Dwiggy0
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These are all on my list of future upgrades. Thank you
3.3TT Drivetrain Swap (RWD > AWD)
- Thread starter Dwiggy0
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Volfy
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I certainly don't doubt your experiences are valid or the fact that your Indigo is a very capable handling car. All I was alluding to was that perhaps too much credit was given to the AWD, when a good bit of the accolades should perhaps have been given to the LSD. As you yourself have rightly pointed out, regular AWD without the LSD didn't quite perform as well as you'd like.
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AdrianG
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Don't get me wrong, I don't believe the AWD absolutely blows the RWD out of the water in every scenario, it obviously doesn't, but the pros far outweigh the cons, especially when performance modifications are part of the equation.
Mind you, I'm making this arguing from the standpoint of believing the Stinger should be modified, and that leaving it in it's factory state is doing it a disservice.
Also, take into account that I live in Colorado, the weather and terrible roads will totally cause a bias from me.
And yes, I was specifically talking about the Stinger, hence the "The", and the context.
Mind you, I'm making this arguing from the standpoint of believing the Stinger should be modified, and that leaving it in it's factory state is doing it a disservice.
Also, take into account that I live in Colorado, the weather and terrible roads will totally cause a bias from me.
And yes, I was specifically talking about the Stinger, hence the "The", and the context.
Chrismal
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TL;DR AWD performance advantage is often stated as "Moar Grip!" All else being equal, two cars identical in every way, tires, suspension, etc., have the same amount of available traction/grip. When one end of the car, typically the rear in a stinger, has more power than traction available, the AWD system can send this excess power to the other end, putting more usable power to the ground. LSD is an additional component, not specific to AWD vs RWD. Brake based torque vectoring is the worst from a performance standpoint, mechanical LSD is better, and the best is electronically controlled at each individual corner.
The Stinger AWD, and similar systems are great in limited traction situations. Low speed acceleration, slick, wet, loose surfaces, etc., because in situations when the rears only take 80% or less of the available power to break traction, you can now apply an additional 20% of that power and use it to drive the front, which has available traction. Thus you now have more power to the ground and increased acceleration. However once you reach a point where the rear tires can deliver full power to the road without spinning up (small amounts of spin can actually assist with mid corner rotation), then the AWD is no longer beneficial, between the weight and drive train loss it actively reduces performance.
Cornering is trickier. Ideally, to maintain the fastest possible apex speed, you want to be on the front tires limit of lateral traction, using any the available traction for drive at this point necessarily reduces max cornering speed, or results in unwanted loss of traction at the front (understeer). If you have more than the ideal (small) amount of rear slip, and the front wheels aren't overloaded, turning the driven front wheels into the slip, or to the outside of the turn means you are driving the front end wide, not understeer in the technical sense, but same result. Now you are wide of the ideal line. The caveat is that in low speed corners, as you open the steering you need less lateral traction and can use the front wheels for drive again in situations where you can't apply 100% of the available power to the rear tires, resulting in a faster exit.
As a side note, even in low speed corners you pay the piper for the weight during braking and at the apex, but the lower the corner speed, and the higher the horsepower, the bigger advantage you gain on exit. On tight technical tracks this could put the AWD well in front, think autocross and street courses like Monaco. On a track with long straights and high speed sweepers the RWD is the weapon of choice, think Monza or Spa.
This is all paper racing though. Stingers are big heavy, fun cars, and at a road course track day the driver is going to be the deciding factor. Given equal drivers, I suspect the margin would be small and track specific.
So to summarize, Volfy is correct in that low traction conditions th AWD is better, wet, sandy, low speed. But otherwise RWD, in a performance sense is the better option. This is why in drag races, in equal Stingers, the AWD wins from the dig, and the RWD eventually catches and passes the AWD, because the AWD can use more power sooner.
The Stinger AWD, and similar systems are great in limited traction situations. Low speed acceleration, slick, wet, loose surfaces, etc., because in situations when the rears only take 80% or less of the available power to break traction, you can now apply an additional 20% of that power and use it to drive the front, which has available traction. Thus you now have more power to the ground and increased acceleration. However once you reach a point where the rear tires can deliver full power to the road without spinning up (small amounts of spin can actually assist with mid corner rotation), then the AWD is no longer beneficial, between the weight and drive train loss it actively reduces performance.
Cornering is trickier. Ideally, to maintain the fastest possible apex speed, you want to be on the front tires limit of lateral traction, using any the available traction for drive at this point necessarily reduces max cornering speed, or results in unwanted loss of traction at the front (understeer). If you have more than the ideal (small) amount of rear slip, and the front wheels aren't overloaded, turning the driven front wheels into the slip, or to the outside of the turn means you are driving the front end wide, not understeer in the technical sense, but same result. Now you are wide of the ideal line. The caveat is that in low speed corners, as you open the steering you need less lateral traction and can use the front wheels for drive again in situations where you can't apply 100% of the available power to the rear tires, resulting in a faster exit.
As a side note, even in low speed corners you pay the piper for the weight during braking and at the apex, but the lower the corner speed, and the higher the horsepower, the bigger advantage you gain on exit. On tight technical tracks this could put the AWD well in front, think autocross and street courses like Monaco. On a track with long straights and high speed sweepers the RWD is the weapon of choice, think Monza or Spa.
This is all paper racing though. Stingers are big heavy, fun cars, and at a road course track day the driver is going to be the deciding factor. Given equal drivers, I suspect the margin would be small and track specific.
So to summarize, Volfy is correct in that low traction conditions th AWD is better, wet, sandy, low speed. But otherwise RWD, in a performance sense is the better option. This is why in drag races, in equal Stingers, the AWD wins from the dig, and the RWD eventually catches and passes the AWD, because the AWD can use more power sooner.
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vipeboy2000
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So we are on the same page. Which is what I literally said. "I'm so glad I got the indigo which has the LSD with awd". Not quite as wild as a pure rwd, but still fun just not as tail happy as one without awd and the revised stability programming for the gts and indigo. I never meant the awd with LSD was better than the rwd only in pure performance, the track tests between the 2 obviously show the rwd only being far superior with lap times . I meant real world not perfect conditions the awd with LSD gives much more driver confidence in bad roads and surfaces, damp roads , and even good roads etc . While still having that rwd with LSD feel and behavior (the car still oversteers /drifts by default not understeers like our old Subaru just not as much as a pure rwd) but with a safety net of some awd ness front end pulling you out of trouble.. (as long as one isn't stupid since no matter how good the car is the driver can obviously push the car beyond physical limits lol)
I love being able to punch out turning onto a road in the wet and being able to accelerate quickly, prior car with rwd v8, in the rain was scary with the amount of slip/traction control intervention to not be able to get up to speed in the wet.
G70LEbyAdoom
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the simple solution to this is to Pull the AWD fuse on your indigo (while the car is off) and see if your car is equally or more tail happy, as with the fuse pulled it is completely RWD. If it behaves the same, then you know that the computer is not intervening in your car. If it feels more tail happy with the fuse pulled, then you know the computer is doing its thing.
vipeboy2000
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I have done the comparisons already, just in sport mode/comfort even, with all traction stability on, it is still tail happy, but computer intervenes early to stop oversteer. sport+(aka sport with traction off) it lets quite a bit of tail out action before intervening. Comfort mode with all traction/stability off, still tail happy, but definitely can feel the front end helping keeping the car at a less extreme angle, more of a 4 wheel drift if you will.
Drift mode, cannot tell any help from front axle, donut city, drift etc , does not "feel" any different than having the awd fuse pulled even though technically i know about 3-7% power is still being fed to the front.
