Put bald tires on the rear of a FWD car. Drive it in the rain, enter a turn on the brakes, and it will oversteer so fast you won't believe it. Ask me how I know. Had to change my seat covers.
Put bald tires on the rear of a FWD car. Drive it in the rain, enter a turn on the brakes, and it will oversteer so fast you won't believe it. Ask me how I know. Had to change my seat covers.
CyberEric said:Put bald tires on the rear of a FWD car. Drive it in the rain, enter a turn on the brakes, and it will oversteer so fast you won't believe it. Ask me how I know. Had to change my seat covers.
I can't believe you would do something so stupid (unintentionally).
I mean folks that are part of the hive would never do anything so risky........unless it was on purpose.
This is the part were I don't tell the story of the old tires on my Protege that made it a drift monster when Vegas got 2" of snow in 2008.
In reply to Tom1200 :
I had a Golf, so naturally I did the thing where you bought a 3x36" plate from the hardware store and welded it into the beam. Rear roll stiffness was darn near infinite after doing that. Didn't change the handling much, it just altered how high the inside rear tire was off the ground.
But then, after some reading on improvedtouring.net, I installed some Neuspeed "race" rear springs that lowered the back of the car so much that the floor jack got stuck under the gas tank when I installed them.
It didn't lift the inside rear so much anymore because the rear CG got so low.... and as a consequence, both front tires had amazing bite on corner exit because it was no longer finding the extremes of the suspension travel up there. I could power through and out of corners like I couldn't believe you could do with a front driver.
Looked kinda dumb, worked kinda awesome.
This was long enough ago that I was driving on a set of fairly fresh AVS Intermediates, a tire whose existence I mourn.
When my wife bought her Geo Prizm it had these hard Firestone tires on it.
The car would oversteer on the limit, especially with deep trail braking.
In reply to Tom1200 :
Haha, well said.
What's the rear steer Honda Civic Randy is talking about? I remember the Prelude with 4WS, but that's it.
And anyone know anything about the Mazda6, like the motor specs? That thing is cool! I always liked the way they drove.
In reply to CyberEric :
EF and EG civics mostly,they were VERY sensitive to what material was used for the big compensator bushing in the trailing arm.
The Kswapped EG hatch we ran in endurance series came to us with a whacky looking aftermarket toe link....the pivot was offset on the trailing arm end.
We decided to leave it focus on the rest...bad idea it turned out.
1st race(and no testing due to being a hobby,early spring race in Canada and a new build that winter)was at Mosport....it was terrifying with the dynamic rear toe out.
Especially over the bump part way down turn 2....not a place to be looking out the side windows :)
Swapped those out for the next race and all good after that.
Gotcha, thanks for explaining it to me. So basically it's either nice to have with the right bushings, and terrible with the wrong.
In reply to CyberEric :
Yep all part of the handling puzzle but yes toe much dynamic toe out is bad in high speed off camber downhill corners with a big bump lol.
Makes you question nearly every corner every lap,not really any "good" places to crash at Mosport.
The Civic setup is interesting in that almost everyone has focused on that setup now, except instead of having a really stiff arm, a weird bushing that can flex a lot laterally, and the toe link way up front where they can tie its loads into the floor kickup, everyone else has an arm that can flex laterally and they do all the toe control closer to the hub, where the loads can be tied into a rear subframe.
The newer way ends up weighing less because the arm can be just a cast or aluminum knuckle with a thin flexible blade bolted to it to control longitudinal position and brake torque loads, instead of the heavier 3 dimensional weldment that has to be pretty stiff to work.
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
I've often wondered how a twist beam rear suspension works without ending up with stress cracks long term.
In reply to kevlarcorolla :
The Golf beams are actually pretty flexible. The rear wheels will gain all sorts of (additional) negative camber when the car is heavily loaded, as I discovered on one parts run that included two fully assembled 13B engines.
I note that Toyota twist beams have a separate "sway bar" bolted inside. Very interesting. It's just a bar with an eyelet on each end and a throughbolt in the beam. It looks like someone could remove it, or take one and grind various thicknesses of steel away from it, to play with reducing rear roll stiffness.
As for my welded beam... after about 30-40k miles the plate stress cracked at all of the lower welds. The welds were fine, but the plate cracked out next to the welds. (I only laid four 3" or so long beads per side, I didn't seam weld it) So clearly the beam is made out of some interesting steel.
I have a Nissan Micra(canadian only model)thats based off the Versa Note.
Its a twist beam also,it has a sway bar inside the beam but interestingly the Note does not.
The Note uses the same springs all around as the Micra but upped the front bar by 4mm.
A used Note bar found its way onto my Micra for a nice cheap upgrade :)
Well this is an interesting discussion. Growing up all I had were the cheap ubiquitous FWD cars that I detested for plowing through every corner. I hate FWD for that and its tendency to peel out instead of applying power. But someday I'll have to try a decent FWD
P3PPY said:Well this is an interesting discussion. Growing up all I had were the cheap ubiquitous FWD cars that I detested for plowing through every corner. I hate FWD for that and its tendency to peel out instead of applying power. But someday I'll have to try a decent FWD
The two new generations of Civic Type R are a treat.
Keith Tanner said:I've always found it amusing when someone praises a FWD car by saying how little it feels like a FWD.
That's just because most of us consider RWD as the benchmark. If you can make a "wrong wheel drive" car approach the handling balance of a good RWD platform, then you're doing something right.
LanEvo said:Keith Tanner said:I've always found it amusing when someone praises a FWD car by saying how little it feels like a FWD.
That's just because most of us consider RWD as the benchmark. If you can make a "wrong wheel drive" car approach the handling balance of a good RWD platform, then you're doing something right.
Because some people have the assumption that every FWD handles like a GM W-body and have never properly thrashed a well sorted FWD application.
In reply to vwcorvette (Forum Supporter) : I raced an "88 Scirocco as well. Set up right it was neutral but I could get oversteer if I wanted. I just ran stiff rear springs and no front sway bar.
In reply to Randy Pobst :
To your point, Randy - there are lots of ways to get that lovely bit of 'loose' for FWD cars that makes them much easier to drive fast, and you point out a few of them here. In some cases, large rear anti-swaybars can help (see your typical 80/90s-era SCCA Showroom Stock 'trunk kits'), too. But for autocrossing these days, I'm running 245/40/15s w/9 in. wheels on the front of my $2000 Challenge Neon, w/225/45/15s on 8 in wheels on the rear... and it works great
^^^ "reverse stagger" tire sizing will definitely work. You can also play with wheel offsets: greater offset at the front can cause a weight-jacking effect that unloads the inner rear tire. This works more at extreme wheel angles like you'd see in auto-cross.
When I was tracking my Lancer Evo VIII about 20 years ago I always felt there was a bit more understeer than I would have preferred (coming from an E30 on rock-hard Gruppe N suspension). We dialed in a tiny bit of toe OUT in the rear. Sounds crazy, but it really helped with rotation on corner entry. Just dragging the brakes a tiny bit on entry would mobilize the rear. If you timed it just right (with the trail-braking, steering input, and turbo lag) you could lay the car into a 4-wheel drift and absolutely fly through corners. The downside was instabiility under braking, as you'd imagine.
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