Need public opinion to judge potential BS.
 

A guy i work with has a 2002 Subaru Impreza WRX. It's a tad modded, nothing crazy.

Anyways, i said to him, "You know, i bet with a stiffer rear sway bar, some camber adjustments, and some downforce, you could alleviate most of the understeer." (I said this presuming it understeers as i'm given to understand AWD suffer from it just as FWD.)

He replied, "They(wrxs) don't understeer."

My jaw dropped-- i've watched a lot of videos on Imprezas being pushed hard on track and understeer is almost always a problem. Or am i misremembering?

Could someone weigh in here?

AWD Subarus understeer like pigs.

Buuuuut, you can get the ass end out on them under certain conditions. I bent a rear control arm finding that out...

That's what i thought! *sigh* Man, i thought i was going crazy for a minute.

I mean, that's why i didn't give a second thought about telling him making the rear-end stiffer may help his understeer-- i just presumed he suffered from it.

Unless you go nuts with a full race setup an AWD Impreza will always have understeer.

I have a 24mm rear swaybar (and other understeer correcting mods too) on mine and the only way for me to get the rear loose is to drive it like a FWD car and lift off before hammering it into a corner.

That guy is probably like every other Nastysock brotato out there.

Well, there is a technique where you graze the inside rumble strip with your inside front tire and that disrupts your understeer. That works with most tracks for AWD and FWD cars.

And it's disappointing about him being a "Nastysock brotato" because until now he hasn't seemed to be that kind of a pompous person. But i guess 'bros' show their overcompensation and masculinity complexes once you question their vehicle's performance prowess..

awd understeer is built into the car just like any other car. fwd awd rwd they all understeer its just a matter on how you controll the rear.

awd does not understeer if you know how to drive awd cars. they need to enter a corner at a specific speed with a chosen line. this works great if you know the road/track ahead and you are not disturbed by other cars cutting your line etc. if your line is disturbed or enter a corner to fast you can always use left foot breaking while hitting the accelerator to swing the rear around and eliminate understeer. this is also used when taking tight corners. also steering alot in the beginning of the corner then going back to a more normal angle also helps with the understeer.

you can compare awd vs rwd to turbo vs non turbo. the turbo car is almost always faster because of more power and trq. but the car with the NA engine can more easily play around with the throttle and change lines and balance of the car mid corner. awd cars cant do that they need to enter the corner put the foot down on the throttle and keep it there. if you lift of bad things happen ;-)

but yes ofc everything can be optimized and setup for the better. and an awd car will understeer more then a rwd car out of the box. but you can improve it alot by modding the suspension. but a good driver who knows how to drive awd and leftfoot breaking is worth alot more then the mods. look at rallycar drivers how they drive awd cars. there is alot of difference compared to track drivers.

as they say in racing a understeering car is often the faster car. because you can push the car harder because it feels safer.

so to sum things up. all cars understeer his is not special. ;-)

From what I understand in short, AWD (more specifically the newer WRX/STI) are pretty neutral on the street. Enter a turn to hot or wrong and you'll be understeering (like most cars). Lift-off throttle and it will oversteer. There is no throttle on oversteer, like in a RWD car.

http://www.iwsti.com/forums/driving-...ndersteer.html

^Is a good primer on the characteristics of WRXs.

In the end, yes they do understeer; many people are bad drivers so they understeer even more.

Yes, sway bars reduce roll, and coil overs reduce roll and lower the suspension, but you still need to be mindful of weight transfer to try and make the car handle as neutral as possible.

Most suggest to upgrade the front and rear sways. My friend has them on his and it's a night and day difference; the car feels so much more planted.

newer sti can send up to 70% of power to the rear. so yes you can throttle oversteer. and ofc even with 50-50 drive you can power oversteer by left foot breaking while holding down the throttle.

I could be wrong but I thought the newer 08+ were 41f/59r MAX. Even at their peek the DCCD only maxed out at 65% rear.

In the dry, throttle oversteer "like in a rear wheel drive car" like I stated is virtually non-existent.

Left foot braking, e-brake pulling and throttle lifting are inducing oversteer in basically the same way, by changing inertia at the limits of grip, NOT by power or by throttle input.

Yes, you can oversteer in certain ways and in certain conditions (snow/gravel), but in the dry you're not going to snap the rear out leaning on the throttle, it just isn't going to happen.

This. A stock WRX is worse than many FWD cars I've driven.

I used to drive an AWD Forester on dirt roads a lot. Corners were always tricky. You'd enter the corner primarily on FWD. Halfway through the corner the front wheels would start to slip and power would be shifted to the rear wheels. When that happened, the car dove into the inside of the corner because of all the FWD understeer making me turn the wheel extra far. The transition is an exceedingly disconcerting feeling. On RWD the steering was normal, but I sadly had no control over what wheel got the power, so in the end I just slowed down on corners.

Until I traded it for a Tundra.

So if you friend doesn't believe you, have him turn a corner on a dirt road, and watch his face at the apex.

While this is true in general, there are exceptions. U-turns, for example, can be quite amusing. ;)

I think the fact that Subaru made the BRZ understeer so that it's owner base would have a more similar feel to the other Subaru's they own (Im assuming this is applying to WRX/STI owners) is a good indication that the Imprezas are set up from Subaru to understeer.

Your co-worker either doesn't push his car very hard, or doesn't know what understeer is.