout the corner. And there, a completely smooth drift with no heavy weight transfers. It'd be a drift with such minimal sliding it almost wouldn't look like a drift at all, but it'd be a drift nonetheless.