I mean it's really hard to put a power of 240-300 hp on the front wheels because of the traction problem. When a fwd car accelerates the weight distribuates on the rear, the frant has to actually pull the whole body and so the front tires can suddenly loose traction (superspin in vane). Dispite that alfa romeo managed that with the 156 gta (and 156 GTAm for connoseurs :wink: ) and that's way i admire this brand so much...anyway people what do you think? what are your opinnions abut the fwd under "heavy stress"? what woul you recomand to keep the wheels on the ground? i heard about a peugeot 607 pesalorro or smth like that anyway a concept with 400hp on the front wheels :shock:

It's not THAT difficult... Anyway you're right, RWD is better for high PS.

I cant see anyone putting 400BHP in a FWD car.
I think 200BHP is the limit (the alfa just exceeds that) for FWD. Because after that the handling is horrible, with buckets of understeer.

Theres the handling 'limit' and then theres the mechanical limit - with FWD, the front wheels need to turn, undulate, and turn - which puts alot of stress on components never mind making thing comlicated.

the handling is horrible[quote]
I heard about smth like "torque steering" like a horrible nightmare that produces when there are lots of hp on the front wheels!
Can anyone explain what it means? :?

its very hard to explain - but when a FWD car has power applied to the front wheels.
It is caused by and varies with the size of the kingpin inclination. - the angle the wishbone makes witht the horizontal.
The larger the angle the bigger the force.

<you may have to read this a few times i cant word it any better>

The force is caused because the upper arm of the wishbone is connected at a point infront of the center of the wheel. - therefore the power in the wheels 'grabs' the ground at a point not at the center, this causes a moment (rotation) and therefore the wheels will try to turn.
You can lessen this effect by having a double wishbone i believe.

The Focus RS suffered from it, i.e. powerful and FWD.

well you can have alot of hp on front wheel drive but what you have to do is learn to work with it. if you floor it on take off with 500 to the front wheels. good bye tires not to mention clutch but. if you lightly push the throttle down you could keep it from burning the tire by letting them gradualy grip but the understeer will be terrible so you will have to work with it or dont put your hp up that high unless you like wobble wheels making you look like your a drunk driver. :lol:

yeah for instance a stock civic front axle can only take 200hp for more you need to modify it, i think its the smae for most fwd cars

the handling is horrible[quote]
I heard about smth like "torque steering" like a horrible nightmare that produces when there are lots of hp on the front wheels!
Can anyone explain what it means? :?

Mallon got a bit too technical, torque steer is present in every fwd cars, even my old 1.6 escort suffered it in the 1 ~ 2 shift or at sprinting off the line, you just accelerate too much, and that makes the steering wheel wo turn a bit to the right i think, but the car had only 115hp, with more horsepower, worse torque steer, like the new maxima, if you dont get the lsd, you 've got to always use both hands at the wheel, otherwise, you could change lanes without commanding that.

Torque steer, is the pull you feel under hard acceleration, nothing else

Mallon got a bit too technical

he asked why and i told him! :D

oh it definately be done!!! this is a qoute from a good friend of mine. he has a 2000 civic si with a built b16 :wink:

Props to Holeshot racing! New dyno #s with ITR cams 616whp/374ft-lb torque
Well I have always ran stock 2000 Si cams which in the VTEC world are the MILDEST cams out, lowest lift and duration. Alot of people praise the GSR cams which tony1 was said that Jotech ran also and were great, I have always wanted to run ITR cams in my car to see if they worked, well talking to Tony about 2 months ago on PM on here he told my set up would benefit greatly from some ITR cams, he had done research and tests and these would work for me. Well I picked some up recently and threw them in last nigh, took a test drive and my Butt Dyno seriously told me they were good for 20-30whp. The VTEC kicked in so much harder and the car lurched harder forward, I spun tires up high in 2nd gear before but when I installed these they just ROASTED!!!!!!!!!! Well previously I had made 581.9whp and 380 ft-lb torque with stock Si cams and a ported head with oversized valves and milled, my CR was 10.4:1 , a couple of blown gaskets due to over unshrouding of the valves. I swapped a stock head on with Skunk2 valvesprings and retainers and threw it on, CR is now at 9.5:1. Well I went to adyno contest about 2-3 weeks ago and it made 573whp and 355 ft-lb torque 28psi. Only change since then was these ITR cams, they are pre 2000-2001 ITR cams (less duration 3 degrees). We put the car on the dyno with the same old plugs from 3 weeks earlier ran it and it made 593whp and 365ft-lb torque, so I said damn the cams were good for 20 whp and 10 ft-lbs just by themselves. We then changed the NGK 8 heat range plugs to some brand new NGK 9 heat range and the car cooled for about 10 minutes, ran it again and it made 616.7whp and 374.3 ft-lb torque. A friend watched the boost gauge and confirmed it was only about 27-28psi max. I am very very very STOKED about this. I plan to run the car on Sunday at a track still open, we shall see since it calls for rain. Oh also when I made 573whp we ran the car to 8700rpm, tonigh the 593whp run was about 9200rpm and the 616whp run was 9500rpm, I checked the print out for each RPM and at 8700 rpm it made 600.7whp which is 23whp more just from the cams. The additional whp was due to the extra RPMs, It still makes power at 9500 and climbing so I plan to run it up to possibly 9800-10,000RPM.

Props to Greg from Holeshot Racing for letting me get on the dyno on such short notice!! Greg is da BEST! Take your car to Holeshot they have a really nice dyno and shop , he would like to see more people show up to the shop, Address and phone # on the dyno chart BTW! Also MAD props to Shad from Abacus racing for tuning my car previously, he wants to retune with these new cams to see what we can do, maybe some torque! Seth for all his machine work, Chuck at Abacus Racing. Millenium Autosports MAD props for all the parts and partial sponsorship, without you guys I would be POORER than I am now.

Here in Greece there are many FWD cars with over 300hp presented in magazines with no problem. In my city there is a VW Golf IV with 440hp and a Seat Leon with 400hp, both of them come in my uncle's gas station and they have never mention any serious problems. Also Novitec has a package for 147 GTA which inceases the power to 350hp, but i believe that it will have new data on the ASR sensor.

Beleive it or not, there is somewhat of a limit of HP that you can induce in a fwd. The brand new 2004 Acura TL has about 270 hp in it, and that's the most that Acura can add to it on that fwd platform.

are u sure? they are surely going to release a Type S version in the coming years and that will be over 270

there are even FWD drag cars that push 1000Hp or more like this pontiac sunfire drag car http://www.ultimatecarpage.com/frame.mv?file=car.mv&num=1666