FWD highway dominance- Fact or Fiction? Options

[KOU In3]

OK, it's come up indirectly a number of times but am I the only one that questions this whole FWD highway ownership thing? It seems like it's become an accepted fact that the FWD's are 50% faster from a roll.

Yes, the AWD weigh 400 or so pounds more.

Yes, there is an AWD drivetrain loss.

BUT, turning the AWD components only saps power to a point. I'm not sure I buy into the hype of 400 flywheel HP turning into 300whp as compared to it only losing half that amount in a FWD.

At stock turbo power levels yes, I can see the difference there but when you start really modding things I'm less certain.

This is when I'm waiting to hear the FFF cars (factory freak FWD cars chime in) with some arguements.

*Beware, the "Marucs at 12.6" arguement I plan on countering with though. *

[natedogg]

A post of mine from a couple of years ago on this subject. This is also after I had recently destroyed a turbocharged integra from a roll on the interstate in my 16g'd AWD.

This is when Josh had his fairly well modified fwd.

Funny that you mention logging Josh's car though. Because that is exactly the reason I was out at his place. We tuned out most of his knock until he was seeing 17-18 deg. of timing throughout. There is no doubt it was running strong. He's the more experienced driver too, though when racing in a straight line from a roll I don't think much driving skill is required. I went all the way to 110 mph still pulling on him. Now maybe if we had shifted to 5th and gone to 140 he would have started reeling me in. I have too often heard that all things being equal a FWD will pull on an AWD from a roll. Well in this instance all things were not equal. Josh's FWD had mods on me and I still pulled on him from a roll. Hence my reasoning that drivetrain loss becomes negligible once an AWD DSM starts getting modded more and more.

If you think about it, it makes sense. As you start modding a car you don't lose more horsepower due to drivetrain loss in proportion to the HP that you add. That would mean that though it took say 40 HP of drivetrain loss on a 200 HP AWD to get the tires moving on a stock car (assuming 20% drivetrain loss), it now takes 80 HP of drivetrain loss on a modded 400 HP AWD. I can't believe that drivetrain loss would increase linearly with HP. It doesn't make sense. I think the percentage of drivetrain loss decreases as you start modding a car. I think it remains a fixed number of 40 HP or maybe increases a little bit due to increased heat dissipation due to more power moving through the flywheel and drivetrain. So, accordingly, the 400 HP car would have say 10-11% drivetrain loss now.

Let's do the same thing with a FWD car assuming 10% drivetrain loss. 200 HP * 0.1 = 20 HP drivetrain loss. With my reasoning the 400 HP FWD should still be seeing only about 20 HP or slightly more of drivetrain loss at 400 HP. That translates to about 5-6% drivetrain loss. So now on two equally powerful modded AWD and FWD the drivetrain loss differs between the two by 5% rather than 10%. This difference will continue to shrink as both cars increase in HP.