Talk:Front-engine, front-wheel-drive layout

Horsepower limit

"As a rule of thumb 150hp is the limit for a FF car of average weight"

Any basis for this claim? Seems like an arbitrary number to me.--RA64 20:31, 25 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Seems bogus to me. A modern BMW MINI Cooper S is and FF car that has 169 hp (stock) but with the JCW factory-installed tuning kit, goes up to about 215hp, there are aftermarket options to get you to 245 hp and still be street-legal. Is it of "average weight"? I don't know what we are taking the average of - so it's hard to know. At 2600lbs, I'd say it was below average weight for a typical street-car. My "daily driver" is a Cooper'S with after-market mods that are roughly equivelent to the JCW tuning kit - and it's VERY drivable at 215hp. SteveBaker 05:42, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Torque versus power

It is inaccurate to describe a driveshaft as "... providing power to the rear wheels" It transmits torque to rear wheels. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.13.142.150 (talk) 20:24, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Clarification needed

Could someone with knowledge in this area make it clear whether the power is going to a single front wheel or to both? In the references, a distinction is made for two-wheel drive. By implication, front-wheel drive and rear-wheel drive are not two-wheel drives, and the power is therefore going to one wheel. Is this correct? 19:14, 2 January 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.239.246.66 (talk)

The sentence: "Hence the driveshafts to the wheels are longer on one side than the other, something which was avoided in the past." implies that the 1959 Mini and related vehicles such as the 1100/1300 and the 1800 have equal length drive shafts.

The subsequent sentence: "For this reason, the Issigonis design (in which the two driveshafts are equal in length) is still preferred by many performance drivers and accounts for much of the Mini's success in rally and short-track circuit racing." explicitly states that the Mini and its cousins have equal length driveshafts.

They don't.

What most people think of as torque steer is in fact tugging of the steering wheel when accelerating under conditions of marginal grip when the front wheels do not have zero scrub radius, and hence each pull slightly to one side. As long as both wheels pull equally, the effect balances. As soon as either wheel loses traction, the steering wheel is pulled to one side. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.63.58.240 (talk) 12:57, 31 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Citations for Physical Laws?

Is it really necessary to provide citations for the tagged material in the intro section concerning why powerful cars usually don't use FR layouts? Weight *is* transferred to the rear wheels during acceleration, and the statement "while unloading the front wheels and sharply reducing their grip" follows directly from the preceding statement; if weight is transferred to the rear wheels, then the front wheels are unloaded. The next statement, "effectively putting a cap on the amount of power which could realistically be utilized" also follows directly as a fact, if the first two statements are true (which they are). It looks like someone went "tag-crazy," but I'm not too keen on removing Citation Needed tags without providing citations or consulting with the wiki-community. Tha Pyngwyn (talk) 20:01, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think all the citation tags are absurd, and I'm removing some of them. When a car accelerates, weight shifts to the back. Brake and weight shifts to the front. I don't think it requires exhaustive physics explanation. Sugaki (talk) 21:33, 6 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Topology

< There are four different arrangements for this basic layout >

The text that follows - five paragraphs under three bold-face headings - doesn't make clear what the four different arrangements are. Has some structure gone missing?

(It seems to me that there are at least five

2 transverse engine

offset gearbox - e.g. Issigonis

inline gearbox - e.g. Giacosa

2 longitudinal engine with in-line gearbox

front engine - e.g. Audi/Subaru

rear engine - e.g. Cord/Renault

1 longitudinal engine with offset gearbox - Oldsmobile/Saab)

86.181.177.63 (talk) 05:15, 26 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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Front Wheel Drive means Front Wheel Drive

People like front-wheel drive so much that they react against anything that's different from what they're accustomed to.

Nearly every front-engine, REAR-wheel drive car from the first Mercedes to the Second World War had the front axle forward of the whole engine. This wasted a tremendous amount of space, which you can observe by noticing that for such cars the hub of the steering wheel is at the mid-point of the wheelbase. Yet such cars are not called "MID-engined, rear-wheel-drive cars". It took the Chrysler Airflow in 1936 to push the engine over the front axle, a bit earlier than the other manufacturers. Then that became standard.

