Torque Steer

Well, you could only get one to spin if you set it up to get sideways and did nothing to help it get back. Once you're at 90 degrees to the intended direction of travel, opposite lock and mashing the throttle to the floor brings them back into line easily.

You couldn't push a 1.5 very hard as they have sod all power.

I have... but it's normally with a bit of help from some diesel on the road, or shitty remoulds on the back end that have gone off. ;-)

-- JackH

Trust me I have experienced far too many of them. I used to fit nitrous systems to cars. And drive them like I stole them most of the time because of the sort of cars and people I was dealing with.

Sorry but this is plain wrong. Physics and experience both aftree.

Wrong. You always get oversteer after the initial mass of the car has begun to yaw, which if you "snatch" at the wheel can appear to be understeer initially. Because the driven wheels always have less grip available for lateral grip.

No it does not! Explain your physics! In a front drive car letting off the gas causes both deceleration (which reduces the lateral force needed to follow a given arc AND reduces grip further since the tyre is now also providing deceleration. Which force wins depends on a bunch of factors but the result is either yet more understeer (similar to braking on ice with the front wheel alone) or same understeer but slowing car which reduces lateral grip requirements for BOTH ends.

Give it some juice and almost front wheel drive

When a car is cornering, (imagine circulating a big roundabout) at constant speed both rear and front tyres give constant lateral grip. Circulate in the wet, at a speed just below what the traction limit will allow. Both ends in this condition are at the limit of traction. Add power to rear end and you are asking for more, so the rear breaks free. Do the same on front axle and the front runs short of lateral grip and it slips. One oversteers and the other understeers. Thats the simple physics.

Under no situation will the rear drive understeer under this situation.

Others will start to oversteer. The modern

Its irrelivant. Bu snappier you really mean a higher level of outright grip but less forgiving- when they let go they do it without warning. Thats not part of the argument.

Has no bearing on under/oversteer.

Electronics, all they do is try to stop morons from hurting themselves. Applying brakes, cutting sparks etc That has nothing to do with the basic fwd problems.

Simple schoolboy physics dictates that they have little choice! And its nothing to do with them being front heavy either!

As I'm

Yes maybe you do. But I dont.

You mean that in a feeble attempt at disguising the natural front drive understeer problem they reduced the grip on the rear or had a slight tow out on the rear to make you feel better? That: a) reduces total cornering speed. b) disguises understeer at small slip angles (its still there just the same but at a few extra degrees) c) makes grown engineers cry.

They have to do it this way because INCREASING front grip isnt an option. They already tried everything possible for years.

OK they are producing 100 percent lateral grip! THATS why the car understeers! The front can never match that!

No you dont. If a tyre can produce 1g of grip, then if you corner at half a g and accelerate at half a g your traction is all used up. None left for further cornering forces. The back can still do 1 g lateral though! So as you acc OR dec you remove the available cornering power available on the front tyres.

Even at CONSTANT speed you have to apply power. at a constant 50mph you may need say 30bhp. You are putting this through the driving wheel. So on front drive you ALWAYS get understeer without "squirting power" as you put it. If you have not foud this out by just driving hard then drive harder. There is almost no time in any front drive car that lateral grip on the front equals the rear.

Because unless you are in REALLY extreme circumstances at a racetrack with odd tyres or strange setting you cannot!

Oiling or removing the rear tyres would do it. Its about all that will.

Got the 405 facing the wrong way up Folkton Brow once. Granted, it was wet and there is every possibility I was going a bit to quickly. And I was in neutral coasting... Yea basically it was in every way my fault :-D

The 206 does the pug small hatch lift off oversteer thing tho, and it's quite recoverable. Apparantly...

Indeed, no risk of kerbing an alloy by being slightly out of control is there...

Hey, I wasn't out of control, I just wasn't looking at the road :-)

...there's an easy answer to that.

Don't get yourself into a situation where you have to lift off. :-P

-- JackH

I would never do that, even if it is funny ;-)

How can I trust somebody who has an on / off switch for driver input to a car?

My experience, and I guess the world around me, must be different then.

It *is* understeer. It *cannot* be oversteer if there is no steering input on the car.

You're forgetting the rear wheels and how most front wheel drive machines decelerate pretty darn quickly off the power in a hard corner, more so than rear wheel drivers do - which causes the centre of gravity to shift forward, so the pressure on the rear tyres is reduced and under certain circumstances they start to slide. Conversely at the front, as the pressure on the front wheels increases, under certain circumstances the available grip increases. If the increase in grip at the back is greater than what is provided by the tyre, even with the acceleration (it's *always* acceleration) of the changing velocity of the car, the back end skids and you have oversteer.

I did a lot of experimentation with setting up the Ka's tyre pressures and with 34 PSI all around, on the Ford Racing set up the back end would drift relatively easily in roundabouts in the lower three or four gears. Reducing the rear pressures to 32 solved the problem.

I had a machine that clearly broke the laws of physics then.

There's no argument here.

Yes it can. Some cars are set up with gripper rear ends compared to front ends. Your corner speed is dictated by the lower grip levels. If you have a grippier rear end and you're able to increase the speed of the car, you'll have rear wheels still gripping and front wheels washing wide. My Dad's Sierra did this in the wet with newer tyres on the back and more worn ones on the front.

Not directly, but it's one reason why cars have stability control systems.

Have you tried a modern BMW and seen how it understeers when the stability control funkiness spoils the fun?

So how come they don't just understeer all of the time?

Everything possible? No I don't think so.

There is no deceleration. Only acceleration upon a velocity.

"almost no time" - now you're conceding my point. Sometimes things happen differently.

You can and people do it. Get over it.

Easier answer - don't buy crappy french trashbacks with dodgy handling characteristics.

"Look out for that Elk!"

-- JackH

I've not done that since getting this Rallye... much. ;-)

-- JackH

I've not done that since getting this Rallye... much. ;-)

-- JackH

Elk!

Bwahahahah!