AWD slam

I don't like this article either. But the author does make two legitimate points.

First good point is that a FWD car with snow tires beats an AWD car with summer tires (or even all-seasons) in the snow. That's because:

4 x zero traction = zero traction (AWD with bad tires)

whereas

2 x good traction = good traction (FWD with winter tires)

The other part where the author has a point is that AWD makes many drivers overconfident, so they drive too fast in marginal conditions. On the rare occasions where I have found myself on the highway in snow blizzard conditions, there were more AWD SUVs (4 x zero traction + excessive weight and speed) stuck in a ditch than regular cars.
 
True.. so many rely on awd to provide that extra traction but fail to miss the point of tires make a difference. But in there I feel he misses the boat on how Subaru AWD is not the same as others, more refined and exact. I run all season tires that are m/s rated and we have had a overall high amount of snow here and did great even from a dead stop on a hill with snow and light ice underneath just having fun one day.
 
Gidday Folks

Leaving aside the blatantly obvious statement that having the correct tyres for the make and model of vehicle for the specific conditions is a good idea, this is the greatest load of frogsh!t I have read in many a long year ...

Having driven all kinds of vehicles - RWD, FWD, 4WD, AWD; cars, light trucks, heavy trucks (I still hold a National Heavy Vehicle licence), 2WD & 4WD tractors - for well in excess of 1,000,000 miles in all kinds of conditions on all kinds of tyres - road tyres, racing tyres, snow tyres, directional bar lugs, full bar lugs, off-road tyres of many different construction and tread designs, my experience is utterly different.

I had my AWD 1993 Impreza for nearly 18 years and 234,000 kms. With identical make and model of tyres on both it and our Camry (same age), I could easily tell the difference in directional and vehicle stability at 60 km/h on dry, hot-mix bitumen suburban roads, let alone any others you can think of ...
Now, I would perhaps put that down to my sensitivity to vehicles from both my wide experience and natural affiliation with things mechanical, were it not for the fact that my dear lady wife who has neither of the above could also tell the difference under those (ideal) conditions, let alone in the wet, etc.

On a far more technical basis, one major reason why this person is so wrong is that the driving wheels of a car with 2WD are (usually) far better located by the suspension system than the other two wheels. FWD cars tend to have relatively basic suspension at the rear (some even have solid rear axles ... ), and this suspension system allows those wheels to move in a more "dynamic" way - i.e. they do not maintain absolute alignment with the front wheels. This was the case even in our dear old Camry which had relatively decent rear suspension, utilising MacPherson struts and other locating arms - by no means the worst system available.

With any reasonably decently designed AWD vehicle, all 4 wheels are rigidly located by necessity to counteract the tractive forces applied to all driven wheels.

For the same reason/s, an AWD passenger type vehicle has to be more rigid in its body shell than its 2WD counterpart to enable accurate alignment of the wheels under all conditions.

Both of the above make for greater directional and general vehicle stability. That was the case with my Impreza, even 20 years ago with "stability control" being limited to split system braking ... 18 years later, I could still throw this vehicle into a marked 50 km/h corner at just over 100 km/h; a corner that one could take reasonably safely in the Camry at 75-80 km/h ...

The RWD Jensen Interceptor I drove was very similar in handling to the E-Type Jaguar of the times (late 1960s), i.e. very urbane, and excellent. The Jensen Interceptor ff I drove was in a whole different league. It had the positively agricultural Ferguson 4WD system (literally adapted from that of a 4WD tractor ... ).

Perhaps the writer's experience was testing that Ford Explorer (??) that was fitted with the Firestone tyres that managed to kill some hundreds of people in roll-over accidents in the States?
The unseemly spectacle of Firestone and Ford each blaming the other for tyres that weren't quite up to spec, and a vehicle that was so sensitive to this that it would roll at the drop of a hat was sad to watch, and did nothing for the reputation of either company. It also came as no surprise to me at the time ...

I just read an article in the Age newspaper comparing the current model Forester, RAV4, CRV and Mazda CX-5. The author states with great authority that the Fox has no air-con vents to the rear ... Funny that. They must have removed these from this model, because even my Impreza had two, and our SG and SH models each have four - two each side.

How can one believe this sort of sloppy inspection and writing?
 
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This article is an utter load of rubbish. Just spreading misinformation about AWD.

Put the same tires on a 2wd and a AWD vehicle, the AWD vehicle will easily have better traction in a corner.
 
I have exams and assignments due so this will be brief.

F = Mv2/r

Where
F = tyres tractive limit
M = mass of vehicle
v = velocity
r = radius of turn

F will be affected by the relative geometry o the tyres to the road surface/vehicle direction and the force on the tyre.

Major factors are COG, corner weighting, suspension geometry, alignment and blah blah, not which wheels are driven.

As RB says having all wheels driven often prompts manufacturers to spend more time and effort on all corners of the susp but do not confuse this as a function o all AWDs merely a happy bonus with some.

