wvonkessler Wilson von Kessler Super Moderator Location: Lookout Mountain, GA Join Date: 02/28/2006 Age: Possibly Wise Posts: 1,127 Rally Car: Colts are in Finland; now '87 325i, '89 325i |
"Talk about drugs. Driving a car like that, going that fast, it’s like all the drugs at once." - Tommy Byrne "Now, Pinky, if by any chance you are captured during this mission, remember you are Gunther Heindriksen from Appenzell. You moved to Grindelwald to drive the cog train to Murren. Can you repeat that?" - The Brain |
Cosworth Paulinho Ferreira Junior Moderator Location: Charlotte, NC Join Date: 03/15/2007 Age: Midlife Crisis Posts: 721 Rally Car: Honda Civic |
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12xalt "oh! you're the one!" Junior Moderator Location: Hazel Dell, WA Join Date: 02/22/2008 Age: Possibly Wise Posts: 1,390 Rally Car: 1974 Dodge Colt, under construction |
cannot express in typed form the giddiness of my friend and I when we saw he was coming back in a Volvo giggitygiggitygiggity |
12xalt "oh! you're the one!" Junior Moderator Location: Hazel Dell, WA Join Date: 02/22/2008 Age: Possibly Wise Posts: 1,390 Rally Car: 1974 Dodge Colt, under construction |
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heymagic Banned Professional Moderator Location: La la land Join Date: 01/25/2006 Age: Fossilized Posts: 3,740 Rally Car: Not a Volvo |
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Gravity Fed Alex Staidle Infallible Moderator Location: Δx = ħ/2Δp Join Date: 08/21/2009 Age: Settling Down Posts: 1,719 Rally Car: Various Heaps |
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john vanlandingham John Vanlandingham Senior Moderator Location: Ford Asylum, Sleezattle, WA Join Date: 12/20/2005 Age: Fossilized Posts: 14,152 Rally Car: Saab 96 V4 |
Wouldn't a rotary be some 1/3 fraction...ya know like the engine volume is calculated? One face of the rotor sweeps xxx cc time 2 rotors =1300ccm Group 2/3....? And then if you can't say "th' very good like me it comes out "Group too turds" 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. |
Gravity Fed Alex Staidle Infallible Moderator Location: Δx = ħ/2Δp Join Date: 08/21/2009 Age: Settling Down Posts: 1,719 Rally Car: Various Heaps |
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ACP Andrew Comrie-Picard Mod Moderator Location: Los Angeles Join Date: 05/12/2014 Age: Possibly Wise Posts: 12 Rally Car: Ford Fiesta, Dodge Colt |
Interesting thread.
Having run all drivelines in a wide variety of power levels on rallies (FWD 90-280hp, RWD 100-450hp, AWD 170-400hp) the answer has to be "it depends". FWD cars can be driven in a very nimble fashion. If they're light, you can go very very deep into a corner and scrub speed very quickly. If the power delivery is good, and the transmission well-matched, you can get everything out of the powerband, all the time. This is the formula of the Fiesta R2. RWD is hard to be so aggressive with. Most of the corner happens a lot earlier, and you're along for the ride a little bit more. On faster, straighter sections, and especially uphill, you can put a lot of power down, more than FWD. But in tight stuff, you're struggling to both put the power down but keep that tail in. This is the strength and weakness of cars like Derik's M3 and Order's BR-GT-FR-Z. At OTR, Ramana took 26 seconds from us on 9 miles at the racetrack, and then 22 seconds on a single high-speed 15-mile stage on Saturday, and beat us by 41.5 seconds overall (ignore the 10s chicane penalty). So we could point to that and say that's where he got us, and it was in the car. But the real story is more subtle. On Gilhouly downhill, a stage where I should have had a solid advantage, he narrowly beat us. He must have been driving terrifically to do it. Conversely, on the first Husky on Sunday, he should have had an advantage, but we took him there. I think we just had more coffee. Bottom line: there's a bit of horses for courses. Very fast, grippy rallies should favor RWD a little; tight gnarly ones should favor FWD a little, all else being equal. At OTR, there's both flavors, and in some places, even both flavors in a single stage (especially on Saturday, but Husky a bit too) so without interval times you'd never really know. And much more important than driveline layout, I would put these in order of significance: 1. Preparation 2. Driver (+ his commitment, which can vary based on goals) 3. Co-Driver 4. Weight 5. Gearbox 6. Shocks 7. Tires 8. Power That went a little longer than I planned. Really I wanted to say the choice between FWD and RWD is like a choice between blonde and brunette. ACP |
