[SirPoonga]

Originally posted by sperry
[b]Good point about the AWD's acceleration advantage. There is more drivetrain power loss in AWD, but the traction advantage usually outweighs it at lower speeds. I race a WRX, I should know these things! lol

Edit: I hate that you can't PM people. You race SCCA? Ever race at Road America?

Yep, to the rest of the people to understand why this is the case I will use this analogy.

Take two cars, everything is the same accept one is RWD and one is AWD (assume same engine, same weight).
In physics force = mass times acceleration
or
force/mass = acceleration.
Since mass is the same for this example the more force the more acceleration.

Lets same in RWD each wheel is putting out 10N of force on each wheel, 20N total. With the same engine the AWD puts out 6N on each wheel because it takes more energy from the motor to turn the wheel. Total being 24N. Obvious which one will accelerate faster.

Yeah, I am an applied math major, I think scientifically.

I agree that generally a slick should have more traction than a treaded tire. I was surprised that emperically it wasn't the case, at least on linoleum. Of course, linoleum isn't all that smooth compared to the size of an XMod tire. I think more testing needs to be done to really figure out what generates more traction. Next time I'm out at the warehouse, I'll toss soft slicks on the front and soft treads on the rear, run around a bit, then swap 'em front to rear and see if the car's tighter or looser.

Yeah, at that scale it's pretty bumpy.

I have to disagree with you about hard tires having more grip on smooth surfaces. The compound of a soft tire is always going to be sticker. The whole point of having hard tires on an Xmod is that it *isn't* as sticky as the soft. You would run a hard tire to reduce traction on one end of the car in order to adjust the handling of the car, as described above.

My bad, you are more correct. Soft give more traction for reason "I" said before. Hehe, I contradicted myself, shame on me.