Subject: Quattro, Lockers, et al (long)

[Lawrence C Leung]

Generally speaking Erik is correct. One thing good traction without drama
(vs. traction control cars) and the less severly loaded contact patches
do to AWD drivers is breed a bit of false confidence. If the car doesn't
slip (in the expected 2WD fashion) when accelerating, there must be more
traction, so go faster. Enter turn too fast, understeer like a pig, exit
corner comparatively slowly. If you had enough traction to enter the same
corner at the same speed in the 2wD car, you'd understeer just as badly
entering the turn, and exit even slower due to less exit traction. On
entrance to turns, all cars (more or less) behave pretty much the same.
Usually when car testers find the AWD cars travelling slower than their
2WD cousins in tests, it is usually due to the greater weight of the cars
slowing them down in the straight line acceleration conditions. 

LL - NY

On Fri, 09 Feb 2001 18:00:23 -0000 "Erik Ringelberg"
<eringelberg at hotmail.com> writes:
>All,
>
>I have no idea what is wrong with some people's cars, but there is no 
>
>possible way that *any* quattro is going to corner worse than a FWD 
>car. 
>That is beyond belief. The same mass car, same center of gravity, same 
>
>spring rate, same tire will corner at the same max g. What I think we 
>have 
>is a difference in perception.
>
>Since you *can* accelerate through the corner in a quattro, you can 
>easily 
>exceed the maximum traction available to the tires. I would NEVER 
>approach a 
>corner at the speeds I do in my quattro on ice and snow in a FWD. It 
>does 
>*feel* looser because I'm driving much faster!
>
>Most people don't understand that on ice the max coof. friction is 
>less than 
>20 vs. 3-4x that in the dry. You get to feel how the car handles at 
>140 mph 
>(minus lift) at 40 mph. Magically, most mericans think massive 
>oversteer 
>then is a solid feeling in bad conditions.
>
>Rant off...
>
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