IMO: any all out drag racing (key word "race") car worth a damn transfers nearly all its weight to the rear wheels on a launch anyway, so AWD is pointless. If you are in a car with a street suspension and/or street tires, and don't have the ability to pull the front wheels off the ground on a hard launch, then awd is a handy thing to have.

It especially burns me to see my friend cut good 60's on "ok" street tires and run 13.5 @ 99 or so in his AWD talon, when my car runs over 14 seconds at 100+ on street tires.

 

Yeah I hear you. I've cut a 12.19@110 (w/ 1.7 60') on my bald street tires and then had my friend in a 383 3rd gen camaro run a 13.3@113 because they wouldn't let him warm up his tires and it was about 25 degrees outside.

Regardless an AWD camaro would be a beast on a roadcourse ...

 

If you were going to go through the trouble of making a Camaro AWD then you should make it where all of the wheels turn also. It would be cool if nothing else.

 

Did you mean turn independantly as opposed to LSD units? AWD = All Wheel Drive

 

I took it to mean (active) 4WS or 4-wheel steering.

Of course all suspensions have 'steer', but it isn't always variable.

FWIW, Audi does a fairly good job of AWD using either a Torsen or Haldex between front and rear. We have a TT (Haldex) and it's system is about as 'invisible' as I've ever seen. What you can do in the slippery stuff with a 60%-40% car is amazing. There was a good reason quattro (Audi's generic name for their AWDs) was outlawed in road racing soon after it started about 20 years ago.

If I was roadracing a Camaro, with reasonably sized race tires, RWD would be my choice. It would just be too cost prohibitive to engineer an AWD conversion of the F platform that was better in the dry. However, if I had 500+ (R)WHP and was restricted to stock street tires, even a decent Bravada AWD conversion might work.

 

Oh shoot, I missed that. I remember Dodge had a car that did that, at over 30 MPH, or was it under 30 MPH I forget. It was a TT 4 cylinder.

 

Yep, and the main reason for that is the fact that Europeans actually race in the rain like real men On dry pavement, AWD offers little advantage unless there's tire restrictions (which may also play a factor in sedan racing - I don't know the rules all that well). In more recent sedan racing history, Audi was allowed to use AWD again, but eventually the sactioning body forced such an extreme weight penalty on them (200+ lbs) that it was impossible to remain competitive.

So, for the folks talking about using the T-/M-body drivetrain in a Camaro - have you ever actually looked underneath one and mentally pictured how to place a similar setup under your car? I ask only because it'd be near-impossible to maintain anything close to a stock ride height. This same idea floats across the Impala board once every few months, but then someone realizes that the crankcase sits right about where the front diff wants to be. Without a "U-turn" transaxle design like the Chrysler LH or convertion to a true transaxle, it'd be very difficult to impliment AWD in a standard RWD passenger car without putting the thing up on 33" all-terrain tires and hanging the stars'n'bars off the antenna.

 

couldn't you just buy a wrecked s-10 or silverado?

use their front and rear axels and ust have them custom fit along with the DS?

where to mount the trensfer case though

 

There is no "front axle" room in the F-body, so you can't just swap in a front-axle. To be an axle it'll have to be on-center with the wheels...through the accessories, if my memory serves properly.

What would be a much more interesting (and possibly feasible) idea would be to have the transfer case directly behind the T56 and have it pump along an axle going up each side of the car, then a bend to each wheel. But then you're talking so much extra weight and hacking of the car that's probably not possible that the whole thing becomes a moot point. You could envision using smaller components and maintaining a rearward bias so that the driveshafts, etc could be smaller, but the engineering would be a nightmare.

In short, not bloody likely, but would be a bloody wonderful thing to do. And on dry pavement, it would be helpful.

Dan

 

I dont like the weight addition aspect, much trying to find a space to stick all that stuff. Maybe an AWD race truck would be a better idea.

I am totally happy with RWD, I would find a way to stick an IRS in the Fbod first, but even a solid axle is ok on a good course without bumps/dips.

 

Hmmmmm............. all wheel drive camaro......... how about this, buy a blazer and drop a 454 in it. sounds good to me

 

Ever notice that full-size vans converted over to 4WD always sit about 6" taller? Well, the technique you just described was used by some aftermarket company back in the late 70s/early 80s to convert a full-size van to 4WD while maintaining a near-stock ride height. I don't recall the name of the company, though - I'll ask my dad the next time I talk to him (the GMC dealership that he worked at sold a few of them, I believe).

 

Weren't they called Trailblazer's?

 

Ahah! My dementia has a basis in reality! BLAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH *evil grin*

Ooo...let's go crazy with another idea...flip the engine around...put a transanxle off the front...hmm...yugh. Put the engine sideways, exhaust coming out of side of car...

Take out back seat/trunk area, put in fuel cell near passenger seat, plop engine over rear wheels...

ok, I'll stop now. Enough dementia for this post

Dan

Although, on a side note: The Previa is a RWD minivan with the engine mounted under the driver's seat, that they later converted to AWD...I wonder how they managed that, as there's not much room there. Maybe I'll go to a junkyard and look sometime - or just look under our RWD Previa and try to figure it out. Maybe there's more room than I remembered (last I looked at it, my car was a 79 Lincoln).

 

Incorrect. For drag racing RWD > AWD > FWD