Most cars in Europe have manual trannies?

That is if FWD is done right. Which is never the case south of the premium segment. As a result in the economy class you are left with torque steer LOTS of it if you have turbo (look at mazdaspeed 3 to see what i mean exactly)

with RWD the driveshaft is expensive to manufacture (and fix, at least around here).

hence fwd crap is abundant

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That is if FWD is done right. Which is never the case south of the premium segment. As a result in the economy class you are left with torque steer LOTS of it if you have turbo (look at mazdaspeed 3 to see what i mean exactly)

with RWD the driveshaft is expensive to manufacture (and fix, at least around here).

hence fwd crap is abundant

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Benefits of RWD, among others: Cost. Due to easier manufacturing and a few less components it may be cheaper to manufacture a FWD car.

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Reply to
Hoof Hearted

all you're doing is presenting underinformed opinion as fact. some idiot web site is no more "proof" of your opinion than this:

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is "proof" that the earth is flat.

the facts for transmission costs are these:

  1. the highest costs in manufacture are machining and labor.
  2. that's it.

and the higher the component count, the higher the cost, both in terms of machining and labor.

now, here is your homework assignment: go away and do a component count for a 3-shaft honda fwd transmission and compare that with a 1-shaft toyota rwd transmission, than get back with the numbers. only then then can you even /begin/ to talk about manufacturing costs.

Reply to
jim beam

Spot The Looney

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The looney considers himself a genius overestimating his own knowledge and ability and dismissing all others opinions

He regards all others as stupid, dishonest or both.

He has a tendency to use complex jargon, often making up words and phrases.

He rarely, if ever, acknowledges any error.

He relishes talking about his own ideas, theories and imagined accomplishments.

He deludes himself into believing that he alone possesses the sacred truth.

His approach is unfailingly didactic, supercilious and pretentious.

Reply to
Hoof Hearted

.

tearthsociety.org/cms/

count 'em, the shops in your area that can true a driveshaft, or at least equipped to do so

count 'em: the torque steering pieces of shit on wheels: they are EVERYWHERE

and if control arms get bent? well, tell the customer to get bent! it's torque steering anyway so what does a little extra imperfection in the steering does ?

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What exactly is a "1 shaft" transmission. I know Toyota is masterful at eliminating parts, put I assume they must at leat have one countershaft in those rear wheel drive transmissions, plus an input shaft and an output shaft. And of course for RWD you have the driveshaft to the rear, and even for a solid rear axle design there is a housing, and two rear axle shafts (admittedly with no fancy CV joints).

I feel it is diffiicult to generalize that rear wheel drive is always cheaper than fwd drive or the other way around. I suspect that in small less powerful cars, FWD is cheaper when all factors are considered but I'd be hard pressed to prove it.

I've had two Fords sort of contempory Fords on either side of the FWD/RWD divide - a 1972 Pinto and a 1978 Ford Fiesta. Of the two, the Fiesta appeared to be the simipler design and actually used fewer parts.If you had tried to make the Fiesta RWD, it would have had to be at least 6 inches wider to allow for the drive shaft tunnel, and foot longer to position the engine front / rear. So even if the FWD transmission and axles were more expensive than the RWD transmission and axles of the Pinto, I am fairly certain that overall the Fiesta cost less to build (and it drove better on the street, and was more comfortable, and got better gas mileage, but was not as good an autcross car as the Pinto).

Ed

Here go a couple of pictures of Toyota manuals - one FWD, one RWD. You tell me which is more complicated (and yes I know the RWD transmission picture shows an extra shaft depending on whether it is a 4spd or a 5 spd - you get one or the other.

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Reply to
C. E. White

And often times a double cardan joint or thompson coupling, and also along with the propeller shaft, a support bearing and mount, a yoke to the tranny on one end and receiver to the pinion on the other.

Not to mention a separate pinion, its bearing, races, seal and possible crush sleeve.

