MinisterofDOOM wrote:
Understeer is FAR more difficult to "fix" than oversteer. Even a skilled driver is limited by physics. Steering back into understeer means heading toward something you were trying to avoid. Maybe something immovable. And slowing would restore traction, but brakes are front-biased and you're already working on limited (or no) traction or you wouldn't be understeering. So you're not stopping until you hit something or end up somewhere you don't want to be. None of those are good.
Most of the time, oversteer ends up as a spinout and that's the worst of it. Might even end up in a ditch, but that's a lot better than ending up in a wall.
Basically, panicking during oversteer is probably not going to be as bad as panicking during understeer.
Driver skill is irrelevant. People who CAN fix oversteer are better off with traction up front, and people who can't are effed either way.
I've been driving rear-drivers in heavy winters for years (including a 2wd truck). If you only have two good tires, you NEED to have them up front. Front tires do most of the braking. And the front tires steer. And steering is how you avoid things. If you can't steer, you're going to crash. The small chance of losing the back end catastrophically is NOTHING compared to the near-guarantee that lack of steering abilities is going to put you into something that will destroy your car.
And this only becomes more true with cars with traction control, which will manage step-out oversteer for you if you can't do it yourself.
And, of course, anyone putting their best tires on the back of a front-driver needs to hand over their keys NOW.
If you have 2 tires that cant really do their job, and 2 that are new. Then you should not be driving. Its unsafe, and unwise. You may have the skills to control a car, but most people freeze up. Understeer is safer in the fact that all you can do is brake, turn, and hope in most situations. Oversteer requires control that most people do not have. This leads to the point of air bags. Cars are designed to hit things head on, because that is the direction in which they travel. Hitting a pole head on is ALWAYS safer than hitting it sideways. ABS adds a new level, its very easy for ABS to save a person in an understeer situation, where as its rather useless for oversteer. Today's stability programs are designed to negate this, but they were also designed to work with 4 matching tires. In practice, this means properly rotating tires, and replacing them when they are worn. Despite what grampa may have told you, this means getting rid of old tires when they have less than 4/32 of tread.
If you have 2 racing slicks, and two new tires on a FWD car, then the new should most definitely go on the rear. That way, when inclement weather strikes, you may never even get moving, and if you dont leave the house, you can run you car into the back of me when you realize you cant stop.
Really Chris, you cant argue with me over the semantics of doing something you shouldn't be doing in the first place. Its like arguing about which is worse, murdering your wife with a knife or a gun.
