[spooki]

i was going to look it up on the "how things work" web site but didnt know how to look this one up.

how come when you have your tires of the ground, and you turn one in one direction, the tire on the other side turns in the opposit direction.

 

[James92Scort]

I don´t think I understand the question, either that or your tie rod ends are broke and your tires are going two different directions... say, when you turn to the left, they both turn that way, but one appears to turn into the car, and the other appears to turn out of the car, but they´re both going the same way.
Is that what you meant??

 

[nukewater]

Do you mean when you turn, your inside wheel turns slower than your outside wheel, this is due to differential

 

[James92Scort]

Escorts didn´t come with a differential. When you turn a corner, the outside wheel has to turn faster to keep up with the inside wheel because it´s on a bigger radius.

 

[spooki]

what i mean is when you turn one front wheel, say the passenger side, like it was to be rolling forward. the front driver side wheel turn like the car would be rolling backwards.

 

[nukewater]

You mean an optical allusion? BE SPECIFIC DAMNIT!

 

[nukewater]

You mean an optical allusion? BE SPECIFIC DAMNIT!

And also, when have YOU ever seen both front wheels (rims) at the same time.

 

[spooki]

ooooohhhhh
i guess i spend more time under my escort than most.
go jack up the front of your car
crawl under it
spin one of the front wheels in one direction
then look at the other wheel, it´s spinning the other way

no illusion
nothing broke
my couger does it
and my sisters toruse does it

 

[nukewater]

OH!.. i seen that in Mechanics Class two.. sorry for misunderstanding like 5 times. THat is a dilly of a pickle.. im not sure

 

[rellimpk]

It´s the differential. I´m not sure exactly why it does that, but that helps in cornering. See earlier posts, Nuke and James answered it.

 

[siragan]

yeah that´s the diff.
same thing happens in RC cars and such... I think it has to do with power transfer or something...

maybe has to do with the fact that when you turn a corner, the outer wheel has to spin faster since the radius it is covering is longer than the inner wheel, as (james?) said.

 

[MadBrad]

James why do you say the escort has no differential? That´s patently absurd!

 

[Arakele]

thats how you tell if a car has posi or not, if they both turn the same direction you have posi traction, if one turns one way and the other turns opposite, thats just standard traction, 98% of cars will have normal traction except for, RWD its alos called limited slip etc, easiest way to explain it, if youv ever driven a RWD car like a mustang or camaro. and dump the clutch, if the rear end sways side to side before it gets traction it has limited slip or posi traction. Say you are in a 6cyl camaro or mustang and dump the clutch, it will most likely only spin one tire. FYI that is taught in auto mechanics I lol

i doubt that helps im not good at explaining things, but thats what it is

 

[James92Scort]

I dunno I guess i was tired. but did Escorts come with actual differentials? most front wheel drive cars didn´t that *I* know of. But I don´t know everything. I could be wrong.

 

[stripedmx5]

We have what is termed a transaxle. That is because the differential is encased within the transmission. On a front engine/rwd car, the transmission and the differential are separate units with the transmission attached to the tail of the engine, and the differential in between the rear wheels.

A differential is needed because the inside tires turn at a slower rate from the outside tire, since the outside tire travels a greater distance (think of the larger radius the outer tires must travel). Without a differential, both tires would be turning the same speed all the time, so in a corner, the tires would be fighting each other for grip, since neither would be turning the proper speed for the distance traveled through its arc. The differential usually uses a set of planetary gears that transfer power to one of the axles, rather than that axle being connected directly to the same gear that drives the other axle. It is rather complicated, but once you look at a diagram, it will make more sense.

As for limited slips, there are any number of designs, some mechanical, some viscous (thick liquid). Regardless of the method, the idea for all is the same, to keep the power more evenly distributed to each drive axle. Without a limited slip, one wheel can lose traction (ice, for instance) and spin using all the engine´s power, even if the other tire has plenty of traction. If you have ever done a hard launch in the wet, or given it too much power while exiting a corner, you may have noticed only one wheel spinning. Obviously, this is not the fastest way to make forward motion, so in comes the limited slip differential.

Our Escorts do not have LSD, but for some reason, our cars put power down surprisingly well. This is not just my opinion, as I have read several reviews, over the years, that have remarked on how well the GT puts power down. In comparison, I have found that Civics do a pretty silly peg-leg burnout rather easily.

As usual, I am a pretty windy guy, but I do like to help those who ask, by being thorough.

Next post, I will discuss corner weighting and cross weighting, since I just did a little playing with that on mine.

Oh, yeah, it is the differential that causes the wheels to rotate in opposite directions when you have the car elevated. It is a function of the planetary gearset inside the differential.

Marcus

 

[Arakele]

haha marcus you obviously described it better than i could, thanks

 

[spooki]

thank for the info guy´s
just something ive always wonderd.
where can i get a diagram of our diff?

 

[stripedmx5]

No problem. You can see a transaxle cutaway in any of the repair manuals for our car, but I doubt that any of them will show the inner workings of the diff. I just did a search on Google looking for some differential info, and this one from a MIT gives a pretty short and sweet explanation. If you look closely at the drawings, you will see the basic idea.

http://web.mit.edu/2.972/www/reports/differential/differential.html

Still curious? Just do a little homework on your search engine for differential pics, or cutaways, to find some actual parts.

Marcus

 

[TheBlade]

The reason the GTs avoid the peg-leg burnouts and fool people that our trannies have LSD....Equal-length halfshafts. A civic´s halfshafts aren´t even in lenth at all, so the shorter one gets more torque. In an escort even though the lenth isn´t perfect and when you order new ones you still have to order them in terms of "driverside and passengerside"....they´re pretty close.

Just another cool engineering feature of the GT´s.

 

[1-qwk-phkr]

Just wanted to say that our cars can pull posi...try putting the car in reverse and just get going a lil´ bit, then hit 1rst and drop the clutch...quite a beautiful burnout actually...and if you really want to have fun..pull the emergency brake as soon as your wheels start spinning...you can honestly burn your tires to a crisp as long as you dont hit the rev limiter, and if anyone hasnt seen this done before, let me know, I would love to post the pics of my lil baby´s burnouts