More on Rear Wheel Drive 1
Just wanted to tell you guys, RE: the latest
driving emotion, that you're right on!
James Wade
Australia
More on Rear Wheel Drive 2
About Driving Emotion on 19 May 2007.
Julian's suggested feed back to his article
is:
- He’s just a wanker who can’t
drive.
- I like power oversteer; only a person who couldn’t drive
wouldn’t like it.
- What a crock! Thanks Christ there are some real
motoring journos out there, not like this bloke.
- He should stick to
driving front-wheel drive shopping trolleys – that’s all he’s good
for...
Like Julian I have owned FWD, RWD and AWD cars (at least two of
each). My only comment is that I agree that some of the cruder live rear axle
RWD and swing arm RWD can be dangerous.
In my experience, several RWD
cars with modern multilink IRS are quite safe. Given the ridiculous mass
and high centre of gravity of the Ford Territory, even the RWD version is benign
in slippery conditions. I was never able to provoke my 1994 BMW 320i into
dramatic or unexpected oversteer.
It is worth qualifying the article with
the comment that all RWD cars are not created equal.
Andrew Sieber
Australia
More on Rear Wheel Drive 3
How much weight did you have on your Ford tow
bar? Things get interesting when too little weight especially with a heavy
trailer with bogy wheels.
Robert May
Australia
More on Rear Wheel Drive 4
Driving Emotion - Rear wheel drive can be
dangerous.
About freaking time someone wrote these words.
You know your going to get slammed for it but bravo. I have owned all-wheel
drive cars for the last 15years. Mazda 323 4WD turbo (Familia in
other markets)and between my wife and I 4 Subaru Libertys (Legacies inother
markets). And quite frankly I am astounded at the crap you keep hearing about
AWD. Yes they do use a little more fuel, yes they can potentially cost more to
maintain (extra oil for diffs etc) but there are very few cars that can drive
away at a set of traffic lights wet or dry as effortlessly as any of these cars.
This means there is one less worry when it's raining so more of your
concentration can go into driving safely rather than wondering ifcar is going to
loose traction or slide out (under or oversteer).Now to go to the extreem you
can, should you desire, plant your foot to the floor when soaking wet and
the car will shoot off from standstill rather than slithering and sliding
all over the place. I'll take the fuel penalty hit thankyou as my life, and my
families lives are more important than a few cents per kilometer
driven. It's quite ironic that one of the cars criticied for heavy
fuel consumption is our 3.0 Liberty Spec B auto yet even when driven in
peak traffic mixed with some short country runs our running averages 10.4
l/100.
Simon Brown
Australia
Dripping
I really enjoyed reading your article about
intercoler water spray (Intelligent Intercooler Water Spray - Part 1).
But after reading the article, i was thinking about water pressure. Since the
reservoir is located higher than the intercooler, wouldn't the water keep
flowing out from the outlet (even when the motor is powered off)?
Lee Kien
Malaysia
Our suggested spray nozzles all include an
in-built shut off valve to avoid drips.
Overtaking
Re: Everyday Driving Skills. I like the way you
guys make people think carefully about passing technique, but there's one
thing I think needs stressing. If you’re in a low or moderate powered
car, and you have to wait for a straight stretch the size of the Nullarbor to
struggle to pass someone... Don't!
If it's this hard to pass, generally the vehicle
in front isn't going that slowly, it just feels that way because you're
used to doing 100(+), and they're doing 80 or 90. If you're sitting behind
a vehicle doing 80km/h for 10km wating for an opportunity it will only cost you
90 Seconds!
Save your fuel (and your life!) for a blat on a
twisty back road (that you know well), where at half the speed you can have
twice the fun, and probably still walk away from an error.
Luke Konynenburg
Australia
Advice
Firstly i would like to say that over the last
year or so since i have been a member i have found that you have quite a good
publication and many very interesting articles. i especially like
the general purpose articles that condense information from many sources into an
easy to read and one place eg like the engine (BMW/Subraru/Mitu. etc). i have
also read with interest your articles about general driving skills and has
prompted me to rethink my ways.
ok that was the good part, here comes some issues.
Firslty i would talk about the recycled content (yep another email) yep i am
very happy that at least you doubled my subscription time but lately i have
noticed that the number of articles that are actually members only is quite
small. actually in the last 7 weeks there have been only 12 articles that
are only available to members. I think that you have published more new articles
but I feel it is a disservice to current members that you have such a tiny
number of articles. basically whats the point of paid membership when they can
get almost all of the articles for free. it gets worse for prev articles.
secondly, not that it bothers me (hey its your
business) but any first year marketing student will tell you that it costs 100s
even 1000s times less to keep a current customer happy than find a new customer.
Also I assume that you are at least a middle aged person with maturity and to
see comments from you telling your customers to get stuffed if they are not
happy is quite child-like. I am sure there are better ways to say the exact same
thing in a better manner.
the only thing i can see is that maybe its not
the 5-10 emails that you have printed but actually a lot more. which makes me
think WHY? the only answer that i can come up is that maybe you can see the end
of autospeed.
I don't expect my views to be printed (there will be
countless spelling and grammatical errors) but just wanted to express my views.
I still have a while for my subscription to finish, so I will checking regularly
and read the articles.
thankx for reading my rant
Muhammad Khan Niazi
Australia
We have never told readers to get stuffed if
they are not happy. We have said that if you don’t like AutoSpeed, you are not
compelled to subscribe to it, nor even read it.
LSDs
Good day, I've been
subscribing Autospeed magazine for a couple of months now and I'm loving every
bit of it. I'm just wondering would you guys like to do an article on LSD,
more specifically on how it actually works to pull a car out of corner (reaction
time of various LSD), the differences between various LSD and how LSD can work
effectively on a FWD and a RWD. BTW, I have a U13 Bluebird (Aust delivered) with
vicious LSD, hence the interest. Thanks guys and keep up the good work.
:)
Thomas Lee
Australia
Our project EF Falcon is scheduled to get an
LSD. When it is fitted we’ll also do a more wide-ranging story on the
devices.
As
you may have noticed, we’ve now decided to run readers’ emails with spelling
errors, typos, etc, fully intact. Future changes to AutoSpeed will result in
reader comments being published without editing, so we figured everyone may as
well get used to it now!
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