Reply to
Hoof Hearted

this:

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>> is "proof" that the earth is flat. >>

this tells you something dude. either everybody apart from you is doing something wrong, or that you don't know what you're talking about. [hmm, tough call.]

i love usenet - it's the perfect channel for the underinformed and underskilled to try to project their inadequacies onto others and vent their anger with the world!

example: some guy bleating about "torque steer" doesn't know either how to handle it or it's value in traction management. it's like listening to some guy bleating about understeer - the kind of person that doesn't know how to handle a fwd car.

personally, i /love/ torque steer - it tells me precisely how much traction i have available. if the wheel stops pulling, i know i need to back off because i'm getting slip. and understeer is a safety thing. to be able to drive with it, you need to know that there's this thing called a "force vector". when you go around a bend, the available tire traction is used in changing the direction of the car. if you try to brake at the same time, you can easily exceed the available traction due to the sum of the braking plus cornering vectors exceeding that traction. if you brake before the curve, then drive through, you don't have this problem. it's all perfectly easy if you know what you're doing.

Reply to
jim beam

sticks have countershafts, yes, but the autos are a single axial drive line. now, that line is segmented, but it's single axis nevertheless.

but it's all cheap and simple. rzeppa joints are /way/ expensive in comparison.

if you're only looking at the assembly of the finished units into a vehicle, fwd is single unit and under-car time is minimized, thus "cheaper" in just that respect.

but if you look at the big picture, these fwd units themselves are typically more complex to reduce their length, and this typically means multiple shafts, chain drives, all kinds of complexity. and complexity is cost. plain and simple.

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the transmission with the small engines tend to be simpler because their engines are shorter, thus there is comparatively more room for the transmission. if you have a longer engine like the 4 cylinder accord or even the 5 cylinder vigor, the room available in the width of the car to place the transmission is much more limited. thus, the transmission has to be shortened, and this, in the case of the hondas, requires no less than three shaft axes, excluding the differential. caddy do it with chain drive iirc. either way, it's a step up in complexity [and thus manufacturer unit costs] compared with a nice simple "straight through" longitudinal engine/transmission/rwd config.

Reply to
jim beam

It seems pretty pointless to say one is better than the other. From a maintenance standpoint, the RWD is easier but my favorite cars have had both. My least favorite car had a 2 piece driveshaft directly bolted to the flywheel and ran to the rear transaxle. The rubber couplings frequently broke and the since the shaft turned at the same RPMs as the engine, balance was critical. Of course, nobody knew how to balance these shafts. Anyway, it don't matter to me if it's FWD or RWD as long as it's not one of these very expensive to maintain drivetrains.

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Reply to
dsi1

...

exactly. understeer is a crutch for new drivers. as i said i have grown out of it and i want a naturally steering or slightly oversteering car, which pretty much never happens in the realm of front wheels drivers.

i don't want "perfectly easy" what matters is if you can correct your mistake if shit happened in a turn (oh my gawd, that turn tightens!)

with rwd you can and with fwd you might, but the margin is very slim. essentially you can not do much quick enough

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om...

What he said. With FWD if you misjudge and overcook it you're going off to the outside of the turn, and there's not much you can do about it. If RWD you have a shot at saving the situation, with the only penalty being that you get all sideways and scrub off some speed. Both are equally fatal in a race situation, but in a more real world situation like driving on an unfamiliar road in bad weather and discovering a nasty decreasing-radius turn with poor traction, I know that I would really much rather prefer to scrub off some speed rather than have an unintentional vehicle/shrubbery interface.

nate

Reply to
N8N

Don't some applications (GM?) locate the FWD transmission behind the engine, rather than on the end? I know it is bad for weight distribution, but it would allow for a simpiler transmission design. Heck, I had an Audi with a 5 cyclinder positioned fore/aft and the transmission was behind the engine with the axle shfts exiting almost fomt the belhousing. It made for a very weird engine comaprtment. First thing behind the middle of the front bumper was the crank pulley. The radiator was completely off to the side of the engine. And didn't the original Olds Toronado do something like have the trnasmission feed power to driveshafts that ran through /under the engines oil pan?

Ed

Reply to
C. E. White

this:

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>>>> is "proof" that the earth is flat. >>

no, it's a safety benefit for any driver that's not an expert. and

99.9% of drivers, however their personal misperceptions may differ, are not that.

of course you do - you're the 0.1% expert.

only for "experts" like you. and yet i'm perfectly happy with my "understeering" fwd, and prefer it to my oversteering rwd.

um, yes you do. all experts do.

then you're a freakin' idiot that's not paying attention going in and you don't know how to get out. [see "expert" sarcasm above.]

how old are you?