johnhuebbe John Huebbe Mod Moderator Location: St. Peters, MO Join Date: 08/31/2012 Age: Midlife Crisis Posts: 283 Rally Car: 1970 VW Beetle & 1991 Subaru Legacy |
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RALLYRS Mike Ball Mod Moderator Location: Simi Valley,Ca. Join Date: 07/15/2011 Age: Ancient Posts: 466 Rally Car: Nope...I wish...RWD 2 Door Jeep XJ 4.0 5-spd Dirt-o-cross car(we have no grass!)2.3 ZX3 rallyx car(sold) |
Nice first post...but look here newb..we got rules about real names for posters here..... J/K Welcome to RallyAnarchy ACP! ...stick around a bit...... ............................................. ................................................. ..................... Support your Local North American Rally Forum!! While they are still around-and get the hell off Farsebook!! We still have Specialstage & RallyAnarchy. Post up Here: https://rallyanarchy.com/phorum/posting.php and here: https://www.specialstage.com/forums/forum.php |
tmachnik Tom Machnik Elite Moderator Location: Edmonton, Alberta, Canada Join Date: 01/31/2008 Age: Midlife Crisis Posts: 78 Rally Car: 1985 VW GTI |
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john vanlandingham John Vanlandingham Senior Moderator Location: Ford Asylum, Sleezattle, WA Join Date: 12/20/2005 Age: Fossilized Posts: 14,152 Rally Car: Saab 96 V4 |
HI Andrew... Good clear comments. As usual. But one thing missing that counts an awful lot, especially for younger guys who don't have rich daddies: cost... cost of car, and cost of suitable parts. So any discussion that glosses over the costs for one or the other is just flap-doodle. That to me is one of the fun things about rally is vastly different drivetrain configurations and approaches can be within fractions of a second on a stage... But there's no getting around the costs for a car to start on, and the cost for "goodies"...since prep/cage/suspension (for most people starting out)/seats etc pretty much cancels out in the calculations.. 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. |
Cosworth Paulinho Ferreira Junior Moderator Location: Charlotte, NC Join Date: 03/15/2007 Age: Midlife Crisis Posts: 721 Rally Car: Honda Civic |
The proven formula in murika is the Golf GTI. |
hoche Michel Hoche-Mong Super Moderator Location: Campbell, CA Join Date: 02/28/2006 Age: Possibly Wise Posts: 1,156 Rally Car: Golf, Golf, RX-3 |
That made me giggle. There are two reasons Golfs are so prevalent here. The main one is momentum. There're a lot of them out there and there's a lot of shared knowledge on how to keep them going, and some active research on how to replace some of the flimsier parts - e.g. the Wimpeys' subframe and front hub upgrades, and Erik and Eddie's Polo rear stub axle solution (although I think that was started by Danster?). The other one is that although the real go-fast parts are becoming less available, there's still enough stuff out there to make them fun to drive: cams, diffs, etc. And they're relatively lightweight and reasonably robust. It's pretty hard to get modern torque and HP figures out of the motors - it's really hard to get them anywhere close to the 200HP mark - but they're still a pretty good car that you can make go reasonably quick. Not the best or the fastest, but pretty ok. There's hardly any rally development going on here in the US, and very few platforms are the same from yurp to here. Historically, the MkII and MkIII Golf have been one of the few cars where the platforms are the same and where the "good stuff" is available - and are robust enough to handle many events. Maybe we'll see that change with the Fiesta. I dunno. I'm amused that it's essentially a MkII Golf with modern innards. Will they last? We'll see. Will they spawn an era where manufacturers start importing cars that have good rally stuff available? I doubt it, but we'll see. Self-righteous douche canoe |