Just because an impreza corners better than a Camry proves nothing.

Awd gives increased acceleration traction, not cornering traction.
 
I found this thread quite interesting....after some thought I wondered what about once traction has been broken - ie: you are now sideways.

Does AWD give you a higher degree of "steerage" which may aid in recovery of control? I think probably so. I've always been able to pull the vehicle back into line when the back goes out (provided you have the cojones to go against your natural instict and use some throttle).

I think AWD is defintely safer than Front Wheel Drive. In slippery conditions a FWD is harder to correct once the back has gone whereas an AWD is much easier to save.
 
I dont know really, I've always found that the point of no return (**** im spinning in circles we'll uses as the definition) in a 2wd is easier to get to than a awd. but that said I've found 2wd easier to pull back after being sideways than an awd. it feels like once i've lost it in an awd not just abit of a tank slapper but fully lost it, the front wheels start fighting the back wheels and the only thing it wants to do is sping around in circles. Where as the same slide in a fwd hatch back would of been recoverable it just would of been going slower on the same corner when it slid.
 
What a load of twaddle, proper AWD will out perform 2wd any day of the week. I can get a 2.5 tonne discovery around a corner on a dirt road quicker and safer than I can in a friggin Camry, falcon, commodore and that is on goodyear wranglers. It's a fact that I can out perform an XR6 turbo on a wet road in my XT forester, (don't ask me how I know that).

On a normal bitumen road in the dry it will only have a slight improvement, as soon as it becomes slippery AWD is the only way to go.

What a retarded monkeys arse, how many camrys do you see in rallies.
 
Before you start flaming, I'm not anti-AWD. Rather, I'm just incensed by those who fudge its ability beyond all recognition. AWD is great at aiding accelerating on slick surfaces and keeping a vehicle moving on snowy roads. Rally racers like AWD because it helps their over-powered cars accelerate on gravel and dirt paths. I co-drove an AWD car to victory in a 24-hour race, and in the rain I enjoyed how the car accelerated off the corners.


This one paragraph throws the whole story out to pasture
 
OutbackOiler said:
What a load of twaddle, proper AWD will out perform 2wd any day of the week. I can get a 2.5 tonne discovery around a corner on a dirt road quicker and safer than I can in a friggin Camry, falcon, commodore and that is on goodyear wranglers. It's a fact that I can out perform an XR6 turbo on a wet road in my XT forester, (don't ask me how I know that).

On a normal bitumen road in the dry it will only have a slight improvement, as soon as it becomes slippery AWD is the only way to go.

What a retarded monkeys arse, how many camrys do you see in rallies.
Click to expand...

Tweaksta said:
I found this thread quite interesting....after some thought I wondered what about once traction has been broken - ie: you are now sideways.

Does AWD give you a higher degree of "steerage" which may aid in recovery of control? I think probably so. I've always been able to pull the vehicle back into line when the back goes out (provided you have the cojones to go against your natural instict and use some throttle).

I think AWD is defintely safer than Front Wheel Drive. In slippery conditions a FWD is harder to correct once the back has gone whereas an AWD is much easier to save.
Click to expand...

idw said:
I dont know really, I've always found that the point of no return (**** im spinning in circles we'll uses as the definition) in a 2wd is easier to get to than a awd. but that said I've found 2wd easier to pull back after being sideways than an awd. it feels like once i've lost it in an awd not just abit of a tank slapper but fully lost it, the front wheels start fighting the back wheels and the only thing it wants to do is sping around in circles. Where as the same slide in a fwd hatch back would of been recoverable it just would of been going slower on the same corner when it slid.
Click to expand...

OutbackOiler said:
Before you start flaming, I'm not anti-AWD. Rather, I'm just incensed by those who fudge its ability beyond all recognition. AWD is great at aiding accelerating on slick surfaces and keeping a vehicle moving on snowy roads. Rally racers like AWD because it helps their over-powered cars accelerate on gravel and dirt paths. I co-drove an AWD car to victory in a 24-hour race, and in the rain I enjoyed how the car accelerated off the corners.


This one paragraph throws the whole story out to pasture
Click to expand...

These comments are in complete agreement with my experience, other than that I have always found recovery to be easier in AWD vehicles, in all conditions - as well as being far less likely to get into a "recovery situation" in the first place ...

OO, your last sentence says it all, really.

I too have noticed that the military prefer to use Camrys for operational use rather than AWD/4WD vehicles ... :lol: :rotfl:
 
They use Camry's for target practice. Like everyone else does
 
What, no flaming for my weak mis-applied physics?

This is better.

Assuming ideal wheel alignment/suspension geometry:

Fr = μN

where:

Fr is the resistive force of friction
μ is the coefficient of friction
N is the force pushing the tyres to the road

This dictates maximum cornering grip, borrowing any of it to accelerate reduces cornering grip.
 
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