Hey Monster, thanks for sharing the incident with us... may I provide an opinion based on the info you've provided?
I had to re read this thread after experiencing some under steer in my Subaru while driving on wet roads.
I have a lot of experience with the Legacy 3.0R such as yours on a wet proving track and skidpan. The Legacy/Liberty requires a more measured, smoother driving style than say an Impreza. It is more sensitive to overdone inputs of steering lock because of there being more car behind the front axle. It's because of this longer car and wheelbase that makes the Legacy less darty and slower to turn in than the Impreza. Ensuring grip on the front axle requires a measured approach to ensuring sufficient load transfer on to the front axle in order to get the tyres to "bite". Once mastered, your generation of Legacy has proven to be one of the sweetest handling cars I've ever driven.
Straight away I realized the brakes weren't as strong as before (The last time I drove it was 2 weeks ago), but I thought the car should be right, I think I was doing about 40km/h at that point. I released the brakes just before the corner, and I had my foot off the accelerator when I took the 1st part of the corner. The car went around it with no problem at all, but then the corner tightens up again so I turned the steering wheel accordingly at this point.
My car began to under steer at this point. I can hear the front tyres scrubbing , and I can feel it in the steering wheel as well. I reacted straight away and applied the brakes, about 50%, for about 1 sec, then I tried turning the steering a bit more, it wasn't good, so I braked again, 50%, for a bit longer, then turned the steering wheel. This time it was good enough and I managed to steer it away from the barriers.
I didn't try anything fancy because I don't have the skill, and the room to do so. Nor did I have the time to gradually apply and release the brakes.
I just want to know if there is another approach to this problem?
Monster, obviously, without being in the car with you to tell you what went down - I instead can only proffer an opinion.
40 km/h in the wet in this corner in your car should be no problem whatsoever - provided your inputs are measured: braking, steering and throttle.
The issue at hand here is the lack of frontal grip you experienced. You were on the brakes before entering the corner, the car turned in on a trailing throttle so all should've been A OK. Technically, I can't say that you'd done anything wrong up to that point.
The question here is all around steering input and the amount of lock you're winding on. For this corner, from what I can guage from the skewed photos, half a turn of steering lock should be more than enough to make this corner. [So, with your hands fixed in the quarter-to-three position on the wheel, your left hand should not pass 12 o'clock with your right hand not beyond six o'clock.] This is all the steering lock that is needed for this corner.
I am guessing that you may have used more steering lock than was needed for the initial turn-in to the corner. We all make this mistake (some to a lesser and others to a larger extent - especially in the wet) and now the tyres are at the limit of their forward and lateral grip levels (remember simple vectors? The resultant is always greater than either of the forward or lateral input forces). Now, the corner tightens... and guess what we all do... yip, wind on some more lock. This exacerbates the understeer situation as the front tyres now have insufficient rotation to maintain grip in the curve.
Now the front tyres are scrubbing because you have too much lock wound on. Luckily, you weren't going fast enough that when you hit the brakes (a critical mistake at higher cornering speeds that'll see a violent snap-oversteer result) and instead: a) load transfer restored more grip to the front axle and b) speed was scrubbed off to the point where the wheels could regain some rotation.
In such corners in the wet, I would employ the technique described in Ben's "Truth about understeer" post. Use the brakes to keep the nose of the car more planted into the first part of the corner, leaving some steering lock in reserve for the remainder of the tightening corner.
