@shadowfax Please read…“with rwd, you never loose steerage under power like you do with fwd” no one is saying you can’t loose steerage with rwd. What I am saying is that when the power is on. Fwd begins to plow and adding weight in a fwd truck, exacerbates the problem. No matter what you say, hill climbing shifts the weight off the front wheels and the more weight in the back the worse it is. When slippery, fwd wheels that spin lose ALL control while rwd that spins, still retains steerage up front. It’s why race cars are rwd and the best handling cars in the world are rwd (. Or awd) It’s why AWD cars with computer management shift more of the drive forces to the rear wheels when cornering, accelerating and hill climbing…all to enhance traction and retain steerage and reduce under steer or plowing. With a fwd truck loaded down, you are perpetually in a reduced steering mode with no way out. With loads on hills, it’s worse. Like I said. Flatlanders just don’t get it and driving around on dry paved roads in lightly loaded cars on hills is not what we are talking about. It’s heavily loaded fwd vehicles on reduced traction roads (snow, gravel, mudd) on these inclines that render them marginal at best, and totally useless under most conditions. Once a fwd vehicle begins to spin it’s tires, it loose ALL steerage while a spinning rwd vehicle still retains i it with the front wheels which are not spinning…as there is more traction Trucks make this comparison more valid.
"They do make fwd trucks"
Tell me who and where they are made and how much of a load they were designed to carry !
Dagosa said:
Once a fwd vehicle begins to spin it’s tires, it loose ALL steerage while a spinning rwd vehicle still retains i it with the front wheels which are not spinning…as there is more traction Trucks make this comparison more valid.
You fwd pick up truck truck fanatics are really groping. From taking everything out of context without quoting me directly by making your own statements and attributing them to me to down right making things up just keep harping on the ridiculous. This appears to be an overloaded tractor trailer rig Not a pick up truck which is what the discussion is about. Dah. You can cantilever any vehicle with improper over loading beyond the rear axle or the excessive torque required to move it at the rear wheels which lifts the front end. Imagine if this truck in the video were fwd… Another big Dah. Why don’t you just drop one out of a plane and use that as an example of poor rwd traction as it falls…I’m still waiting for a video that shows a fwd pick uptruckANYWHERE actually climbing a slippery hill with a load of styrofoam, or the hot air…;() we seem to be getting.
Btw, the driver still managed to steer the rig up the hill…imagine if the rig were fwd !!! Using vehicles as examples to boost your false claims that aren’t even oick ups is desperation now? You guys are wearing out your “google” search button trying to actually find any fwd pick up trucks that can work as “real” trucks.
Dagosa
I apologise if I have offended You, I have no reason to do so and it was not my intention.
I prefer rwd, I have a rwd “truck” and wouldn’t change it for a fwd. I have driven many fwd pick-up trucks/boxvans and have had them loaded to - lets just say - to the limits and have had no problems neither with driveability nor with reliability. And yes, we do have snow and hills in Denmark too. I believe that people should by whatever suits them best as what would be perfect for one might be a crappy thing for another.
The link was only meant as a funny thing and the first time I saw it is more than 6 months ago.
Again, sorry for ticking You off.
Klaus
When driving any front drive vehicle, you don’t keep your foot on the power when you lose traction as you steer. You disconnect the engine from the drive wheels. Of course the ultimate hill climb capability is reduced, but you still have your steering. If you insist on keeping your foot on the power as the front tires start to slip, then you can plow straight into whatever you’re steering away from. As I stated in another post, the Tundra that I drove began doing donut as soon as the automatic responded to the throttle and I couldn’t release the throttle soon enough. I was lucky that there wasn’t anything next to me.
Oversteer and understeer result from the geometry of an automobile’s design, load and driving conditions. Within its design limitations the VW Rabbit truck seemed to function well. Any vehicle can be made to look inadequate by operating it beyond its design limitations. But I don’t recall ever using the pickup at my shop to haul anything that was beyond the capabily of a Rabbit. Of course at home hauling 12 foot treated posts is a pain in an F-150 and might not be possible on a Rabbit. But how does anyone haul 12 foot limber on a small trailer?
@dagosa Please read… “Sure you do. You just lose it under different conditions. Talk to someone with a Lamborghini Countach some time and ask them how well it steers at full throttle.”
Full throttle = under power.
I know what you’re saying. You’re not wrong. But neither am I.
