Cossies!

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Grant Hughes

Yes... bring on the Focus Cosworth.

makes me miss groupe A , great video

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I would rather drive a slow car fast as a fast car slow!
first rule of cars: get what makes you happy, your the one paying for it!

Makes me miss my old Sierra

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Cosworth
Makes me miss my old Sierra

Jezzuz boys donät you know_?
Ex-spurts here in America have said they were terrible cars and had no forward grip and only reason they did anything was the powerful motor..

After I read that recently I've decided to throw away all three of the rebuilt engines I have here and buy a 510 Datsun instead.

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John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

Quote
john vanlandingham

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Cosworth
Makes me miss my old Sierra

Jezzuz boys donät you know_?
Ex-spurts here in America have said they were terrible cars and had no forward grip and only reason they did anything was the powerful motor..

After I read that recently I've decided to throw away all three of the rebuilt engines I have here and buy a 510 Datsun instead.

True they werent very successful in the World Championship, but as street cars for a young fella like me at the time, it was the shiznit. The saphire and escos were understeering pigs in anything but fast corners until the active diffs came aobut, but even the great Carlitos Sainz couldnt do much with them in 96 and 97.

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Cosworth

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john vanlandingham

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Cosworth
Makes me miss my old Sierra

Jezzuz boys donät you know_?
Ex-spurts here in America have said they were terrible cars and had no forward grip and only reason they did anything was the powerful motor..

After I read that recently I've decided to throw away all three of the rebuilt engines I have here and buy a 510 Datsun instead.

True they werent very successful in the World Championship, but as street cars for a young fella like me at the time, it was the shiznit. The saphire and escos were understeering pigs in anything but fast corners until the active diffs came aobut, but even the great Carlitos Sainz couldnt do much with them in 96 and 97.

The list of European National Championship titles won by 2wd Cosworths is fawkin long.
Lancia pretty much had a good head start that took some years to match, especially on tight tarmac....

Fortunately for us here, and now, we have nearly nothing as narrow and tight as many of the stages I've seen in You're-a-peein rallies...
And my affection for them isn't from its tight narrow tarmac behavior, it is for its very good medium fast to very fast handling....the kinds of roads most common in North American rally..

And driving both 2wd 2300 8v and YB powered 4x4 on gravel, I haven't noticed even the hint of understeering...but technical geniuses say "no forward bite--only reason they did anything was from the powerful engine"
Now that is logic I can't argue with.

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John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

Quote
john vanlandingham
The list of European National Championship titles won by 2wd Cosworths is fawkin long.

Thats the same as saying that the Fiesta R5 or RRC is the best car because a lof of people are winning national championships with them. Meanwhile they cant touch the VW's in the WRC. Many times at the local level is not what car is good that wins it, its what car can be bought. Ford has always been geared towards customer sales. Back in the 90's the only other easily acquired car by privateers was the Subaru. No one had Toyotas except Grifone, the Lancias were all from Jolly Club and Mitsubishi was only factory cars.

But now you're telling me that you havent noticed a hint of understeering on the 4x4 cossie goes against everything everybody has ever said about them. The only time they got rid of the slow/medium understeering was with the introduction of the active diffs in 95ish if I'm not mistaken. And that being said how many WRC events did Ford win against Subaru/Toyota/Mitsu during those years? To memory I remember 2 specialist drivers in 2 specialized events: Delecour in the 93 Monte, and Makkinen in Finland. By 1996 they had it figured out and Sainz did well but I'm not sure if it was the car or Sainz!

Actually a quick search on gewgl by typing "escort Grp a understeer" came across this The groupA version suffers from understeer in very tight corners when not using "active" differentials. WRC and groupA cars that use active diffs do not display this character. In one of the customer's marketing spec thing.

Let it go John, I like those cars as well but cant deny the flaws. And dont use the term "forward bite" for understeering, its a totally different characteristic.

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Cosworth

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john vanlandingham
The list of European National Championship titles won by 2wd Cosworths is fawkin long.

