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I have the pleasure of driving a 2.0 normally aspirated Subaru Legacy Estate at the moment.
I'd like to sharesome findings.
It's dull. As ditch water. To explain this I need to fully explain the physics behind the dullness. Get your cuppa and read on. It's gonnas be a lengthy one.
When a front wheel drive car drives straight, it can scrabble if the power is put down too harshly. If you ask too much of the tyres, they spin. Sometimes the body of the car moves sideways a tad as the grip totally disappears and the cars slides sideways a bit to whichever bit tarmac has most grip. No great revelation. It even follows gravity and white lines.
When a rear wheel drive car drives straight, the rear gets a lot of body weight transfer as the car squats and it puts the power down better, but can still wheel spin. It also wriggles a tad sometimes. At the back. Same as the front driver-- but the back end.
In a 4x4, all that happens in what?
In THEORY you accelerate? But in practice you just don't go any faster. Why? Cos the car does weigh a certain amount, and the engine only has a certain amount of torque, the tyres just won't spin, so the engine just....bogs down
It's so boring.
But it's also slow. Not in the wet,I grant....it'll pul out on an uphill junction just like its dry. So it's safe, but it's dull.
Very.
Next: The clutch gets battered a tad. Because, simply put, it is the ONLY thing that will give up/let go/surrender to the grip. The tyres won't let go, and the engine does have SOME grunt. So for a split second, on each gear change, the clutch slips a tad more than a normal car.
But worst is the best bit. Corners.
Why worst? Why is it so bad to have 4x4 in corners? Well, its not BAD, per se, it's just....
let's try this another way. When we were kids, we ran around in the playground, arms out, making "weeeeeee" noises and pretending to be planes. We swooped and soared, in 2-dimensions
But sometimes we just ran in circles. I used to....with my best trainers on, I'd run in circles, getting tighter and tighter, my head leaning inward....in summer on hot tarmac, with brand new trainers, I could run in a tight enough circle that I could LEAN INWARD. My Dad was well impressed.
But there was only SO fast I could go. I could not physically run in circles as fast as I could run in a straight line. The inertia...the centrifugal force STOPPED me going so fast in a tight circle.
Back to cars.....
in a front wheel drive car, the front tyres slide outward. (lets not go into too much detail....the fronts slide wide for now), and one tyres spins away the extra power. With a limited slip diff , if we go too tight, BOTH tyres spin it all away, and we go REALLY wide (if we have tried to go too tight.)
in a rear wheel drive car the inner wheel spins the power away, and if the car's sideways intertia is big, the arse breaks away.
Do you know what happens in a 2.0 non turbo 4x4 Estate?
Nothing. It just wont go any faster. The tyres won't let go. The clutch is up and wont let go. The engine doesnt have enough grunt to make either of the other things let go. You just go round like that.
Dull
As ditch water.
NOW FOR HEAVENS SAKE don't think this means you can go round corners at 500 mph . You can't. I am on about ACCELERATING OUT OF TIGHT CORNERS...the rally car thing....the race track day thing.....
flat along a straight knowing the roads gonna go gently left and then 180 tight right....you've got the ball of your foot on the brakes and as you go into the left, you push firm and hard, you heel skipping out to blip the throttle at the down-changes, and as you flick the wheel right, dropping to second gear, the semi exciting flat-4 Subaru noise making it through the bulkhead to yuor straining ears, you plant the power in, and go round the 180.....
at the same speed....ok there's no throttle balance to do....no fine tuning of the input, but likewise, its only as the wheel straightens that the speed picks up.
It's dull. I hate it.
Roundabouts.....just accelrate and go round until you find the perfect balance of turning radius (tightness) and steering input. I mean, it will drift wide, cos the car weighs a lot, but it wont go FASTER....
it just won't.
Dull.
as ditchwater.
Legacy for Sale. 3 carefull drivers and one mad bored one
Originally Posted by Advice Trinity by Knoxville
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