RWD conversion

[Mike-92RT]

i was just wondering what would i have to do in order to convert my FWD stealth to a RWD?

would i have to bolt the AWD stuff up, and just take out the front axles?

[IPD]

are you joking? isn't this topic coming up once per week enough for you?

[Mike-92RT]

clearly i haven't seen any

[IPD]

well i'll try to be nice. sell your car. buy a corvette. don't even bother thinking about doing RWD to a 3/s. way, way, WAY more labor intensive than you really want to fathom--if you're really going to get it to a capability level on par with the stock AWD. (well, as "on-par" as RWD can be with AWD). doing what evan did in that video is not true RWD, and you won't have nearly as much capability or power as a dedicated RWD setup.

p.s.

the AWD parts don't "bolt on". it's a LOT more complex than that. i suggest doing research on florida3s before rushing into a project you're going to regret.



seriously, buy a corvette. thank me later.

[Maximal]

Now...for a slightly nicer answer...

It's been done a couple times but it was proven to be no real benefit except for that video above...to do burnouts. If you're going to take the time to go RWD you might as well just do the AWD (since it's basically the same thing) and gain something from it. However, if you just want to do burnouts then it'll be a worthwhile conversion.

[Mike-92RT]

i know a lot about these cars, and i know a lot about the TT/AWD conversions... im not fucking stupid.

Maximal, thank you for giving me a good answer. Imperfectdarkness obviously doesn't know how to treat his fellow 3/S members.

I was just curious if its worth doing it or not, since everyone in my city asks me if my car is RWD, and i've never seen or heard of anyone doing the RWD conversion. Since i DO live in canada, and not too many people own 3/S cars.

[Maximal]

Yeah, I think there's been 2 RWD cars before and neither owner was too fond of the idea afterwords...at least as far as performance goes.

[Mike-92RT]

my car is just the N/A, so i won't be drag racing it, or dumping thousands into the engine.. so im not too worried about performance, unless im losing horsepower to the wheels, or if the handling gets more shitty.. the stock HP is fine with me.

[bridge]

from the god himself

RWD is slower because you put less power to the wheels than a FWD vehicle or even an AWD vehicle. A FWD car has around 15%ish drivetrain loss while a RWD car has around 20%ish. The actual numbers will depend upon the exact set up of the drvietrain but you guys get the idea, FWD has less drivetrain losses.

It's important to think of an AWD car as a FWD drivetrain PLUS a RWD drivetrain. The torque split occurs in the tranny before either of the axles get torque with half of the engine torque going to the front and the other half going to the rear. So if you have 300 BHP, then you have 150 HP going to the front and 150 HP going to the rear. Now subtract your drivetrain losses. That would be 150 HP - 15% for the front equals 127.5 FWHP. The rear wheels would be 150 HP - 20% equals 120.0 RWHP. Add them together and you get 247.5 AWHP. It's important to remember that the different drivetrain paths that the torque takes after the torque split with give you different drivetrain losses. This is why members who added a CFDS have reported that they are now able to spin the rear wheels at WOT, because they changed their rear wheel drivetrain losses.

Now lets do my car in it's current RWD trim. 300 BHP - 20% for the rear wheels equals 240 RWHP. That is less than the 247.5 for AWD. That may not seem like a hugh difference but also remember that I reduced my total off the line traction by about 50%. My car sucks out of the hole. It lost a little from a role too. Enough to lose anyway.

Finally, we'll do a FWD like those members with a TT swap and a TT tranny converted to FWD. Take 300 BHP - 15% and you get 255.0 FWHP. Obviously the highest wheel HP rateing we have seen so far. A stock TT FWD would slaughter me like a cow in a meat factory from a roll.

I'm sure some one is thinking that the TC doesn't make for an "ideal" drivetrain set up, but it didn't seem to slow me down when I was AWD. And even if the engine was turned, a RWD drivetrain will still have more power losses than a FWD or AWD vehicle. The transverse set up of our drivetrains will make for less power loss to the front wheels also. Helping us in a race from a roll. .

[bridge]

for those that are anal

The percentages are not exact. The idea I wanted to get into members minds was that once the torque takes two different paths, the percentage of loss will be different between the front and rear wheels. To get the total percentage lost, you would add up the amount (not percentage) lost while going through the front and then through the rear, add those numbers together, and then figure out what percentage of your BHP that is. But it would not be the average between the percentage of front wheel loss and the percentage of rear wheel loss.