Torque Steer

Convincing people like me that FWD is better... Have you actually been reading anything or are you purposefully just making random and unrelated comments ?

No its just a crap arangement. It means you have to fight it, or back off the go pedal and wait for the nice little car to calm down. No problem doing the same in any (even an old) rear drive car they just go when I want to go, rather than when the stupid front drive thing allows you to.

FWD suits small low powered granny cars only. They tried to add it to bigger cars and with more power as years went on. People "got used" to the awful handling and accepted it over the years. So now they keep bringing out more and more with bigger power outputs. Still a crap arangement.

As far as engineering solutions go its a non starter! But it "works" in low powered cars ish. Whats next, steering wheels at the back like a fork lift truck? Thats a bad idea too. But it CAN be made to work in spite of that. You wouldnt buy one though would you. It would offend your sensibilities! Just like fwd does to me!

someone tried it, Megola.

drive to front wheel has good reviews but that's AWD.and there are those nasty French things with motors on the handlebarsthat drive the front wheel by a rubber skateboard wheel and the clutchaction is by lifting and lowering the whole motor on and off the frontwheel.

FIAT

AUDI

gotta do some looking around on that. I'm sure someone did, way back in the "Golden Age" before I was born but that would be Grand Prix not F1. When people didn't copy everyone else so much, didn't rigidly define the cars design in the rules and there was room for adventure and experimentation.

Cord, Ruxton and Gardner used FWD for racing with great success in open competition in America around 1925.

All good dragsters are FWD once they launch, the longer they remain FWD the faster the run. Un-steered FWD! Yeeeehha! 100% mass on driven wheels, nothing on wheelie bar which is just skimming the strip and also naff all on the steered wheels which are waving in the air. Of course if you over cook it and ride the wheelie bar hard enough to get

70/30 weight split between the driven "front" wheels and wheelie bar rear wheels, like a domestic FWD car it turns to shit, the tyres light up (scrabble) and you lose.

Peter Hill Spamtrap reply domain as per NNTP-Posting-Host in header Can of worms - what every fisherman wants. Can of worms - what every PC owner gets!

OK then motorbikes that dont make you laugh

Yep, about 1 hp! I rode a hydraulic drive (to the front) motorcrosser 15 years back and it was truly crap!

No thats OWD (only wheel drive)

the longer they remain

You forget I used to mess with rather a lot of drag bikes with 3 to 4 hundred hp. Been there! Yeeeehha alright! I ran them on the road too. Ever tried a 300bhp roadbike?

Of

Yup. FWD crap again...

Have you ever thought that it was the method of delivery rather than which wheel was driven that made it crap?

Besides, bikes have a very rearward weight bias, which naturally makes RWD better. Most cars have a natural bias to FWD unless you start doing stuff like relocation of batteries / gearboxes etc to the rear, meaning that, for a lot of average RWD stuff when it was the 'norm', all you ended up with was a tail happy piece of shit that would light up it's rears without much provocation due to the complete lack of weight to help with traction over the driven wheels.....

Nothing wrong with the method. Its the fact that its the wheel that you are trying to balance/steer with combined with the weight transfer thats the problem.

Almost every bike you see in a showroom has a FORWARD weight bias 45/55 rear/front is pretty normal. So you are wrong. We used to weigh every road test bike when I was working for pb mag each wheel individually. The more power they had the greater this forward bias. Because the rate of acceleration needed this to stop the front lifting, and allow the power to be used. EG rear swing arms on moto gp bikes are almost as long as a drag bike. For exactly this reason.

You mean they are nose heavy? Causing understeer? Because to get any traction they need the engine mounted far forwards? in front of the axle in some cases? And the gearbox too (instead of in the middle of the car like fwd, or the rear in say a porche 944), and the rear wheels right at the back of the car to try and add even more weight to the front for grip? Of course they are! Its the only way they can make a front drive car remotely "sensible" in regards grip. Rear drive cars can have the engine mounted further back and the gearbox central or at the rear in a saloon car. The rear axle is usually about 20 percent of the cars length in from the rear end. This gives a very even balance rather that the nose heavy front drive setup.

unless you start doing

BUT real (sorry I mean rear drive) cars are all made this way to start with! The gearbox on my v8 sierra for eg was in exactly the same place as it was in a stock sierra. IN THE MIDDLE.

meaning

Wrong its front drive that does the wheelspin and no go thing. Because the weight transfers rearwards on application of power. Thats why bikes wheelie, dragsters are rear drive etc etc.

