Re: Quattro and the rain ..

[Brendan <bman@shentel.net>]

At 03:22 PM 1/15/98 -0800, Arun Rao wrote:

<snip>

>What do you folks think?  Why is quattro (or any
>	other 4WD scheme) better in the rain, if it is at all?
>	
>	-Arun

While I'm sure there are many far more qualified to answer this than
myself, my over-simplified answer is this:

Anytime a vehicle's driven wheel(s) lose traction, you have less control
over the vehicle.  Rain is beside the point; this holds true under any
weather or road conditions.  The more driven wheels you have (in a
4-wheeled vehicle; I'm not leaving that scope for this discussion, although
it might be kinda neat to have a lunar rover..), the less likely you are to
be in a situation where no driven wheel has traction.

The type of AWD system determines how effective it is at accomplishing it's
task.  Older quattros, for example, without the diffs locked, don't provide
as much protection from this type of traction loss as when the diffs are
locked.  Newer quattros use more advanced systems, some of which don't
require "manually" locking the diffs.

A lot more can be said on this, but if this brief answer doesn't satisfy
you I'll leave it to those with more knowledge and experience to give more
detailed explanations.

Brendan