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No, because.. Posted by Ari [Email] ![]() ![]() In Reply to: Shifting weight onto front wheels, Nathan Work, Fri, 2 Feb 2001 09:09:00 Members do not see ads below this line. - Help Keep This Site Online - Signup |
A car (or any object) has a center of mass. The center of mass is the point at which all the mass of a body may be considered to be concentrated in analyzing its motion.
Since the wheels aren't in the same plane as the center of mass, when a car accelerates, the chassis actually rotates around the center of mass - the front goes up, the rear goes down.
If you built a car where the center of mass was right on the axles of the wheels, there would be no rotation, and the front wheels wouldn't unweight. In order to actually ADD weight (downforce) to the wheels when accelerating, you'd need to put the driving wheels behind the center of mass. Of course, if you did this with a front wheel drive car, the front end would fall over when the car wasn't accelerating.
So technically, you could keep the front wheels from being unweighted during acceleration, but you'd need VERY large diameter front wheels, and to keep most of the components of the car - engine, fuel, transmission, passengers, at or below the centerline of the wheels. Essentially, you'd have wheels that were as tall as the car.
Practical in a race car, but not very practical in a passenger car. 4WD is a much simpler solution than trying to bend the chassis of the car to fit.
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