And your list of cars/bikes partly proves why you dont/wont get it. Nothing there with enough go to give any weight transfer...

Lets face it the MASSES are technically ignorant and by some obscure law it seems they will always chose the worst product.

8 track was/is better than compact cassette. 8 track long dead, compact cassette still lingering on.

Betamax was better than VHS. Betamax dead, VHS is still lingering on. (some Phillips system was also better but is long dead)

Microsoft XP/2000/... is not technically the best OS [1]. But it is currently the market winner.

... at least when posting in a group with a name that sugessts it's about individualism and not being a sheep.

-- Peter Hill Spamtrap reply domain as per NNTP-Posting-Host in header Can of worms - what every fisherman wants. Can of worms - what every PC owner gets!

Heh; but people buy BMWs for the wrong reasons. To impress their colleagues and because it has a "sporty" badge.

Yup. 316i just says something, doesn't it?

No. It's because the sort of control you reckon you have just turning at a junction isn't needed in 99% of driving.

It isnt "needed" but the horid feeling that the front wheel drive gives while pulling out and turning isnt needed either. At this point its not a control issue just a "this car is orrible" issue that a lot of people cant even feel apparently. But if you DO want to boot it to go, then it goes from feeling crap to a torque steering (and depending on road and conditions) control issue. Sorry but I dont want it. You obviouly dont know any better or cant feel this happening. For you fwd is fine.

It really isn't as big an issue as you're making out.

For the road, yup, front wheel drive works just fine. I don't need anything over and above.

Unfortunately, rear wheel drive machine that I'd want to own are very thin on the ground too.

Round here, the 116 is a pensioner wagon, ever wrinkly in the area has a silver one to match their hair. They're a fecking menace, drive at 20 mph everywhere hugging the kerb, except when in narrow country lanes where they drive at 20mph zig-zagging to stop people overtaking.

I'd say its more to do with your driving style than anything.

By out of control I mean understeering into traffic, moutning pavements etc. I've pushed the limits many times on my FWD cars.

The small ones are nasty. I had the close ratio XS and the TD.

I'm not saying it's as good as a RWD car, but you learn to cope with it. Certainly not as bad as you make out. If I had the choice of a decent RWD car and a decent FWD car I'd take the RWD. However if it was a choice between a crap RWD car and a decent FWD car why the hell would I go with RWD?

Worked for me on many rallies thanks (RWD and FWD). Much quicker than not using it.

Yeah but drag cars dont go anywhere if its damp. They only run under ideal conditions, have the engine in the back with no weight up front, stupidly big grippy tyres etc. Not exactly your average road car on you average British road is it.

That was my point :)

For me, it's rounabouts where FWD feels unsafe, worst experience I've had was driving a Rover 400 diesel (hire car) on a slightly wet road. The understeer was horrible and at the first roundabout it was touch and go whether it would go around without touching the outside kerb.

Even my 4xtruck handles better, which is why I laugh at the Rover fanboys here who rant on about them being such a bargain. No amount of money saved is worth the nasty feeling one gets driving a Rover 600, 800 or 75.

You mean I actually move? Not fixed to the spot? Yep that would desguise the FWD traits! The slower you drive the better they are I suppose!

What if on a slippery fast blind bend to the left it tigntens up? You are already understeering and no matter how far you turn the wheel the damned thing keeps going wide into a truck comming the other way...

Because to me the fact that its FWD simply STOPS it ever being a "decent" car in the first place. It goes a long way down my list.

No amount of fancy seats, go faster stripes, swoopy bodywork can make up for the initial bad design decicion to be fwd. Its like trying to turn a pigs ear into a silk purse. All the rest after the basic scassis layout is just onnametal tat.