No matter what you say, hill climbing shifts the weight off the front wheels and the more weight in the back the worse it is.
This is also true. Where you get off track is where you assume that it matters outside of extreme circumstances. Much like most people with a RWD vehicle will not experience the full throttle steering loss that someone in an insane, abnormal car like a Countach will, a normal person hauling a load up a normal mountain road is not going to lose the ability to steer or move forward just because their truck is front wheel drive.
I lived at the top of a mountain peak. It was a 3000+ foot climb from the valley to my house. My neighbor had one of those VW Rabbit trucks, which as we know is FWD. They never died. They never failed to get up the mountain. They hauled crap in it all the time. And for the record, yes, we got snow, and lots of it.
Again, we are talking about normal people hauling things on normal roads - not extreme endurance hill climbs up Kilimanjaro.
"They do make fwd trucks"
Tell me who and where they are made and how much of a load they were designed to carry !
I alread did, but it’s a few pages back:
The Chevrolet Montana (Tornado in Mexico to avoid confusion with the Pontiac minivan) is front wheel drive. It’s been on sale since 2003 and is currently in its second generation. 1620 pounds.
The Ram 700/Fiat Strada is front wheel drive. It’s just come onto the market and is on sale now. 1554 pounds.
I don’t know your requirements, Kevin, but the 2013 Ram 1500 Tradesman with the 6-cyl starts at $17,600 at a dealer in my area. Take off $1000 for a private sale, and take off more for mileage over 30,000.
@shadowfax
We aren’t hoping to see any utube accounts of the Tornado conquering any snowy inclines with a load on back in Mexico. When lightly loaded, a fwd truck (or van) is no better, no worse then a minivan properly loaded. We all know they are perfectly adequate in mild conditions. That’s not the debate. The original supposition was that a fwd truck would have better traction then a rwd truck. Well, starting off on level ground with no loads, sure. But use it like a truck and the entire argument for having one because it’s better in all the conditions they both face, “melts away” . In my heart of hearts, I feel we are a generation of drivers who have been weaned on fwd cars and few of us know the difference. My last statements on this matter are simply this. There will be no massed produced light fwd trucks designed to replace the use that rwd trucks unless physics is altered and the world is upside down. As we speak, the 1/12 mile road to my house on a small mountain is snow covered. I have all season AT tires on my truck and my winters on rims are in the back waiting for the change over tomorrow. Along with the cap and the tube sand, there is over 600 lbs of weight in the back. I drove in and out yesterday in 2wd because the drive wheels are on the back. With this nominal load, I could never have done it in a fwd anything. I know that because of the storm, a fwd nothing on our road ever ventured out. My neighbors are too smart…It’s been fun !
@dagosa My supposition was never that FWD has better traction than RWD. My supposition is that there’s nothing wrong with a FWD light duty truck in the situations that people buy FWD light duty trucks for. Perfectly adequate is all anyone reasonably expects of light duty trucks. If they needed better than perfectly adequate, they’d get something more robust. These things are meant to haul a yard of mulch, or take a bunch of bags of yard waste to the compost pile, or maybe haul the lawn mower into the shop for a tuneup.
Anyone looking to do very heavy work is not going to be well served by buying a small truck, but then not everyone who needs a little hauling capacity and doesn’t want to worry about tearing up the interior works in construction. Small trucks, FWD or not, fill a need for some people. Small FWD trucks fill that need just as well as RWD in most situations, because most situations do not involve hauling very heavy loads up very steep hills.
For what I use my small pickup for, I could do exactly the same work with a front wheel drive version. It wouldn’t make a single difference, even if I lived in the mountains again.
Arguing that small trucks of any drivetrain configuration cannot do the same heavy hauling as large trucks is like arguing that minivans cannot beat a Ferrari around the race track. While both statements are true, both statements also ignore the fact that they are utterly irrelevant. People who buy minivans are not looking to race Ferraris in them, and people who buy small trucks are not looking to haul an entire building to the top of a snowy mountain in one trip.