Thats the same as saying that the Fiesta R5 or RRC is the best car because a lof of people are winning national championships with them. Meanwhile they cant touch the VW's in the WRC. Many times at the local level is not what car is good that wins it, its what car can be bought. Ford has always been geared towards customer sales. Back in the 90's the only other easily acquired car by privateers was the Subaru. No one had Toyotas except Grifone, the Lancias were all from Jolly Club and Mitsubishi was only factory cars.

But now you're telling me that you havent noticed a hint of understeering on the 4x4 cossie goes against everything everybody has ever said about them. The only time they got rid of the slow/medium understeering was with the introduction of the active diffs in 95ish if I'm not mistaken. And that being said how many WRC events did Ford win against Subaru/Toyota/Mitsu during those years? To memory I remember 2 specialist drivers in 2 specialized events: Delecour in the 93 Monte, and Makkinen in Finland. By 1996 they had it figured out and Sainz did well but I'm not sure if it was the car or Sainz!

Actually a quick search on gewgl by typing "escort Grp a understeer" came across this The groupA version suffers from understeer in very tight corners when not using "active" differentials. WRC and groupA cars that use active diffs do not display this character. In one of the customer's marketing spec thing.

Let it go John, I like those cars as well but cant deny the flaws. And dont use the term "forward bite" for understeering, its a totally different characteristic.

Why let it go?
I say what I say based on direct conversations with driver who drove rwd Cossie in WRC to a number of 2nds and 3rds when I was buying 4 rear shocks and for personal experience driving them in rwd and 4x4 spec, and observation over a number of years...


You know the GroupA cars in 4x4 had 50/50 split right?
You know they set the rear and center diff STUPID tight-----virtually locked right?
And you know they early on were on big fat dumb tires on tarmac, right..
EVERYTHING handled like pigs when set up like that, just some worse than others

But I'm saying in my REAR wheel drive car, and my basically Group N 4x4 car, with the stock 67/33 or whatever the torque split,

ON GRAVEL

No hint of understeer in US fast and stupid fast gravel roads..

You completely missed the absurdity of the US expert saying "no forward bite" and "only did good because of powerful engine"....a hilariously crazy contradiction...

They work fine in both configurations and sorry but I'll take the word of guys who did good with them in the closest conditions to what we drive here.


No point in asking how many RWD and Group N stock rear biased 4x4 you drove on US type roads---not narrow and tight Pork-n-cheese roads, 3rd and 4th gear US gravel roads.

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John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

i favor the tight technical stuff my self
even with a poor handling car makes for a nice challenge

its boring to just power down the straights

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I would rather drive a slow car fast as a fast car slow!
first rule of cars: get what makes you happy, your the one paying for it!

Quote
john vanlandingham
You completely missed the absurdity of the US expert saying "no forward bite" and "only did good because of powerful engine"....a hilariously crazy contradiction...

Was this some obscure statement made in 1997? Who is this US expert saying this?

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Grant Hughes

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tdrrally
i favor the tight technical stuff my self
even with a poor handling car makes for a nice challenge

its boring to just power down the straights

Me, too....back when I started we used to go out ---far out---into the mountains, well away from the ordinary recreational traffic and we'd find narrow and twisty roads and usually a weeeee bit rough and they were fun..We had one nice dead end about 3.2miles and dead ended at a rather dramatic cliff, and it was lined 99% of the way by 6-7 foot tall Scotch Broom (a invasive specie which grows like crazy in direct sun--like clear cuts, and is the toughest gawddam bush I've ever seen except sage brush) and we would never get out of the very top of second gear. No idea why they punched the road thru so squiggly...But it was fun fun fun...

We did have a few stages that had the fun hard in second then into 3rd for a bop! then back to second then up for a flash in 3rd then back...
One was called Spider Lake and it was tight...Problem was the entire stage had pretty scary exposure--clear cut down to a lake that you were certain to end up in....