I already said 4wd was better for a road car. And said for ULTIMATE acceleration rear drive worked best.

Then you need to have a long hard look at your driving and think about slowing down to suit the conditions.

Only because they're driving too quickly for the conditions, which is a separate issue to the FWD / RWD argument.

Alternatively, in similar conditions in a RWD car, lots of people would also die because they'd have the tail hanging out without knowing how to control it.

*shrugs*

There's plenty of decent FWD set-ups out there, and once you're thrapping the car down a country lane you'd be hard pushed to know which end of the car is being driven.

Agreed, but on occasions on greasy roads situations like this occur. The result is dead people. Sorry but FWD is far too much of a compromise to so many things in a car that I cannot consider it as a serious mechanical solution. Its bast left to small/slow/town cars for wimin!

I will be keeping my 15 year old shit. It's so much better than new shit. It's not full of stuff I'd never use like airbags, traction control, ESP/DSP, cup holders, ISO child seat points.... well I've not found a sudden urgent immediate need for any of them in the last 6 years.

It's a RWD 2+2 with a modern multilink rear suspension and is 52/48 and people have set them up to 50/50 distribution without the need for gearboxes in the back end. Only number1 cylinder is in front of the front axle. The current offering from the same maker with the same rear suspension only have 2 seats, weighs 20% more, can't carry a bicycle inside, have a huge turning circle of 11m instead of nimble

9.5m, have a worse drag coefficient.... the Brembo brakes are pretty but it needs them, they would work so much better on the front of my lighter car. But as this is urcm I can buy a set of Brembos from a crashed Seat for about 1/50th what it would cost to get a worse car that doesn't do what I need it to and make what I have little bit better (or would it then need new wider wheels and tyres?).

Having discounted 95% it's easy to discount the rest too. Why do you need a new car? To keep up with the Jones's? I find they are left far behind as 95% of cars are so mediocre. The other 5% it seems are too good to use daily and have to be kept in heated garages.

I feel very sorry for people that can't find a satisfactory car. Demand for new stuff is a symptom of dissatisfaction with what you already have. Find the car that does what you want, that hits the spot and keep it. A newer car won't do the job very much if any better than the old one. All my mates 2+2 Elan needed was an electronic distributor from a Fiesta and removal of the rotten lucar bullet connectors for him to use it as a daily driver.

Lots of the overload of devices and "must have" stuff on modern cars are not needed. ESP, DSP etc is un-needed by the sane, safe driving public. It's been sold to them as a safety thing but when a car is driven correctly it will never function. People that really need such safety devices drive way past the point at which it can save them anyway. So exactly who and what is it for? To pass part of NCAP or some magazines ELK test or the like? Then there is Traction control, Renault (I think) had an advert with some woman giving directions, driving though bends on the traction control. Again, how many people will actually hit that limit and make the TC function on the open road (any idiot can when moving off). No doubt the same idiots that exceed the ability of ESP/DSP. ABS ... if it works it means YOU HAVE F**KED UP!!! Conditions where it may be useful it doesn't really work how people need it to, you can still steer but won't stop so you just get to pick where you hit the scenery.

The works car park has a MGB GT, a Spitfire and a number of other "old" cars that are in use as daily drivers. Cars that most dissatisfied people would see as being unreliable, "old", ropey and in some way inferior to their "new" cars. It's purely snobery. I can invert that halfwitted snobery. Be very envious of someone who has found satisfaction with what they have, they have found the happiness you seek (and will never have).

99% of cars deserve to get crushed the day they are made. They lack that certain something, that means they are just gray porridge, transport for the masses. The current hot hatches and V6 rep mobiles will go in the melting pot and become tin cans. Good riddance.

The good cars will go on forever. May need a few mods to keep them roadworthy and useable but they will go on.

-- Peter Hill Spamtrap reply domain as per NNTP-Posting-Host in header Can of worms - what every fisherman wants. Can of worms - what every PC owner gets!