Re: four vs F vs R wd

[Huw Powell <human@nh.ultranet.com>]

-- [ From: Huw Powell * EMC.Ver #3.1a ] --

>I understand what you are saying, however, Scott and I were debating
whether one could show an advantage of AWD over RWD/FWD on dry pavement.  I
say to do that on must have _one_ car that can be modified to be all three. 
If you cannot do that then there is no valid comparison between them.

But is it fair to hobble the 2wd examples with the added weight of a
transfer case and extra differential and driveshafts?  Or should the three
cars be optimized for their specific drive train design?  It seems like an
AWD car with one set of drive wheels disabled is never going to be as good
as the entire car functioning as it was designed.  And as I understand the
problem, if you were to compare actual, say FWD vs AWD versions of the
"same" car, the weight distribution would be different, the suspensions
would probably be different, again rendering the comparison useless.

Dry pavement... since my coupe puts more power (torque?) to the front wheels
than they can transfer to the pavement (squeal!) at certain speeds/RPMs, I
would be of the (horribly uneducated) opinion that AWD would confer an
instant advantage.  So long as the weight penalty was compensated for by a
bit more power... or a lot more power!

We run into this problem with speaker design, where two competing drivers
for an application require very different designs for the system - even down
to perhaps different choices for the other drivers.  this can make an apples
to apples comparison very difficult, since it's unfair to say that tweeter A
is not as good as tweeter B in a system designed around tweeter B when the
system designed around tweeter A shows it to be better....

Not sure if I've said anything here that hasn't been said before but I had
to shoot my mouth off.


Huw Powell
HUMAN Speakers

Sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from science....

http://www.thebook.com/human-speakers