Wing mirrors on cars

I've never had a car that won't wheelspin in 1st on a perfectly dry (and non-gritty) piece of road. Rev it in 1st with the clutch pedal down, then slam the clutch pedal up. Most cars will continue the spin into 2nd up to about 20mph. FFS I could even do it in a 1.3 litre Austin Maestro.

If you let the clutch in sharply enough with sufficient engine revs, the torque at the wheels on most cars will break traction. It may only be for a moment, but once the wheels are spinning, they tend to stay spinning even with lower torque that would not cause them to *start* spinning.

My little 1100 Renault 5 occasionally spun the wheels if I set off quickly from a junction. Obviously it doesn't do the clutch or the tyres much good, and the natural instinct is to back of the power the moment you detect it.

I imagine that RWD is better for adhesion than FWD when accelerating because the weight is transferred to the rear wheels in that situation. Not so good for accelerating out of a bend, though, when RWD is more likely to lose the back end if you overcook it.

I did it on purpose, especially when passing my neighbour's house who had told me off for speeding.

Not so sure about that. RWD has no weight over the wheels. The engine is pretty heavy. RWD cars often have heavy stuff put in the boot to gain traction in the snow.

There is a very good demonstration of FWD versus RWD (subject to a lot of artistic licence!) in an episode of The Sweeney, in which Regan and Carter in a RWD Granada chase a suspect who is in a FWD Renault 16.

On the road, the R16 is lurching all over the place because of its softer suspension, and there is a hair-raising moment (maybe the stunt driver overcooked things slightly) where it takes a corner too fast, the inside back wheel lifts about a foot off the ground and the opposite front wheel comes close to grounding on the front wing.

But when they go off-road, onto some rough ground, the R16 is far more sure-footed than the Granada which is chasing it and therefore (presumably) going the same speed: the Granada with its RWD is fish-tailing all over the place in a very dramatic but also very counter-productive manner.

It's the fish tailing which is why no car should be made RWD for general road use. The average everyday driver cannot possibly control losing the back end. It's very easy to correct understeer in a FWD car, but once a RWD car loses the back end, all but the best rally drivers are f***ed. You end up facing the opposite direction before you've had time to blink.

The worst snow car I had was a '73 Mustang. Even on dry pavement you had to be careful with the gas pedal. A friend would borrow it and I could follow her progress around town by the sounds of screeching rubber.

Funnily enough, most cars were RWD until about 30 years ago. I certainly owned 4 such beast and had no difficulty in controlling them.

British TV follows the Hollywood style. A car chase with two competent drivers would be as exciting as a Formula 1 race. Fiery crashes are particularly popular although quite rare in real life.

And Citroens long before that.

JWS is a troll. You're wasting your time and effort talking to him (unless you're doing it for amusement). Just killfile and forget him.

Although I was quite surprised it wasn't "boltar". Everything he says about cars and driving is wrong.

I find him a constant source of amusement and an excellent foil to allow me to improve my technique of insults.

F1 is boring. Not enough crashes, and so many regulations that all the cars are virtually identical. We want more overtakes and more collisions.

It depends.

Accelerating hard out of a bend the inside front wheel will be very lightly loaded. If you've got FWD and no trick diff you won't accelerate very hard, and you'll likely suffer understeer.

RWD loads up the outside driven wheel, so the limit is the inside driven one - but that's not really been unloaded much, so the available traction is far higher than a FWD car. That's why most race cars are RWD, if not 4WD.

The downside with RWD is that when you finally do overload the tyre you'll likely get snap oversteer...

Andy

I went to one F1 race in my life. We have found something we can agree on.

RWD and FWD is nothing to do with weight going round a corner. Both the front and rear inside wheel are less loaded.

I thought we agreed on politics.

Are we supposed to clap at this point?

PKB, do it yourself, or don't you know how to operate one? Why ask everyone else to killfile him for you?

Maybe it's just you that's wrong?

In many cases.

Dumping the clutch is using it as a torque multiplier via engine momentum and doesn't count and it doesn't work with autos anyway. I was talking about when the clutch is already engaged. Lets see the wheezing lump of pig iron under the bonnet of your 1.3 austin muppet manage it then.