There is little difference between small trucks and the intermediate that exist today as far as capacity is concerned . My small 80 's Toyota trucks were rated half ton as is the intermediate I have now with the same bed size length. With just five to 700 lbs in the back of it in the 80s vs a my neighbor’s Rabbitt fwd truck , the difference in tracton is substantial on hills and acceleration as well as handling in favor of rwd. He had a business and routinely tried to carry small loads well less then a half ton to just 300lbs with the idea it would be good in snow. It wasn’t ! Now if you want to argue smaller loads then that, you aren’t even talking trucks of any consequence. Get a horse . You may have not been talking this issue difference, but I have in order to stay true to op, that he wants a small fwd truck because they have better traction. Staying true to that concept, small / medium or large, it doesn’t matter . If you use it like a truck and carry weight, rwd handles better and has better traction.
Guess why rwd pu outsell every other vehicle including fwd cars. People want trucks and they don’t make fwd. Some one somewhere, some how decided there was not a market here in the US. I think they know what they are doing when they refuse to make something that won’t sell. There is no demand for these things ! You are in a minority…a very small one. If they come out with a fwd truck, like the previous attempts at a fwd truck, a few will buy them…once.
I really preferred my rear wheel drive Ford Aerostar minivan to the front wheel drive minivans that replaced the Aerostar for carrying a full load of passengers with their musical instruments. I think that if I were to purchase a small pickup truck, I would want rear wheel drive as opposed to front wheel drive for the same reason.
Front wheel drive is evil incarnate to many but despite its limitations the benefits often make the system very practical. Soccer mom vans are much more convenient on FWD chassis. And for a great many car(van) buyers there is little thought to why one van’s floor is much lower to the ground and easier to get kids and groceries loaded and unloaded, they just choose the convenient one. Can you blame them?
Fwd is definitely a positive when it comes to space utilization. Car makers and drivers give up handling, towing and load carrying for convenience and economy. In trucks though, especially those with frames, the drive shaft is enclosed in the frame somewhat and increasing the ride hight to accommodate it increases ground clearance as well. No problem. No one is saying there are not practical uses for fwd cars and minivans designed more for passengers then heavy cargo and towing. After all, when I struggled to get up a steep gravel hill in my fwd SAAB, I just had the passengers in the rear get out and carry the outboard in the trunk while I drove up it. Unloading a fwd truck at the bottom of a long steep slippery hill is too much of a compromise and barreling through a corner with gobs of under steer when loaded while climbing is also unsafe. Big difference between minivans ( that’s why they are called mini, it’s mini weight, less then 900lbs) and cargo vans and pick up you are going to use as one and not just carry grass clippings alone. I guess there is indeed a market out there for fwd pick ups used to carry a lawn mower and styrofoam sheets. But the market is really small.
Besides, as. I said before. We have little fwd trucks of sorts…they are called compact SUVs. Why have an open bed that Carries minimal weight when you can have as much tall space by plopping the rear seats down. Fwd truck proponents are looking for a solution to a problem when that solution already exists. Compact SUVs are one of the most popular categories of vehicles made…and small truck and fwd truck owner wannabes, take heart. They are in every car show room. You want room for stinky trash and lighter loads of gravel and sand that any car can handle ? Get a utility trailer. Life is simple. You have a low load loading hight of 1000 lbs plus of crappolla.
I’m not sure I agree with FWD having poor handling. In my 45 years ago I got my first FWD car, an Austin America. Handling was terrific. A friend had a bugeye Sprite, and my Austin had better handling. The trick is to keep your foot in it if the back end breaks loose. The front end just pulls the rear end through. I scared the day lights out of a few friends in the back seat when I went around corners at 25 or so. The back end would break loose and waggle while they bounced from wall to wall. But the FWD would pull us through. A bit later, I had a VW Rabbit and it handled very well in snow.
Everything is relative and JT, you are taking it out of context. This is a truck discussion…not a compact car discussion. When LOADED AND UNDER POWER as you need in a truck, fwd is lacking. Comparing one fwd car to other fwd cars and high center of gravity trucks, fwd can handle better. When coasting, fwd should handle as well as any other compatibly balanced and suspended rwd /AWD automobile. Fwd handling is perfectly suitable for the average consumer not carrying cargo or having to climb a hill or accelerate and make a corner at the same time. But if you need or want the best of handling in any class of vehicles, you do rwd or AWD. As far as snow is concerned, everything, rwd, fwd you name it…takes a back seat to AWD.
Good point, dagosa. The only pickup I’ve driven was a RAM 1500 crew cab with a hemi. It was fine in the good weather as a rental. I did have trouble parking it. I have no need or desire for a truck ( too big).