So I was thinking....

Most FWD cars have more weight at the front of the car becuase the engine and drivetrain are there.

RWD cars are usually 50/50 weight dist right?

The prelude, for a FWD car is 63/37

If you dropped a alot of weight from the front of the car, say with CF hood and fenders etc. how would that affect handling, bad or good? How would that affect traction on a launch?

 

Probably more important to do have even distribution of weight over the drive wheels because the driver sits on the left side. I know that having a passenger can make touge feel a little better/easier.

 

Yes, the weight needs to be over the rear axle for the ideal ratio.

I think most of the 50/50 cars are mid or rear engine.

 

That's what an LSD is for.

But I think lightening the front in a FWD car will not make that much of a difference since it'll still understeer, just not as much as the heavier car. But if it was a drastic reduction, then I would assume it would oversteer, due to the fact that the now "unbalanced" FWD will have a heavier rear, which can swing out.

 

Is the s2000 considered a mid-engine car? That has near 50/50 distribution, but I think the engine sits on or behind the front wheels, making it a front mid-engine car. ANybody have engine bay pics?

 

That's a tough one. Some people consider a "mid engine" design with the motor sitting behind the FRONT axles. While others say that a true mid-engine platform has the have the motor behind the seats and RWD.

As for the S2000, I just call it heaven.

 

S2000 is considered FR, it just has smart engine placement..

 

obviously in the realm of drag racing, FWD needs the weight up front to help prevent traction loss. additional/modified suspension components can help prevent front to rear weight transfer to provide more traction, tho.

as for handling, 50/50 is preferred for neutral handling... but again, understeer and oversteer arent necessarily judged purely by weight balance, but by suspension preparation.

using my car as an example, (since i of course know my car better than i know other cars), i use mine for autocrossing, so i did the best i could to get it more neutral, and possibly into slight oversteer. i stiffened all four corners with Tein HA struts, stiffened the rear with a larger anti-roll bar, and removed the front strut bar. i then added front and rear strut bars to keep the strut towers at an equal distance from each other, reducing chassis flex so the suspension would reproduce the results consistently, and adjusted camber to allow for more contact patch during cornering, and toe correction for more tendency to dive.

in addition, i also moved the battery to the trunk, removed all "useless" components out from the engine bay, to include the vibration dampener, metal bumper, aft engine mount counterweight, washer fluid reservoir and intake system. this in the name of helping to offset the front/rear weight difference. one consideration is to now rotate the engine within the compartment towards the aft to help shift more weight off the front wheels.

all said and done with proper corner weighting, i was able to achieve a slight oversteer bias. this was attributed to weight relocation, increasing front traction thru more compliant suspension settings, and decreasing rear traction with stiffened rear suspension settings.

 

Do you mean you removed the front anti-roll bar?

 

Yeah I think that's what he meant...

 

i dont know your plans, but if its only drag, then i cant see weight distro being a big deal.

 

and drift, A LOT of the things you mentioned would put your car (prelude?) in a difficult class to compete in.

 

Removing weight from the car will, varying about equally with weight removed, show positive results in just about every performance test. Removing weight and enhancing the natural balance of the chassis by evening out corner loads will further improve this, up until the point where you exceed the design of the suspension itself. The suspension on your car is designed taking into account the front heavy nature of the car, and if you actually could change the bias to near 50/50, you'd find the suspension would need to be partially redesigned to take full advantage of this. Roll centers, camber gain and loss, roll axis and a whole other host of elemental suspension design points are specifically catered to the stock vehicle, and moving too far away from this can have negative consequences.

Launch traction depends less upon weight balance than actual suspension setup and drivetrain performance, so simply pulling some weight off the front end will do little either way IMO. What it will do is allow you to run faster times, since the car is lighter and therefore can accelerate faster at any given point with the same power output.


Ps- Removing the front sway bar is generally not a good idea on cars that come equipped with them, unless you are looking to have a funky handling car that has very high roll moments (which will show up as instability in quick transitions). It'll also mess up the front to rear weight transfer during cornering, something the stock setup is pretty well tuned for. Just add a moderately bigger rear sway bar and call it a day.

 

Nah, It is considered FR. Just like you said since some cars such as the S2K and RX7 have a large part of the motor sitting behind the front axle. That along with the light weight of the motors give the car a 50/50 weight distro.

Mid-engine or MR lets us know where the engine sits in the car, and for a mid that would be directly behind the driver.

 

well TECHNICALLY MR means the motor is sitting in between the 4 wheels, so technically it is considered a MR, but most people just consider it a FR since its not the typical MR (where the motor is behind the cabin)

 

The motor is not completely behind the front axles a part of it will still rest forwad of the axless, but a great portion of the weight is either inline with the axle or a little bit behind it.


[Modified by BlueShadow, 12:43 AM 12/3/2002]