Response

More on Rear Wheel Drive 1

Just wanted to tell you guys, RE: the latest driving emotion, that you're right on!

James Wade
Australia

More on Rear Wheel Drive 2

About Driving Emotion on 19 May 2007.

Julian's suggested feed back to his article is:

-  He’s just a wanker who can’t drive.
-  I like power oversteer; only a person who couldn’t drive wouldn’t like it.
-  What a crock! Thanks Christ there are some real motoring journos out there, not like this bloke.
-  He should stick to driving front-wheel drive shopping trolleys – that’s all he’s good for...

Like Julian I have owned FWD, RWD and AWD cars (at least two of each). My only comment is that I agree that some of the cruder live rear axle RWD and swing arm RWD can be dangerous.

In my experience, several RWD cars with modern multilink IRS are quite safe.  Given the ridiculous mass and high centre of gravity of the Ford Territory, even the RWD version is benign in slippery conditions.  I was never able to provoke my 1994 BMW 320i into dramatic or unexpected oversteer.

It is worth qualifying the article with the comment that all RWD cars are not created equal.

Andrew Sieber
Australia

More on Rear Wheel Drive 3

How much weight did you have on your Ford tow bar? Things get interesting when too little weight especially with a heavy trailer with bogy wheels.

Robert May
Australia

More on Rear Wheel Drive 4

Driving Emotion - Rear wheel drive can be dangerous.

About freaking time someone wrote these words. You know your going to get slammed for it but bravo. I have owned all-wheel drive cars for   the last 15years. Mazda 323 4WD turbo (Familia in other markets)and between my wife and I 4 Subaru Libertys (Legacies inother markets). And quite frankly I am astounded at the crap you keep hearing about AWD. Yes they do use a little more fuel, yes they can potentially cost more to maintain (extra oil for diffs etc) but there are very few cars that can drive away at a set of traffic lights wet or dry as effortlessly as any of these cars. This means  there is one less worry when it's raining so more of your concentration can go into driving safely rather than wondering ifcar is going to loose traction or slide out (under or oversteer).Now to go to the extreem you can, should you desire, plant your  foot to the floor when soaking wet and the car will shoot off from  standstill rather than slithering and sliding all over the place. I'll take the fuel penalty hit thankyou as my life, and my families   lives are more important than a few cents per kilometer driven.  It's quite ironic that one of the cars criticied for heavy fuel consumption is our 3.0 Liberty Spec B auto yet even when driven in peak traffic mixed with some short country runs our running averages 10.4 l/100.

Simon Brown
Australia

Dripping

I really enjoyed reading your article about intercoler water spray (Intelligent Intercooler Water Spray - Part 1). But after reading the article, i was thinking about water pressure. Since the reservoir is located higher than the intercooler, wouldn't the water keep flowing out from the outlet (even when the motor is powered off)?

Lee Kien
Malaysia

Our suggested spray nozzles all include an in-built shut off valve to avoid drips.

Overtaking

Re: Everyday Driving Skills. I like the way you guys make people think carefully about passing  technique, but there's one thing I think needs stressing.  If you’re in a low or moderate powered car, and you have to wait for a straight stretch the size of the Nullarbor to struggle to pass  someone... Don't!

If it's this hard to pass, generally the vehicle in front isn't going  that slowly, it just feels that way because you're used to doing  100(+), and they're doing 80 or 90. If you're sitting behind a vehicle doing 80km/h for 10km wating for an opportunity it will only cost you 90 Seconds!

Save your fuel (and your life!) for a blat on a twisty back road (that you know well), where at half the speed you can have twice the fun, and probably still walk away from an error.

Luke Konynenburg
Australia

Advice

Firstly i would like to say that over the last year or so since i have been a member i have found that you have quite a good publication and many very interesting articles. i especially like   the general purpose articles that condense information from many sources into an easy to read and one place eg like the engine (BMW/Subraru/Mitu. etc). i have also read with interest your articles about general driving skills and has prompted me to rethink my ways.

ok that was the good part, here comes some issues. Firslty i would talk about the recycled content (yep another email) yep i am very happy that at least you doubled my subscription time but lately i have noticed that the number of articles that are actually members only is quite small. actually in the last 7 weeks there have been  only 12 articles that are only available to members. I think that you have published more new articles but I feel it is a disservice to current members that you have such a tiny number of articles. basically whats the point of paid membership when they can get almost all of the articles for free. it gets worse for prev articles.

secondly, not that it bothers me (hey its your business) but any first year marketing student will tell you that it costs 100s even 1000s times less to keep a current customer happy than find a new customer. Also I assume that you are at least a middle aged person with maturity and to see comments from you telling your customers to get stuffed if they are not happy is quite child-like. I am sure there are better ways to say the exact same thing in a better manner.

the only thing i can see is that maybe its not the 5-10 emails that you have printed but actually a lot more. which makes me think WHY? the only answer that i can come up is that maybe you can see the end of autospeed.

I don't expect my views to be printed (there will be countless spelling and grammatical errors) but just wanted to express my views. I still have a while for my subscription to finish, so I will checking regularly and read the articles.

thankx for reading my rant

Muhammad Khan Niazi
Australia

We have never told readers to get stuffed if they are not happy. We have said that if you don’t like AutoSpeed, you are not compelled to subscribe to it, nor even read it.

LSDs

Good day, I've been subscribing Autospeed magazine for a couple of months now and I'm loving every bit of it. I'm just wondering would you guys like to do an article on LSD, more specifically on how it actually works to pull a car out of corner (reaction time of various LSD), the differences between various LSD and how LSD can work effectively on a FWD and a RWD. BTW, I have a U13 Bluebird (Aust delivered) with vicious LSD, hence the interest. Thanks guys and keep up the good work. :)

Thomas Lee
Australia

Our project EF Falcon is scheduled to get an LSD. When it is fitted we’ll also do a more wide-ranging story on the devices.

As you may have noticed, we’ve now decided to run readers’ emails with spelling errors, typos, etc, fully intact. Future changes to AutoSpeed will result in reader comments being published without editing, so we figured everyone may as well get used to it now!