Rear or front wheel drive

[embee]

I'm still trying to find the right motor home now after rejecting the Fiat X250. One question I had not addressed was that of the driving wheels.

 

From other forums I have read front wheel drive vehicles can have problems on wet and muddy surfaces.

 

I anticipate more Cl's will be used, where grass is the norm. than the club sites with hard standing and roads up to the pitch.

 

Would it be sensible to choice a RW drive model?

[davenewellhome]

To be honest with you I've had as much trouble with rear wheel drive getting stuck as I have with front wheel drive. FWD only really becomes a proble with a badly designed motorhome, our own current 'van (1990 highwayman on Talbot Express) falls into this category, short wheelbase with a relatively long overhang and lots of heavy stuff at the back (kitchen and toilet/washroom) means that unless we are very careful about loading the front can end up light and traction can be compromised. Fitting M&S tyres has helped but then I've only been stuck once with this van and to be honest a single wheel rear axle RWD van wouldn't have faired any better on that particular pitch.

 

Bear in mind that if you're camped for a couple of days on soft ground all your wheels will settle into the ground making moving off interesting to say the least.

 

D.

[Tony Jones]

My own experiences would give me a SLIGHT preference for RWD, for traction on dodgy surfaces, but only if "other things are equal."

 

So in fact I chose FWD on my Transit, because on the Cavarno that gives you a bit of storage under the floor at the back, which RWD (or 4WD!) wouldn't have had.

That was far more use to me than the slight advantage of RWD - and I'm no great fan of well-equipped campsites, as regular readers will know!

 

Tony

[rupert123]

Generally FWD will give you more grip in most vehicles, motorhomes are the exception to this for obvious reasons. In practice it really makes little differance I would have thought. The answer is common sense, only park on hard standings or if you are forced to park on wet grass try and make sure you have a pitch with a small incline down towards the exit. I got stuck once a couple of years ago but by taking a little more notice of where I pitch have not had a problem since.

[RupertGS]

This may seem simplistic but if you have a front-wheel drive vehicle and drive it backwards, does it not become a rear-wheel drive vehicle?

My point is that, if rear wheel drive is better than front-wheel drive when it comes to leaving a wet pitch, then driving your front-wheel drive MH forwards onto the pitch so you have to reverse out, effectively gives you a rear-wheel drive vehicle.

Having said all that however, I have both front- and rear-wheel drive private cars. The front-wheel drive is far better on snow up the steep road to my home and my far more expensive rear-wheel drive car is pretty useless!

It has to be said though that the rear-wheel drive is far more satisfying on normal roads, which is probably why most prestige car makers use this system (BMW, Mercedes and Porsche). The constant velocity joints on front-wheel drive cars just can't handle real power. (So I'm told, I'm no expert myself.)

If my simplistic analysis makes any sense then the choice of driving wheels is fairly unimportant. I remember the butcher's delivery van when I was a lad. He would reverse up the hill in the village when it was covered in snow. He had a rear-wheel drive van and it was his way of turning it into a front-wheel drive to get more traction.

[Guest Tracker]

It's not only about which axle has the driven wheels, but also the amount of weight over the driven wheels - axle weight.

 

The higher the axle weight the greater the grip - BUT - the higher the axle weight the deeper you sink in anything soft.

 

So you pays yer money and takes yer choice!

 

Perhaps an Alko chassis extension with front wheel drive and rear wheels at the rear corners, well almost, of the van presents the best compromise for proportional weight distribution as more weight is over the front wheels and less over the rear because they are further back?

 

BUT - Alko chassis are generally lower profile and have much less ground clearance and a longer wheelbase which brings their own problems - like grounding on bumpy terrain and a wider turning circle.

 

So you pays yer money and takes yer choice.

[olley]

hi, traction control, which I believe most/some? modern vans have, so instead of one wheel trying to get you out of a greasy spot you have two.

 

Wish mine had that or a diff lock. :'(

 

Olley

[davenewellhome]

When I got stuck traction control would have done nothing as both drive wheels were spinning. TC would have just got itself confused and probably dug me in deeper. I got out by wedging grip mats under them then letting the tyres down on the driving wheels and then I just drove out of it.

 

D.

[Brian Kirby]

The answer lies in the weight distribution of the laden van.  If it is near 50:50 front/rear, it won't matter much which end drives.  If it is not, then it is better to have the drive at the heavier end.  However, beyond a certain ratio, maybe around 70:30, I don't think it will matter much, because the heavier loaded tyres will just sink too far in to dig themselves/be dragged out.  If you can't get a 4x4 van (and there are a few), try to find one that gives as close as possible to 50:50 weight distribution, and avoid long rear overhangs.  You shouldn't get bogged in that way, but your turning circle will be increased (longer wheelbase), and manoeuvrability correspondingly reduced.  (Darlek voice) You are not allowed to win!

[colin]

We're all sort of guessing what type of van your looking for, generaly (but not allways) a panel van will have short overhang at rear and be resonably well balanced so it will make little differance, a coachbuilt often has a large overhang at rear so loading up those wheels and RWD may work better, but as said above it doesn't allways work out that way, last week we had a lightly loaded Morvano delivery van decided to turn on grass, the more heavly loaded front wheels sunk straight in, we towed it out with a Disco.

[Clive]

You want the majority of your weight over the drive wheels. From this statement the decision is straight forward.

C.

 

[olley]

you want a half track. :-D

 

Olley

[Den]

On entry to the field at last years Stratford Show, Mh's were told to drive fast so has not to get bogged down. This was by the Hymer's section. Yes it was very muddy but also very bumpy. Not one to damage and throw everything about, I drove slowly and let the merc underpinnings do there job. It went slower than i would have wished and accelerated.............. Nothing it just kept going at its own speed. We arrived on pitch with no mud thrown up on the Mh unlike all before and after. So the morel in this story is REAR wheel drive is best!!!!!!!!!!!

[Derek Uzzell]

If the sole criterion for selecting between FWD or RWD for a motorhome is to seek maximum grip on wet/muddy surfaces, then (as Tony says - with everything else being equal) RWD is likely to be preferable just because the majority of motorhomes, when loaded, carry more weight on their rear axle than on the front.

 

On the caravan forum emdee considers using a motorhome to tow a caravan and, for this scenario, a RWD motorhome should offer definite traction advantages on poor-grip surfaces.

 

A motorhome dealer acquaintance of mine, who uses his own motorcaravan solely to tow a racing car, invariably opts for a RWD model for this task. I remember him flirting very briefly with a FWD tandem rear-axle design that he told me was fine towing on the road, but hopeless on wet grass. Since then he has chosen only vehicles with RWD and a twinned-wheel rear axle.