corrado is evil in the snow!

[Kevin Bacon 5]

I reckon a Corrado on 4 space savers would cut through the snow like a cheesewire :-)

[tug 0]

Then you'd get a guy that knew what he was doing and just drive past all of them with no hassle.

Yup, that'd be me & my Dad! :lol:

[craigowl 0]

If you have to do a hill start (uphill) after reversing out of your drive, try going up backwards to a place you can turn. I found it never failed with the front wheel drive cars I had in 17 Scottish winters.

I think the drive, now at the rear, with the weight of the engine over it did the trick.

Trying to go uphill from a standing start meant wheel spin from the front wheels in first or stalling, if in second. Also as the car has its nose up, the weight/centre of gravity is in the wrong place.

The appliance of science can work.

[Andi 2,147,483,647]

Reminds me of when I saw a van reversing up the hill around the corner from work. For about 1/2 a mile!

 

It was so low on fuel, he had to go up the hill backwards for the catchment in the tank, to get him to the top where the petrol station was :)

[tug 0]

I think people should at least have snow driving explained to them when they're learning to drive. It's pretty dangerous having a bunch of people on the roads who have absolutely no idea what to do when the white stuff starts falling!

[Andi 2,147,483,647]

They all have a lot explained to them when taking their tests - doesn't mean they listen though.

 

Tail-gaters, excessive speeders, parking, you name it...

These people do it every day and can't remember. What's the chance of them remembering for the 3 days a year we get snow?

[TomB 0]

craigowl, I agree completely. Happy days going up a hill in my Beetle past all the people with not a clue to share between them...

Cheers,

Tom

 

P.S 2CV perchance?

[craigowl 0]

TomB said

P.S 2CV perchance?

 

Related

A Dyane - