wasnt quite sure where to post this. not directly Third Gen related. but i got into an argument with my father because he thinks front wheel drive is better at cornering and acceleration than rear and in every other aspect and basically called me stupid for thinking otherwise. so can i get a show of hands and some explanations why rear wheel drive is better.

yet my camaro still kicks his cars *** everytime!

 

Just let him know.... when accelerating - weight moves back - onto the driving wheels. When accelerating out of a corner... weight moves.... BACK! When doing anything involving the increase of speed.... weight moves BACK!!!!

Less weight on the front wheels = a lower ability to keep traction due to decreased pressure = slipage.....

 

False, rear wheel drive can benifit from weight transfer, resulting in superior acceleration. Im sure youve seen a wheelstand. Thats weight transfer in action.

FWD also can have poor F/R weight dist. resulting in poor handling if the engine/trans assembly weighs alot. The car will push like a plow, especially under power.

Lastly, theres whats known as a friction circle. Basically theres only so much friction available from a tire, and the components from acceleration, braking, and cornering cannot exceed that value, or slip occurs. If the acceleration component is very large, then the cornering component has to be reduced. IOW, floor the car with FWD, turn the wheel, and the car wont turn too well.

 

thanks guys ill be sure to have him read that lol. i appreciate it.

 

Watch the import front wheel drive drag cars. They all have wheelie bars to keep the front end down so that they have traction. Weight is transfered to the rear during accelleration. Rally cars, that aren't 4wd, are normally RWD because they can power through the corners easier. Super Stock drag racing allows newer FWD cars to be converted to RWD. There's a fantastic 91 Calais here in SuperStock. SBC under the hood and all tubbed out in the rear. Runs in the 9's. Full interior under SuperStock rules and you could probably drive it on the street with a milder engine. It looks so good in RWD, I'm surprised the conversion isn't done to more cars just as a street vehicle.

Police forces don't like the handling of FWD cars. With very few RWD cars to pick from, they're currently stuck with Crown Vics. Dodge has jumped on the problem by introducing the Magnum in a police package. The only other options are trucks.

Personally I don't like the handling of front wheel drive. Even in winter conditions, I can manouver and control my 2wd truck better with rear wheel drive.

Why are there so many FWD cars now? It's not because they're better to drive. It's because they're lighter and cheaper to build. There's no consideration on how much more it costs to repair them.

 

Just search for rwd vs fwd or something like that in google. You will find that fwd is about the worst setup there is. It is pretty much a comprimize between two bads. But with modern day vsc, stability control... all those acronyms, its more about computers.


But simply when fwd accelerates, bad things happen, especially when turning and there are bumps.

There was an awesome article in Road & Track a couple of months ago that went into why fwd is actually dangerous and deadly to its users.

 

Just want to point out that Goy seemed to be saying the same thing. When he said less weight on front tires=less traction, I think he was talking about FWD cars loosing traction when the weight transferred to the back and the front tires lifted, which we all know drives a FWD car.

 

While were on this subject I saw the other day where a local shop (JMS Chip) took a newer Focus and swaped a 5.0 and RWD in it. almost made me wanna get one of those ugly little things.

 

 

I was, but it's wasn't worth getting into any kind of arguement to point that out.

 

Thats a posting goober... His post arrived before mine did.

 

Oops , my mistake.

 

Years ago being a mechanic was easy, if you had a noise from the engine, gearbox or back axle, it was easy to pinpoint.
With FWD its not as easy, and lots more work if its diff trouble.
Ok so in a very few cases FWD is better, but all the Mercs and BMWs etc still favour RWD, and they out drive, in terms of quality ride, all the major FWD motors.

 

thats what im sayin! plus RWD is alot easier to replace a tranny, also it evens out the weight in the car more i think. there is no reason for me ever to invest in front. and as a comment to an earlier post. i agree RWD is easier to control on the snow when your a good driver . most ppl CANT drive thats why there is FWD. cuz for some reason alot of kids an some adult like to floor it around corners and make us male teens a statistic

 

FWD is one of the worst possible setups for handling. only thing it does have going for it is that it is very forgiving
as someone else said with tires they can only do so much being they only have so much grip. when you ask a tire to grip the road for turning and grip the road for acceleration all at the same time the tires are going to be overworked and loss of grip will happen.
then comes the issue with weight transfer. when pushing power to the ground weight goes to the rear (unless you are driving in reverse ) that brings less overall grip to the front of the car leading to even more loss of grip to the front wheels.


oh yeah and another thing. their turn in usually sucks compared to a RWD car and even more so compared to a mid engine car. think of this. grab a grocery cart load the back of the cart up with chips bread and stuff and then on the front of the cart put your 2 cases of soda and a gallon or two of milk. run really fast. then try to turn the cart. bet you are just going to go straight.
reason why is all that weight is far from the rotation point of the cart which is near the rear wheels. but now do the same thing with the cart but put all the heavy stuff in the rear of the cart. bet that thing will turn a HELL of a lot easier. that is because all the weight is right on the axis so it is a lot easier to move around.
with FWD cars more often then not they are VERY nose heavy compared to the rest of the car being your motor and tranny sit right on the front wheels while a rwd car they can put the motor behind the front wheels then the transmission behind that and then the rear end right between the rear wheels. that will bias the weight a little more towords that axis point making for an easier turn.
why do you think they have mid engine cars? it isn't just because it's cool it actually serves some purpouse.

also on the poorly designed fwd cars where the axles are uneven in legnth it leads to torque steer which isn't going to make handling very nice when you try to apply power in the middle of the turn. and again this is on top of everything else labeled above.

about the only advantages I can think of with FWD vs RWD is FWD as I said is a little more forgiving as for the average everyday driver understeer (when you try to turn but the car doesn't and instead goes straight) is easier to deal with then oversteer( when you try to turn and the car really turns by the back trying to catch up with the front end). because of that a lot of cars are designed to understeer from the factory. also the FWD platform generally is easier to make lighter as you don't need the rear differential, driveshaft and such it is direct mount and more compact. but still to my opinion it doesn't overcome the problems of FWD.




another thing to think about though. if fwd was that much better at least for dry ground driving why do they make most race cars in a RWD platform? a lot of them aren't AWD either it is more often then not RWD.
NASCAR, F1, F3000, the T/A series, indy, all those and more use a RWD platform for racing. collectivly billions upon billions of dollars. they all choose RWD for sh<x>its and giggles? I think not. they wouldn't spend that much money for all of them to do it unless they felt it was the best platform.

sorry to say but your father prolly thinks FWD is better cause that is what he drives and because it is easier to drive and more forgiving. but easier doesn't mean better it just means you aren't skilled enough

 

BTW driving a FWD car on loose surfaces seems backwards.
with my mazda I drive on dirt and I'm not turning hard enough I give it some more gas get the back end to spin a little bit let off a little on the gas to straighten it back out.
my honda threw me for a curve. was driving on dirt one day and wasn't turning hard enough so I gave it more gas and the thing just started to want to straighten out on me so I let off the gas really quick and that front end just turned in like crazy.


you need to drive them completly different then one another I found that out. but I must say my honda is a little more fun on dirt and stuff just needed to take some getting used to. never thought I would say this but gotta love the 1.6L of pure 3V gerbil power. lol

 

Front wheel drive has to be the biggest scam ever pulled on the auto buying public. It exists because it's cheaper to make and easier to assemble in the factory. Ever see a front drive Ferrari or Rolls Royce?

 

FWD really really blows on gravel and is terrible for drag racing. my freind has an 88 prelude and the car bounces like crazy when he floors it its just stupid haha and he cant step on the gas around a turn on gravel or the car just goes straight. hondas wernt meant to be raced or drivin fast theyre almost useless. the only people that think hondas and mazdas are fast are the people who havnt been in camaros or firebirds. but then again they have insane cornering but thats it.

 

Its not about traction, its much more complicated than that!!!!!! If you know anything about vehicle dynamics you will know what i'm talking about.

 

not going to say much other then don't be so biased and actually learn something about other cars. cause you are WRONG!!!

thank you have a nice day

 

You can't honestly say that a fwd is better then a rwd on a 1/4 mile? And I'm not totally biased, I don't mind seeing nice import cars (aka I hate ricers), but I'd rather climb under a RWD car ANY day of the week. Now FWD is awesome in the snow, thats for sure.

 

This is an excellent thread. I always liked RWD better, but now I have some more ammo for arguments
I'll have to find that road and track write up, Leigh...

The ONLY plus i've ever noticed in a fwd, and one of the only things I could think of for marketing purposes, was in snow. In canada that's a pretty big issue. With more weight on the front, and those being the driving wheels, you have better traction. Like putting sandbags in the back of your pickup.... But I still think my last FWD car handled like crap in the winter... sure it'd actually take off from a stop light, uphill in 2" of snow, but once you're moving, and you happen to start sliding... who knows where you'll go, it's got messed up traction.... (FE3 sport suspension my ***...)

 

read what I quoted and you will see what I am talking about
has nothing to do with fwd or rwd

also read what I said above in my long post and you will see my views on fwd vs rwd

 

I'm guessing you're heading in the direction of coefficient of drag, center of gravity, ,but my post was just to clarify that Goy was heading in that direction. So yeah, it's more complicated than that, but all of those things come together for one purpose, traction. In that respect, it is about traction. If it didn't come down to traction at the end, then nobody would've made traction control. The motor and trans also play a factor, but if they can't get the power to the ground, they aren't going anywhere. After building that killer mill, getting that awesome trans, putting on those trick suspension and chassiss parts, the tires ability to hook up and move the car is what gets you going. In that respect, weight transfer from the front tires to the back ones in a fwd vehicle puts it at a serious disadvantage. Coming at it from a looks point of view, a Camaro with 10.5 inch slicks mounted with mini-tubs looks pretty damn cool! Put a 10.5 inch slick on a fwd and all you're gonna do is look pretty frickin' stupid. Oh, and don't forget, that big slick that they need to put the power to the ground also increases the frontal area of the car, adds drag in the airflow around the car, and it makes you look stupid to boot! If we want to get into tire compounds, we can do that too. Of course if we get into that, we're still dealing with one thing, traction.

 

Err...Fronts for turnin', rears for burnin'. 'NUFF SAID?

 

Hey pal, if you want to give a 3 hour Lecture about weight loading, and the forces at work during a shift in momentum, go ahead. I was giving my 3 liner on ONE basic principle on why RWD is superior.

Feel free to waste bandwidth though.

 

I think a book on suspension theory, chassiss dynamics, tire composition, engine powerbands and the drop they experience when shifting using an automatic vs. a manual trans would be needed to cover everything. But why not throw the aerodynamics book in for good measure. When he's done though, we could all say we knew somebody rich.

 

"Loose is fast"

 

Did Stekman just go days of thunder on us? Good flick by the way.

 

"She's really a real doctor Cole!"

 

wow this thread turned out to be very useful thanks for all the info guys