Reply to
jim beam

every fwd configuration concept possible has been tried. the ones that have proven the most reliable are those with the engine on one side, and the transmission on the other, mounted axial to the engine. [pioneered in the autobianchi primula if you must know.] this layout helps keep the component count down, bearing loadings smaller, and that in turn leads to overall reliability.

there is also the analysis of mechanical efficiency of the gears - with a 90° transition being less efficient than one where shaft axes are parallel, but hey, that's not covered in this module.

Reply to
jim beam
[unwarranted insults snipped]
39, not that it matters of which last 15 years are spent driving

bottom line is: I've driven an rwd beater through 3 winters now and i absolutely love that drivetrain arrangement, I'll vote with my automotive currency towards rear wheels drivers or all wheel drivers with heavy rear axle bias such as bmw 3xx xi series and A4 now that the rear gets more torque. I'll pay for active rear diffs $$$s permitted.

you can buy whatever front wheel driving peices of shit that rolls off the henry ford legacies as long as it pleases you:

I don't mind people buying that shit, but i'm apalled about all the propaganda fed to the american public about rear wheel drivers contributing to the miniscule market share allotted to the latter.

If it was not for that there would be more rwd choices and they'd be less expensive too (see mass production in wikipedia to pick up more perfectly cromulent words for you meticulously crafted agruments)

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that's because you're familiar with it. and rwd is easier to drive. like walking without having to chew gum.

i don't understand this comment - henry only ever made rwd. and frod was one of the last manufacturers in the world to discover fwd.

that makes about as much sense as your transmission causing accessory belt failure.

rwd is frequently cheaper already dude. that's why frod, the most aggressively cost conscious manufacturer in the world, hung on to rwd for so long. but it makes for a less passenger friendly car, both in terms of interior vehicle room and in terms of normal drivers' skills.

most people benefit from having weight over the driving wheels. and most cars are front engine because in a loss of traction situation, the car at least points forwards most of the time. hence, front engine fwd has proven itself over many decades and billions of driver miles, even to cheapskates like frod.

Reply to
jim beam

No, fwd is most assuredly easier to drive. Ever witness someone new to driving attempting to do so in even moderate snow? Their completey at a loss with rwd, they hardly, if at all, notice the snow with fwd.

Reply to
Hoof Hearted

just point the front wheels in the direction that you want to go, no matter what the back end is doing. Light inputs when it starts coming around on you. Add light power when rear breaks traction. Ease off when front breaks traction. Not that hard.

There are a few reasons why people think that FWD is easier to drive in snow.

1) Most passenger vehicles have a frontward weight bias. This helps the FWD car get going from a stop. However, a balanced RWD car with good snow tires is usually better than either a typical FWD or typical (if any such thing exists anymore, perhaps I should say "traditional") RWD car. 2) The typical loss of traction mode of a FWD car is understeer, and the correct recovery technique for that is to lift off, which is likely the typical unskilled driver's reflex action anyway. With RWD sometimes easing on the throttle is the correct response (in an oversteer situation) and that behavior has to be learned.

But for a moderately skilled driver I think it comes down to personal preference... and I for one fall into the RWD/rear-biased AWD camp.

nate

Reply to
Nate Nagel

Ok, I'll dumb it down. FWD takes Henry Ford promise of mass production to extreme by increasing potential utility by removing the center tunnel and and saving some heavy metal on driveshaft contruction. Cheaper production for most front wheel drivers. Do it right (audi) and there is no signs of torque steer but all of a sudden it's not cheaper to make than rwd.

ok, i'll write it off on american public thinking there is such a thing as an "all season" tire. that mode of thinking would be disastrous coupled to rwd

it makes for a less passenger friendly car because the only rear wheels drivers left on the market are sporty cars (stiff suspension is not usually passenger friendly).

i guess we won't agree what is "normal" as far as driver's skills are concerned.

If you get inferior winter rubber for a rwd car i can assure you your "driver's skills" will improve real fast after a few accidents with snowbanks and icy downhill offramps of parking garages.

how car points is loss of traction situation is a whole lot more dependent on the tires worn than on the front to back weight distribution

focus is fine, i don't know why you dislike them so much. maybe they sell shittier models stateside but in marginally american big3 set such a trend is not exclusive to ford

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