Riddle me this- front wheel drive

The two best 2wd cars I ever drove in snow were first a Corvair and next VW Beetles, both rear engine, rear wheel drive. The Corvair seemed to have almost ALL it's weight on the rear wheels!
The best front drive car was a Chevy Citation which was about the most nose heavy car I ever had. I'll bet the original FWD Oldsmobile Toronado and Cadillac El Delrados would do well. Nevertheless they still have the less than desirable FWD handling to deal with.

So getting back to trucks running in 2wd the most competent set-up would be rear drive with additional weight in the bed over the rear axle. That way you can dial in exactly how much rear weight bias you want and still have the front wheels dedicated for only steering. Front wheels loose traction when spinning, at any speed.

 

What? That's where they all came from until the Japanese took over.Volvo, Audi, VW, Sabb, Fiat, Citroen, Austin etc. Granted Volvo was the last hold out but the majority of Euro daily driver cars are and were FWD.

 

1997 was the first year of the Impala FWD You were close! The 1996 was the last year of the big "D" body cars (Impala, Caprice, DeVille) and in 1997 all 3 came out with the newer body styles, and all were FWD.

 

I guess I should have put an 'ish' on the end there.

My brain hears 'impala' and I think of the 60s-80s. Fat, wide, low sedans with boat anchor motors, not these zippy lil v6 gocart cars like the new ones

 

Yeah. The early 90s were some big boats as well. Those are the big Caprice/Impala cars that the police always drove. Commonly called the "police Interceptor" with those ugly steel wheel and stupid center hubcaps. lol.

 

This is my line of thinking, they just drive different. Neither one is necessarily better, it all depends on condition. RWD vehicles wreck more often because there is less weight over the drive axle and people don't account for that.
I'll drive either and stay on the road but I prefer my truck over my gfs Accord or old Corolla.

 

Another positive attribute for rear wheel drive towing: you can use a 1:1 direct drive 'gear' in the transmission with heavier loads that takes all the strain off its gears and bearings. Can't do that easily with front wheel drive.

 

That's kinda' silly. RWD 2wd vehicles perform more poorly in the snow, or any sticky/slippery situation compared to FWD's.

Empirically, it's all about weight distribution and how much directional force you can apply to the wheels that are turning.

FWD: weight over the driving wheels, more hard contact, car easily drags the two back dead wheels: more hard contact, and you're also able to steer with the wheels that have both the power and the traction

RWD: weight over the front non-driving wheels, acting like an front anchor and less weight on the driving wheels. Car has to push the heavy front end: the back wheels with all the power and very little traction spin and slip more easily, and RWD always "steers" straight ahead.

No amount of "intelligent driving" other than staying home, is going to help you in a two-and-a-half ton Dodge Charger stopped at a red light towards the top of a hill in packed snow.

But hey, if you don't like physics, try statistics: drive around in packed snow, or icing conditions and do the math on the number of RWD's you see in distress!

 

um, not exactly taking all the load off the gears. Still puts all of the load on them, just in a different way. Planetary gear sets just work that way. But yes, with using a transfer case with a chain, you add a "breaking point" potential if trying to drive just the front.

 

does everyone forget that there is weight distribution in cars now?

just because a motor is over the front does not necessarily mean that those tires have any more traction than rear tires. cars now are pretty damn close to having even distribution especially those RWD "sports cars" everyone says in end up in ditches. not to mention rear tires on those cars are also typically larger and have a bigger contact patch for snow.

 

you guys are getting way off base, comparing a passenger car FWD/RWD to a Truck are 2 totally different animals.

The whole weight distribution angle has to be one of the silliest things I have heard in awhile.

If we were road racing or balancing a trophy truck yes that would apply.

The simple fact that Trucks load carry and or tow are built with a rear drive axle is because of traction and controll when the front end unloads under torque/power, and would overly stress the front under brake from re-overloading the front.

 

Came, past tense. Audi AWD, VW AWD, Volvo AWD, and list goes on, not many of the fwd options exist in Europe like in the past, I was just in Germany and Holland and not one rental was fwd.

 

looks like i said that

and how is weight distribution silly? it still affects the vehicle. and essentially what you are doing by putting sandbags in the bag of a truck

 

This post makes me facepalm. I thought you were on the right path for a while and then lost it at the end.

 

Incomplete

I also had a '76 Plymouth Fury , and a '78 Mercury Comet and a couple other gems

Minimum wage and all

 

Ah, took me a minute to figure out where you were coming from. We're thinking apples vs oranges. Sometimes I forget there are people that can tolerate automatic trannies, haha.

With my R155 if I have it in 4th gear, then all gearsets freewheel because the input and output shafts lock together. It doesn't even put torque through the input reduction gearset, excluding what it takes to overcome the friction in the other unselected gearsets. Not transferring power through the countershaft takes the side loading on the bearings way down too. Example, the 80s Toyota-powered motorhomes; the 4 speed w-series trannies were bulletproof, but the 5 speeds that were almost identical in design but for the inclusion of an overdrive would forever eat input shaft bearings. Same concept with the RA60 in 5th.

So I guess if you have a MANUAL tranny you can have significantly less wear on your transmission when you tow with rear wheel drive.

 

Because a truck's load sits in the bed over the rear wheels. The Honda is not a truck. It's an ugly minivan with a bed.

 

Are we talking Ridgeline here. ?

 

Yep

 

No doubt , a 5' bed on a truck is a joke