When the Cord and the Ruxton of the 1920s came out, sure they had the engine even further back from where it was for a rear-wheel-drive car, because the gearbox could only be connected to the engine. The advantage was that customers admired such a long hood ; the problem with such real mid-enginedness was not getting enough weight on the driving wheels, making it actually unable to get enough traction on ice. Space wastage was was alleviated a bit when, after a lapse of production, the Cord 810 had the gearbox forward of the front axle, the engine behind it, and the differential, of course, in place of what was once a solid front axle.

There's a difference between "old" and "new", and "old-style" and "new-style". Sure, the original Mini is for many people really "old", but it's the second car with the "new-style" arrangement : transverse engine, gearbox under it.

The arrangement of the parts of this article should be : 1) early front-wheel drive cars, all examples ; 2) all transverse-engined cars with the gearbox under the engine (with a note on the Fiat that introduced more torsional stiffness on the longer half-shaft to equalize power when turning) ; 3) exceptions such as the Audi that moved the engine to the rear for better steering, and the GM Toronado and Eldorado.

One does not say that a non-transverse-engined front-wheel-drive car " is not 'really' a front-wheel-drive car ". It's just a design that differs from what you're used to. "Front-wheel-drive car" does not necessarily mean, nor is it short for, "front-wheel-drive, transverse-engined car".173.162.253.101 (talk) 19:40, 23 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"Front-wheel drive shafts" section needs diagram, possibly its own article

(I'm writing as a reader and a learner, not as an editor. I don't know anything really about this topic - just trying to learn.)

I came to this article because I want to learn how front-wheel drive works, its parts and mechanisms. The "Front-wheel drive shafts" (sub)section of this article has some of the information I was looking for, I think, but a good diagram of the layouts of parts and mechanisms described (like those that can be found in many related auto-mechanical articles) would really help me understand things better. The language is a bit technical too, but I don't know if that can be avoided. (I look stuff up as I go, and I learn more than I intended.)

The Front-wheel drive article has hardly anything that describes how front-wheel drive works. (It's almost entirely historical in nature.) Neither of these articles seems to link to anything more specific, and maybe that's what's really needed - an article on the design of front-wheel drive mechanisms, including trans-axles and other unique layouts and their functions. What do y'all think? And perhaps suspension differences? (That's what got me here. I was trying to learn about the suspension in my new car, but the McPherson strut article only described its layout and function in a rear-wheel drive configuration. That most likely makes the article more understandable to people like me. That's good in the abstract, but everything is front-wheel drive nowadays, in the US anyway, so its real-world application is limited.)

I know WP has people who volunteer to create computer-generated images for articles, including technical images. If any of you who edit this article agrees with my request here, would you mind making that request? I know almost nothing about this topic, other than what I've read here, so I'm not sure I'm the person who should make that kind of request. I wouldn't know what to ask for, and I have no idea if anyone would agree to its suitability for this article rather than the creation of a new article. Thanks! Dcs002 (talk) 02:07, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Lack of citations, and irrelevant content

Serve lack of citations within most of the article, and a decent amount of irrelevant content, that needs to be removed.

E.g -

"Mid-engine / Front-wheel drive

The earliest such arrangement was not technically FWD, but rather mid-engine, front-wheel-drive layout (MF). The engine was mounted longitudinally (fore-and-aft, or north-south) behind the wheels, with the transmission ahead of the engine and differential at the very front of the car. With the engine so far back, the weight distribution of such cars as the Cord L-29 was not ideal; the driven wheels did not carry a large enough proportion of weight for good traction and handling. The 1934 Citroën Traction Avant solved the weight distribution issue by placing the transmission at the front of the car with the differential between it and the engine. Combined with the car's low slung unibody design, this resulted in handling which was remarkable for the era. Renault is the most recent user of this format - having used it on the Renault 4, and the first generation Renault 5, but it has since fallen out of favor since it encroaches into the interior space."

This entire section needs to be deleted, and/or moved to its relevant article.

The section implies that the "earliest arrangement" was a Mid-engine, but yet was described as a FF. However, the fact that the first FF, or perhaps better stated the first cars(?) were mid engines is not in dispute, or implied to be in dispute within any of the article?

This entire, uncited paragraph just needs to be deleted, this information would probably be better suited to the article/topic of mid engine configurations. I don't necessarily dispute the information, but it's just not relevant enough to be within the article for Front-engine, front-wheel-drive layout. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BattleCrap (talk • contribs) 13:11, 12 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

What metal is in the 2008 Pontiac Grand Prix V6 motor and transmission.

On the transferse motor. Mike bush4 (talk) 13:38, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]