[Shotimes] Pontiac unveils SHO successor?

[Jason Hartberger]

Actually, the problem is that FWD and RWD both push the car the same, but
even though there's a convergent force vector progression with FWD, the two
forward wheels don't have anywhere near enough mass to pull the rest of the
car back into its force vector. Thus, the track vector (with the much
greater mass behind it) wins . This is also known as the back end snapping
out. ;)

There's also a lot of weight transfer and gyroscopic principles and
equations to figure in, but I'm trying to keep this as simple as possible!

And also, what the hell was the whole point to begin with, anyway? wasn't it
"which is better on snow, RWD or FWD?" or something like that? well, if
that's the case then I'd honestly have to say, from a physics standpoint,
FWD... with conditions. as soon as you tap the throttle on a RWD car/truck,
all of the weight transfers to the back of the vehicle. This is great for
dry road applications, but on snow, the added snap compression to the wheels
tends to turn the snow into ice, which reduces traction to 0. on FWD cars,
the compression is gradual and channeled by the tires, so the snow remains
snow, and as long as you don't apply too much torque (!), the weight
transfer will reduce compression on the tires, letting the tire gain more
traction on the snow.

When you start turning is when RWD starts becoming better. When you turn and
accelerate on a FWD car, you're splitting your force vector amplitude
(energy) effectively in half (or some fractional value thereof), thus
reducing the energy available to correct any change in track vector (which
is guaranteed if you're turning) also by half. In a RWD car, the force
vector remains constant throughout the evolution, and the advantage had by
FWD cars in situations of vector differences is cancelled out by the lack of
traction (and energy) to the front wheels.

I'm sorry if this starts not making sense... I've been working like 14-15
hour days busting my ass for the past two weeks, and I am dead drained...

Jason


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ron Porter" <ronporter@prodigy.net>
To: "'Shotimes Mailing List'" <Shotimes@autox.team.net>
Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2004 8:46 PM
Subject: RE: [Shotimes] Pontiac unveils SHO successor?


> Yeah. When I think about it, FWD pushes a car the same way as RWD, it's 
> just
> that there's more body mass in front of RWD.
>
> Or something like that!
>
> Ron Porter