jimjon

is it really that big of an advantage on public roads?

can you turn 4wd off in a scooby?

SC008Y_MAD

iTrader: (5)

YES it is a fantastic adavtange on public roads. Subarus are not 4WD they are AWD and why would you want to turn it off, to make it just 2wd. Read this: AWD and Technology - Subaru Symmetrical AWD | Subaru (UK) Ltd.

STi wanna Subaru

iTrader: (1)

Try pulling out onto a roundabout in a 2WD car when it's a bit damp then try in scoob. Once you get used to being able to hammer it you get a bit of a shock going back to 2WD as you're sat there spinning the wheels

andythejock01wrx

Yep, excellent adavantage, especially if you're not an overly skilled driver !

Check out Audi's in the BTCC a few years ago.

jimjon

i understand the pulling away etc, and in bad weather/road conditions, but once your up and going etc, do you think you'd break traction that often?

i.e: round fast corners?

just everyone rates scoobies on the "twisties" but do they go round a dry tarmac corner much quicker than a well driven 2wd car?

Mangel

Its like traction control............without that crappy judder judder slow you down cut in and out rubbish!!!!

jimjon

i spose you can plant the power on as you leave the corner and not worry about spinning to the other side of road

i've not driven an AWD car before

abc

Going from FWD to AWD takes a bit of getting used to if you're going to get the most out of a Scooby, but once you do, the handling is in a different league: much more fun and more interesting to drive. Having said that, and as some on here have learned to their cost, even a Subaru won't defy the laws of physics!

SC008Y_MAD

iTrader: (5)

In the dry in a scoob you can just floor it around the corner 100+ and the car will not even bat an eye lid were as in a 2wd (fwd or rwd) you would have to crawl around the same courner at say 70mph.

Paulo P

iTrader: (42)

Front wheel drive cars can corner just as well as all wheel drive at those speeds. Lower speed corners is where all wheel drive has an advantage.

jasonius

iTrader: (1)

lol, this is going to be a long one..

Anyone going the offie..?..

andythejock01wrx

If 4wd was just for off-roaders they wouldn't have put it on the X5 !

gpssti4

iTrader: (6)

Exactly as he said. It's the low speed (corners or otherwise) where you need the grip.

Oh, and don't confuse grip with handling. A Honda Civic Type R is a great handling car where as a stand Scoob is at best okay (ish) - but it does have high levels of grip to flatter the average driver.

GC8

This is the hardest fact for most to swallow. An Impreza flatters a driver and too many assume wrongly that theyre highly skilled. This misjudgement is quickly followed by a: 'crashed; whats wrong with my Impreza?' thread. The answer is usually: 'the driver!'!


Simon

Bat-Fink

Also AWD suffer from moretranny losses.

jimjon

thats the other point i was thinking of ^^^^


i drive a corrado vr6 btw

lunar tick

iTrader: (2)

[QUOTE=jimjon]is it really that big of an advantage on public roads?
[QUOTE]

YES - especially in rural Cumbria where the road surfaces resemble Beiruit airport runway and are continually covered in damp/leaves/mud/****/salt (take your pick depending on the season)

stilover

The way to look at it is this.

Take a fairly tight corner on any back road. In a FWD car you wait till the car is out of the corner before giving it the full beans, as full throttle mid corner would provoke Power Understeer (sending you into the path of on coming traffic)

Take the same corner in a RWD car, and you'll have to wait till the car is out of the corner before giving it the full beans, as full throttle mid corner would provoke Power Oversteer (sending the untrained driver into the hedge)

Take the same corner in an AWD/4WD car and at the mid corner point, mash the throttle and the AWD/4WD system will just pull you out of the corner without any fuss. This also gives you an advantage along the straight, as you've exited the corner at a higher speed.

That is traction working for you. However a FWD/RWD/4WD car will all corner at the same speed/G force, as proven by Porsche.
Corner speed is dictated by a) the weight of the car b) the tyres c) the chassis.

A 911 Carrera will corner as fast, and pull the same G force as a Carrera 4. This is based on a constant circle where power is not applied. Add power and the 4WD car will then exit the corner faster as there is no loss of traction through understeer or oversteer.

Jap Import

Agreed.

"my mate showed me what his Impreza can do"

WRONG

"The car showed you what it was capable of doing, including getting you and you mate round that hairpin that nearly killed you both outright"!

Scoob noobs like to think their drivings exceptional, when really it's the car getting them out the ****!

Speaking from experience.

joey_turbo

iTrader: (26)

I did see a vid once of some Kiwi's or Ozzies, that converted a wagon to RWD. It was only a short video, and they managed to wrap it around a tree/lampost.

Bat-Fink

That would've been a very cool car IMO.

Scoobyspanners

AWD (4WD if you like) has its Pros and Cons.

Pros......... You put power down to 4 wheels when accelerating, so more grip than a 2 wheel drive cars of the same BHP and less chance of spinning up the wheels. Most imprezas will understeer (as will most 4WD cars, but this can be adjusted out by electronics or suspension upgrades depending on the age of the car if getting the back end of the car out is you preference) which is safer than having oversteer for the average driver, just back off a little to have the nose tuck back in on corners. This is also true of most Front drive cars too. Off road drive if better then 2 WD cars, but the impreza ain't no ranger rover, so don't expect to climb ever mountain in one!!

