Customer Reviews

The Front-Wheel Driving High-Performance Advantage

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I found this book a little disappointing. It is a collection of different drivers views of the handling of front wheel drive vehicles in different conditions. It gives one drivers view on tarmac, one on rally, another on ice and so on. It is interesting to see how each driver sets up their car, but that is something that varys from person to person. I didn't find it too objective, I was hoping for something that would give more tips about setup, weight distribution etc, so maybe if a few drivers had been included it would have allowed me to make more general assumptions about FWD setup that could be applied to my car. This is a good book, and is a starting point for learning to setup a FWD car, but I was personally hoping for a little more depth.

This books points out the differences and the similarities of FWD vs RWD race cars in the following aspects: driving style or line, differential selection, front/rear weight balance and downforce distribution, brake balance, suspension geometry, torsional stiffness, tire heat transients.

The authors have interviewed the FWD champions in road racing, autocrossing, rallying, ice racing and drag racing, and expressed their opinions on car setup and driving techniques in these different competition driving areas. For example, you will find pros and cons of left-foot-braking in this book, as expressed by the champions in respective areas. All the interviewees have agreed that trail braking is much more important for FWD cars, or even unavoidable.

There are also good chapters about FWD cars in the following books:
- Competition Driving (Alain Prost, Pierre-Francois)
- Race Car Vehicle Dynamics (William Milliken, Douglas Milliken)

What the book lacks is a clear conclusion, an outcome (probably a final chapter) based the on the data gathered by the interviews.

Received the book and dove right in, as I was planning to drive my newly tweaked 2000 Honda Civic hatchback in an autocross near future. I set up the car as the autocross national champion (woman)suggested (e.g. ~40# pressure front, 34 back, and high tension coilovers front, soft rear). I thought it sounded strange, but who am I to challenge a national champion. When I got to the autocross to drive a front wheel drive car in an autocross for the first time (other car is a RWD Miata), the regional champ also driving a Honda Civic told me that that setup was exactly backwards. After changing to 34f/40r and soft shocks front/hard rear, the car drove great. Could things have changed that much???

Fantastic book. Very good coverage on driving technique and alignment setups for drag racing, autocrossing, rallys, etc. Neat pics from the late 80's racing scene, this book is as entertaining as it is informative. Well worth the search for this one.

I was happy to find this out of print book that is written by many people I know. It took over three weeks for me to receive it however! Part of the problem was this company didn't ship it out right away (I think it was a week or so). Then it took a couple of weeks to get it to me from USPS. I order things all the time and if I had known it would take so many weeks I would have ordered from someone else.
The good thing was the book was as described.

I love this book. Its old but the techniques for FWD cars havent changed much in the years. I read it once a year and try to apply the techniques to myself at HPDE days. I put it on the coffee table for all to share, but my father thinks gun books look better. Well TOO BAD DAD. Great info in here, well worth the price of admission! 100% satisfied.

This is an excellent book