and me lol

 

its all physics...in brief:

during acceleration in a front wheel drive car, there is a large amount of traction lost due to weight being thrown rearward off of the front wheels...the more acceleration there is, the less traction there will be. this leaves less for the car with which to accelerate and steer. that is why front wheel drive cars experience understeer. a fwd car will handle better in conditions where weight is being distributed to the front wheels, such as during braking or negative acceleration through the absence of throttle.

the front wheels in a rear wheel drive car are left free to steer the car and dont have to deal with a loss of traction through acceleration. the rear wheels are free to accelerate the car and assist in steering by helping alter and throw the momentum of the car in ways that fwd cars cannot. during acceleration, the weight of the car is distributed more towards the rear of the car, placing weight on the wheels that propel the car foward and help with traction.

please feel free to clear up anything ive misinterpreted or elaborate on anything ive stated.

 

To add to Lupae3s, there is only a certain amount of "tractive effort" available for a certain size tire patch. That tractive effort available is made up of the surface area of the contact patch, the coefficient of friction of the road/tire interface, and the downforce on the tires.

When you accelerate hard and spin your tires, you have exceeded the tractive effort available at the tires, thus they begin to spin. RWD cars have separate steering/acceleration inputs (steering front, acceleration rear), thus the tractive effort available at any one corner is dedicated to only 1 activity, not divided between 2. (i.e. combined steering/acceleration of FWD cars.)

Weight transfer further plays into acceleration as the weight shifts to the rear of the vehicle, increasing the weight on the rear tires, thus increasing the tractive effort available to accelerate.

This is why the absolute fastest accelerating FWD cars are what....into the 8's, maybe 7'sin the quarter mile (don't know, I'm just guessing), and there are RWD cars well down into the 4's at 330mph. (top fuel)

 

thanks! that is what i was trying to say. i probably seemed dumb trying to explain it.

 

Thanks for the help, guys. That helps me. I hope SPeeDy understands better too?
Isn't the gyroscopic effect also play a heavy roll in FWD? i.e. Dividing the duties between the two functions?
After all, even I know that an object in motion wishes to stay in motion. And when something, like a ballis twirled around on a string and that string is cut, the object wants to go in a straight line, no matter how hard/fast it was being twirled.. (8th grade physical science class.)

 

Even though you have been answered by other people. Let me think for a second...Here is my answer.

AB-SO-****ING-LUTELY.

ANYONE knows that rear wheel drive holds/maintains power better than a FWD car (except you...)

 

what about an MR-2 what would you do about taht one :P

 

mr2s are rear wheel drive cars. the same concepts may be applied here. mid-engine cars generally have better balance and weight distribution.

 

hmmm interesting.

 

That's why I stopped before going any further and asked for some professional assistance.

I don't need any helplooking foolish.I'm perfectly capable of that all on my own.