Cons......... Weight, lots of drive train components add to the cars mass, the more mass you have to shift the more torque/power you need, plus inertia on corners is higher so the effect of wanting to continue in the same direction is higher (but the Scooby gets around this by having excellent suspension and a low centre of Gravity due to the Boxer Engine/Drive train layout). The power losses will probably be greater to due to the extra number of drive train components and changes in the power line from the Engine to the Wheels compared to a car of same power/torque this is 2WD. Noise, AWD are noisier than 2WD cars due to the extra mechanicals werring around in the drive train. Transmission shunt, due to the design of the car transmission slack or movement in the components between the engine and drive wheels can be greater, more noticeable at low speeds.

The impreza, overall, is and excellent package. Top notch suspension and drive layout combined with a relatively low COG, bags of power/torque and a 4 seater or estate than can blow away cars £15-20K more expensive than it! One word of advice though, if you do have an off in one due to pushing it beyond its limits it will be a BIG off due to higher speeds and conditions then with a normal car. Where a normal motor may say understeer/oversteer off at a corner at say 30 MPH the scooby will let go at say 40 MPH, for example. And the turning circle is a bit on the large side too compared to some of the other cars that I have owned in the past..........can make parking in tight spaces a pain! That said of the cars I have had it is by far the best (previous cars..........Morris 1100, MK 1 Escort 1300XL, MK1 Cav 1.6, Triumph TR7, BMW 728, XR4i 2.8, Opel Manta GTE, Lancia Delta HF Turbo, MK3 Cav SRi 2.0 130 BHP and that's the ones I can remember!! ).

andythejock01wrx

C'mon man, be serious ! How can you even suggest that any Scoob is better than a Mk3 Cavalier SRi !!

B9GLY

[quote=stilover]The way to look at it is this.

Take a fairly tight corner on any back road. In a FWD car you wait till the car is out of the corner before giving it the full beans, as full throttle mid corner would provoke Power Understeer (sending you into the path of on coming traffic)

Take the same corner in a RWD car, and you'll have to wait till the car is out of the corner before giving it the full beans, as full throttle mid corner would provoke Power Oversteer (sending the untrained driver into the hedge)

Take the same corner in an AWD/4WD car and at the mid corner point, mash the throttle and the AWD/4WD system will just pull you out of the corner without any fuss. This also gives you an advantage along the straight, as you've exited the corner at a higher speed.[quote=stilover]

not really true, a scoob will generally still understeer and say an evo would prob oversteer, or at best you would do a 4 wheel drift!

it all depends on the level of grip on the road, the power output of the cars, etc etc, however 4wd has more grip in general than 2 wheel drive.

RedScoob

Another thing that really sells the AWD to me is the stability that you get when all four wheels are driven. They're much less likely to lock an inside wheel under braking or understeer/ oversteer when you lift off the throttle because all four wheels are being forced to rotate at similar speeds. If you're going round a corner on the limit of grip and you lift off (the usual reaction if something happens in front of you...), you'll get oversteer in a RWD and understeer (to a lesser extent) in a FWD. AWD is just more stable when grip runs out.

Tuts

You will probably get lift off oversteer in all of them....

Paulo P

iTrader: (42)

One thing that I'd like to point out is that a 4 wheel drive or an all wheel drive (whatever the difference is) is only any use under power. Once no power is applied it's the same as any car and will behave in the same way. Many 4x4 owners forget that as I found out a few years ago when some idiot stuffed his 4x4 in to a ditch. He came round a bend at 40 mph in the snow on my side of the road, he saw me and swerved and spun it into a ditch He'd forgotten that although he could pull away stopping was another matter

andythejock01wrx

Yep, as soon as that clutch goes down its no longer 4wd !!!

hades

They go round dry corners a lot better than many2wd cars - they have a fairly good chassis, low centre of gravity due to flat 4 engine, tend to have large fairly grippy tyres etc. However, they are still a bit on the heavy side, and aren't the final word in chassis design, so some 2wd will slaughter a Subaru on a dry tarmac corner.

So compared to say a Nissan Almera 1.4, yes they go round dry corners much quicker, and they'll out-corner most "normal" family cars fairly comfortably. Compared to say a Caterham superlight, they are nowhere near as quick, and they'll lose to a lot of "proper" sports cars in dry bends.

Admittedly in low speed corners, traction is an issue so the Scoob will generally do better relative to a 2wd car than it would in high speed corners.

andythejock01wrx

[QUOTE=hades] However, they are still a bit on the heavy side, and aren't the final word in chassis design, so some 2wd will slaughter a Subaru on a dry tarmac corner.

Compared to say a Caterham superlight, they are nowhere near as quick, and they'll lose to a lot of "proper" sports cars in dry bends.

QUOTE]

Maybe a bit unfair to compare a Caterham with a Scoob (power to weight !).
Note that the thread was about the advantages of 4wd, not whether some cars are faster than Scoobs.

What sports cars that have a similar power to weight ratio as a scoob will beat one round the twisties on a rough surface ? Handling matters but so does outright grip.