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st184 sillycar
Forums Junkie

Location:
Melbourne
Registered:
June 2004

Re: Front wheel drives

Wed, 25 August 2004 04:26

FWDboy wrote on Wed, 25 August 2004 12:45

Seems contrary to your previous stuff going on about how good RWD is because of the oversteer...and how your FWD oversteers and how if god drove, he would oversteer. I guess there's a difference in our idea of driving. You want to be challenged to 'balance' the car and to drift out of the corner. I try and drive any car really fast, and adapt my style to get the most out of the car. Maybe I've got it wrong, afterall you seem to love the idea of a ridiculously active diff 4WD even though they won't oversteer. Maybe that's because you know they are going really quick - i dunno.

Then there is your argument about AWD not being any good unless you have 300 computer sensors attached to it and they are more active than a ho-house on saturday night. Then of course, suddenly an overly complex AWD system will lose tonnes of power to the ground and hence be slower, even though you stated a FWD system will gain sweet-fa over a RWD system earlier (okay there is a magnitude of difference between comparing FWD-RWD power loss and 2WD-4WD power loss - but you are being too selective with yer argument there).

Whaddya know: we actually seem to more-or-less agree!!!

About exiting a corner fast: I never meant that people should have an armful of opposite of lock with the foot to the floor (as fun as it is). I'm talking about dialing in that magical 2-5 degrees of slip in the rear end to walk the tyres right up to the limit of adhesion, while gettin' tha power down. Can't do it in a FWD. I've tried. God I've tried. I've pounded through the apex of corners with the arse 10-20degrees out of shape, full throttle, still turning in, and eventually the rear grips and the front slips. Annoying!!

The AWD thing is relative. A certain M.Skaife has done a fair chunk of development and sign-off driving in the HSV GTS and Coupe'4 AWD. The GTS is way quicker in the dry, coz it has more power and less weight. Throw some rain down, and the Coupe'4 is a fraction quicker, because you can drive it into a corner sideways, and be on the power BEFORE the apex, coz the torque-split (front38-62rear) pulls the car out of the slide square.

That's going at 10/10ths though. That same torque split just pushes the nose wide at 9/10ths in the dry. Hence my raving about "clever" active diffs, which shuffle torque about to limit understeer AND oversteer.

The balance between the two is then up to the engineer setting up the computer.

As for drivetrain loss, I hunted around a bit, and:

RWD is 8.5% -> 12.5%
FWD is 6% -> 10%
AWD is 18% -> 23%

Throw another 8 or 10% on all of them if you have an automatic.

I guess if you ain't got enough power to spin da wheels, don't waste precious kW's on extra diffs and driveshafts!!

I mean not to enrage, simply to . . . . . . . . clarify Smile

I s'pose there's been a lot of flaming going on over minor, or misunderstood points then....

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