Strategic Weight Reduction/Placement Write-up, Old title might have made it sound like a noobish question Options

[JesterDC]

RWD cars have a distinctive advantage over FWD cars because of a crappy high school class called PHYSICS.
Newton's first law of motion.
Objects in motion tend to stay in motion, and objects at rest tend to stay at rest unless an outside force acts upon them.
Because objects typicaly don't like to move, they like to stay put. But we don't like that. Lets say we have 2 cars that are 100% identical(rotating mass, weight, wheelbase,tires etc.) except one was RWD and one was FWD. Now lets put these cars at a drag strip.
Vroom-vroom the cars are ready to go!
Both revving exactly the same, ready to launch!
The light turns green, and they're off!
Ohh ouch! The RWD car is speeding down the strip, while our buddy FWD is crawling forward spinning his tires.

Why?

Transition of force(weight)
Weight is a mesure of gravity's pull(force) on an object relative to the objects mass.

When you hit the gas the weight of the car shifts from being supported almost equally on both front and rear axles, to being almost solitarily supported by the REAR axle. We will call this the wheelie affect.

When you hit the brakes weight shifts back forward onto the FRONT axle. Next time you're driving notice how the noise of your car dips down when you hit the brakes hard. We will call this the dipping affect. It's also because of this dipping affect that front brakes wear out faster/make more dust. Also take note that ST's have front discs and rear drums, that's because front breaks work harder and NEED to be better.

Now that wehave gone over a couple knowns, lets move in to theories-ish.

I've got a nitro R/C truck that's pretty damn fast. Its stomping ground is a big parking lot. Lots of turning and such, but not when I first got it. It had bad wheel spin all over, so I put on stiffer shocks in the front, softer in the rear and moved the reciever pack over the rear axle, problem solved. But why? It was rear wheel drive and I needed more traction or gripping-force for my RWD r/c. So I put softer springs in the rear to absorb more weight and allow it to sit on top of the rear axle. the stiffies up front helped keep weight from moving forward when I hit the gas to keep rear traction.

Next up Application to FWD Celicas(or at least theory of)

Because of the wheelie affect, when accelerating, FWD cars loose traction on the drive wheels while RWD cars gain traction on the drive wheels.(yeah we know that now.)Not sure if I mentioned this yet but the more weight pushing down on an object the more traction it has.

So we are finally to the actually doing something part-ish.
There are two things to be done:
a.weight reduction/placement
b.weight transfer prevention

Ok b is super-duper OMG easy. Get stiffer springs and shocks in the rear and DO NOT LOWER THE REAR MORE THAN THE FRONT!!! If the rear is lowered more than the front weight transfer will be even easier than stock! Remember carrying your grandma's piano up the stairs? You wanted to be in front because you wouldn't have as much of a load from the piano as the guy below you. If anything keep stock ride height rear with lowering springs in the front with a slightly more stiff set-up than stock(for handling not traction).
To sum it all up, get a stiffy in the back and keep it up!

Next up to bat, A! Alright, Yeah WOO-HOO! By the end of this it'll be "MAKE IT STOP!"
Wheelies are the result of weight transfer to the rear in combination with the rotational force of a RWD car's rear axle. Weight transfer gets the front in the air and the spinning axle keeps it that way. Cool huh? In FWD cars all that happens is crappy wheel-hop! As traction is gained and and lost in a yo-yo like transfer of weight.
Losing weight makes for a quicker more agile car, right? Depends. On what? As store owners every where say, "location, location, location."
"So wise Master where do I want to lose weight?"
"Hips and thighs, and your a** is pretty big too, but don't lose the rack young grasshopper"
"But wise master I was talking about my Car."
"Same places dumbsh**."
Listen to the wise master! You wanna get rid of weight around your a**=behind rear axle + Hips and thighs=between front and rear axles. But he also said "don't lose the rack" you really don't want to lose to much weight up front or you'll lose traction Ta-Duh! The farther the weight is forward the harder to move back and the more traction up front where you need it. Here's a little crazy talk, maybe just maybe once you lose some weight in the back you might put some actual weights(as in lifting weights) up front. Oh that's crazy or is it crazy enough to beat that RWD, hmmmm.

Something to check out for ideas of strategic weight removal for our FWD cars would be RWD drift cars. Why? Cause they want to LOSE traction in the rear and GAIN it back in the front, hmmm wha-wha-what, wait just a minute! That's exactlly what we wanna do! YEAH!!!

Any comments/flames/expansions of theories/discussions would be sweet.


P.S. first post(EVER)

This post has been edited by JesterDC: Jun 28, 2006 - 11:58 PM