nice bodykit

[sc9ar]

Nah, nah, I meant Cougars. I've seen a Cougar with fwd and you yourself said Cougars also come with 4x4. So are there any rwd Cougars?

sorry - i miss-interpreted your post.

all cougars are fwd, there are no rwd ones, and no 4x4 ones. they can have a 4x4/rwd conversion, but thats a huge amount of work. usually too much to justify spending on a car of such low value these days.

 

[Black Tiger]

Thanks for the info. I've also taken note of the spoiler conversation you've been having. So what about the spoiler I chose? Would that cause instability, it being smaller an' all?

 

[sc9ar]

a spoiler will pull the rear of the car down - hence downforce
it wouldnt make the car unstable as such, just no tas much as it would be without it. one of the best examples is teh escort cosworth. removing the whale tail adds 5mph to the top speed

a low spoiler will always be better on a fwd car but anything can be counterbalanced. as you planend on the hot rod style i.e. having the front sitting lower than teh rear, the spoiler will have a very small impact as the car will have more weight up front and improve the grip yuou have available to the front wheels

to think of this more- when a car accelerates, the force pushes down on the rar of the car and the front surges upwards. this is good in a rear wheel drive car as the will be more grip available to the rear due to the large increase in downforce. however, the rear pulling downwards on a fwd car removes teh tractive force from teh driven axle creating more likeliness of wheelspin and less acceleration power

 

[Procomm]

dont get me wrong - im very much the fan of spoilers, being a motorsport engineer they are a fundamental part of a cars aerodynamics. just rememeber that adding a rear spoiler thats large to a fwd car will cause a stability inbalance- any rear wing needs to be compensated by a front splitter to create suction at the front. a rear diffuser would also create more downforce to balance the downforce across the car

a fwd car nees most downforce at the front to maintain traction

I am only putting it on for cosmetics, can't see it doing much at the speeds i will be doing. From what i understand which granted isn't alot, spoilers have little to no effect below 100mph

 

[ginja]

Several FWD cars have been lowered at the front and raised at the rear# to increase the down force on the front wheels (the driven wheels) to aid acceleration (notably RS Turbo owners) they also fit smaller front wheels as they give quicker acceleration than larger diameters (laws of physics)

The Cougar S concept has slightly flared wheel arches (the Racing Puma* has metal arches), and when it was conceived there was talk of a 4wd transmission (similar to the Mondeo 4x4) its worth noting that one of the members of this club has so far built a 4x4 2.0L Zetec Cougar (the Mondeo 4x4 was a 2.0L Zetec also) and was finishing off the V6 version. Both units would use the same transmission as the Escort RS 2000 which is similar to the Cougar/Escort/Mondeo but has a transfer box at the front to the rear wheels.

* there are several 4x4 Cosworth Turbo converted Pumas kicking about*
#to be honest you would be better off fitting a spoiler on the front of the car to increase the down-force at the driven wheels#

 

[sc9ar]

very true ginja and well written.

only 1 thing id like to add. a lot of the time when uprating wheels its for a larger size. this inherently means a larger rolling diameteer sloin gacceleration. ... or does it? if upgrading to larger rims, select a tyre size smaller than stated to decrease the overall rolling diameter of the standard wheel package and you will have bigger rims and increase acceleration.

most aftermarket wheels distributers like to sell tyres which create a larger overall rolling radius to give the car a lower looking stance by reducing arch gap a feww mm's more - yet think to yourselves, how cool do corsas on 18s look lol, they are like monster trucks from the rear unless lowered lots

 

[ginja]

Max speed increases a little but acceleration decreases, with larger wheels.
The RS turbo's I mentioned are usualy only driven like that on drag strips, they also raise the bonnet nearest the windscreen to aid cooling....NB: dont do this on your cougar as most people will call you names

Your point about the corsas is true, I've seen a pic of a Cougar on 22's and it looks like a SUV !