Alright, so today was an extremely boring day.
and by extreme, I mean my friends and I were going to the extremes of playingHide and god seekfor some fun. (Dont laugh, I got off work at 12 and had nothing to do.)
We didnt feel like doing anything electronic wise, and it was really nice outside, around 40-50 degrees.
and the past few weeks its been in the low Teens to twenties, so 45 is a nice temperature.
After our escapades of pissing off elderly neighbors screaming obscenties about damn kids and getting off lawns, we Decided we should go driving or something. Well of course my family is the only family with a car that is even close to high performance, so all 5....yeah..5... of us hop into the A8.
and my housing track-lot-area-place is kind of in the middle of nowhere, theres a place we call the industrial area where theres alot of Machine businesses and shipping businesses and even a HUGE starbucks plant.
So in this area there is alot of un-produced(is that the word to use?) lots and lots of culdasack type things around the place.
is this making sense so far? cause Its not making sense to me.

Now of course after reading all that bullcrap here comes the actual reason i posted this.
we head into one of the circular roads(isnt it spelled culdasack? god im so damned retarded)
and I floor it trying to break the rear loose(yeah its AWD not gonna do much. especially when the trunk is full of stuff and the car has 5 people in it, and its already heavy to begin with)
So my "buddy" travis says: "And now dont you wish you had Rear wheel drive phil?"
(Little info about my "buddy" travis.
He's a little spoiled rich kid and his parents buy him everything. and supposedly his dad has "promised" to buy him an RX-7. and me and him get into arguements about AWD and RWD. and always pulls this bullcrap about how an rx-7 can beat an audi easily stock and how fast they are. then I come back with how nice an audi is and how I want AWD for the snow and everything around here.)


NOW! BACK TO THE STORY!
well I find this little remark offensive, and actually had a complete comeback all ready.
but completely spaced and forgot everything about it.

so..


heres the actual reason I posted this.
Whats better in a turn..
AWD or RWD?


...

I know that was long, I just felt like explaining everything..
and by everything I mean....Everything..

 

You could have done better with ...Biturbo or Twinturbo.

Btw, always bet AWD.... you won't loose. The only ...only....eeeeehhh....little drawback...is they are heavier than RWD, but better control and grip overcome that part also...

 

check my s/n and you will know my answer is teh same as about 99.9999999% of teh rest of us!

Watch my cut&paste skillzzz:
In a dig, bet on AWD, but ONLY if the AWD has teh same power/weight ratio (which generally translates into more power for the AWD, since it's almost always heavier). Better traction!
Coming out of a corner, bet on AWD, but ONLY if the AWD has teh same power/weight ratio (which generally translates into more power for the AWD, since it's almost always heavier). Better traction!
In inclement weather, bet on AWD, but ONLY if the AWD has teh same power/weight ratio (which generally translates into more power for the AWD, since it's almost always heavier). Better traction!

In the second two you don't even NEED a P/W ration equality, since the traction plays a more important role.

Combine any two of them... A dig in the wet... Wet cornering... AWD PWNS FTW!!!

I will write a poem about how awsomer AWD is, and post it up, later!!!

 

If you took two cars with similar power, weight, and weight distribution characteristics, but one is AWD and one is RWD, the RWD car will be able to get through the corners quicker. If you're driving just to drive, there will be no difference, however if you're pushing it the RWD car can go faster by drifting versus the AWD car having to plow. Unless the AWD car has a massive power bias to the rear wheels, the rear drive car will win. Certain driving techniques can take advantage of the way an AWD car handles more like a FWD car, but they are much trickier than mastering RWD.

 

You are correct. Correctish, anyway. With identical power and identical weight, the AWD car will only be faster than the RWD if the RWD car is spinning it back tires on acceleration. If it's not, then the RWD will be marginallyfaster due to lower frictional losses and lower rotational mass. If the RWD does spin, then the AWD car will only be faster as long as the RWD is spinning. In a straight line, AWD is only superior in extremely low traction situations or very high power medium traction situations.

Handling throws another wrench into the mix. Higher rotational mass in the AWD car equals higher gyroscopic effect, in essence, the faster you're going, the more resistance to yaw changes in a car with a heavier drivetrain.

Plus, there's a little thing called a friction circle. You can't apply 100% power and still have 100% lateral grip available to you. As you increase power or braking force, the amount of lateral grip available to you decreases, as seen on this handy dandy graph. As you can see, the more power you apply through throttle, the less lateral force is available. If you are going in a straight line, you can use 100% driving force. If you're coasting through a corner with no throttle or brake input, you can use 100% lateral force. But if you're using 50% of the friction circle for power, lateral force is reduced by 20%, likewise if you're using 80% of the circle for power, lateral force is reduced by half.



This is applicable to all tires on a car, this is what causes power oversteer coming out of slow corners on RWD cars, and this is a basic tenet of car handling. In a RWD car, yourlateral grip is reduced only in the rear while accelerating, you still have 100% lateral grip in the front (unless you're braking). In an AWD car (especially one with a forward bias or evenly split power distrubution) you reduce lateral grip on both front and rear tires when accelerating.

Another interesting effect is that the size of the friction circle is larger or smaller depending on whether you are accelerating or braking because of the dynamic weight distribution. As you are accelerating, the pressure on the contact patch of the front tires is reduced, reducing the total traction available to the front tires thus reducing the effective size of the front tires'friction circle, and weight is transferred to the rear, increasing the size of the friction circle. Since a RWD car is not wasting it's front friction circle putting power down, the front tires will still have a large portion of lateral grip available, but an AWD car, which is already having to share it's front friction circle will notice a much more drastic reduction in front lateral grip, often to the point of overcoming the side bite of the tire and "plowing" the nose.

Power is fun and all, but steering is what wins road-courseraces. If you have more front grip, you can brake later, you can enter the corner at a higher speed, you can carry more speed through the corner, and you can accelerate out of the corner sooner. Simply put, all other things being equal, the RWD car will have more steering than the AWD car, and if power is the same, weight is the same and tires are the same, the car with more steering will win the race, everytime.

The only time AWD has the advantage is when available traction is considerably lower than what is needed to take advantage of the available power (such asrain, snow and dirtracing) or in endurance racing, where the power being split among four wheels instead of two can prolong tire life.

 

You're notretarded, it's French. It's spelled "cul-de-sac".

 

AWD FTGDMFW!

 

Spenser is right and RWD is a better racing platform in certain conditions but AWD comes into it's own in certain conditions also, in all honesty I can't say one is better then the other, I love them both, but I will give you this video to show your friend

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp-8sdzxS18

 

Argh, Silver beat me to it. Yeah, to sum up, a tire's contact patch only has 100% traction at any given time. The more tasks that traction has to deal w/, ie- turing, acceleratin, braking, the lessgrip offered for each individual task. So it is all dependent on a specific situation. Ultimately, AWD offers more traction because it offers more traction more of the time. However, ultimately RWD is a better platform for racing and canyon carvingdueto it'slower rotating mass, inertia, soon and so forth.......




I personally preferRWD....

 

I estimate that I was around 70% correct, since my answer was only 30% as long as yours