Fortunately we did it at night...

But we have what we have. Counties and land-owners prioritize what roads they's gonna maintain and added to that the current generation of competitors being primarily consumers driving the cars they drive---very expensive Blue things---would not stand for the challenging type of narrow and rough, medium speed roads where the primary thing is driving ability, not when they spent what they spent on their 06 Blue thing... They WANT TO be on roads that they can "utilise" their 2.5 turbo Ess Peas cars...
They have more money, and in America those with money always call the shots.
They can never do wrong---no matter what...

That fact of the roads we have is what we can get is the major reason I push the 2 cars I push---and nod in the direction of the 100.5" wheelbase Mustang...

We can more or less match the expensive Blue cars in torque, gears in the box, final drive, brakes, steering, brakes and beat them in weight and reliability---and no restrictor.
All at fractions of the cost....Who cares if the cars are big if we're never on any road less than 2 1/2 lanes wide?

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John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

Quote
NoCoast

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john vanlandingham
You completely missed the absurdity of the US expert saying "no forward bite" and "only did good because of powerful engine"....a hilariously crazy contradiction...

Was this some obscure statement made in 1997? Who is this US expert saying this?

....and I've driven a Merkur on rally stages, and as bad as hard as the mustang is to drive, the merkur is worse...as bad as my old FJ nissan was exaggerated by more power , and the fact that Ford spend millions on making the Sierra competitive is nearly irrelevant for the grassroots rallyist...if you think everything those engineers knew about making that car competitive is in some published manual...well...


Did you notice that in the Ford Sierra videos everyone raves about the car appears to have absolutely no forward bite? Chassis-wise the Sierra was a big step backwards from the MkII Escort, it was only faster at the time because of the huge leap forward in power from the Cosworth YB turbo engine.


Ford rallied it only because it was the only thing they had at the time worth promoting with rally.


Mike Hurst
Competition Director
RallyCar

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RALLYRS

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NoCoast

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john vanlandingham
You completely missed the absurdity of the US expert saying "no forward bite" and "only did good because of powerful engine"....a hilariously crazy contradiction...

Was this some obscure statement made in 1997? Who is this US expert saying this?

....and I've driven a Merkur on rally stages, and as bad as hard as the mustang is to drive, the merkur is worse...as bad as my old FJ nissan was exaggerated by more power , and the fact that Ford spend millions on making the Sierra competitive is nearly irrelevant for the grassroots rallyist...if you think everything those engineers knew about making that car competitive is in some published manual...well...


Did you notice that in the Ford Sierra videos everyone raves about the car appears to have absolutely no forward bite? Chassis-wise the Sierra was a big step backwards from the MkII Escort, it was only faster at the time because of the huge leap forward in power from the Cosworth YB turbo engine.


Ford rallied it only because it was the only thing they had at the time worth promoting with rally.


Mike Hurst
Competition Director
RallyCar

Yep.

Imagine the bitter frustration even unto today all those idiot engineers at Ford must feel knowing what a abject failure they are and how they could have done so much better than those miserable First Loser 2nds they did with the RWD in the Dubya Arsey

if only they had hired the right man who knows all. (sigh)

You got it the quote.---was that 2 weeks ago?

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John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

This is going into a 2wd conversation now, but I was talking about the GrA escorts, those were 4wd and understeered like pigs, the Sapphires were even worse. And if they were so great John why did they ever invented a 6º rear beam? I rented a GrA cosworth in early 2000 and hated it, I can send you a small incar of some rough Portuguese twisties that required a lot of arm work. And the tire sizes you were talking about became standard in 93, same with the 34mm choke. The tight packed diffs were only tight for those that wanted it tight, just like the dampers, the diffs are tunable.

The lack of forward bite, that Mike is talking about on the Sierras was because the rear wasnt squating as much in order to keep the toe and cam inline. They fixed that with spring and added power to the cause. In early years of the Sierra, the old Manta GrB cars were just as fast with much less power. Wonder why.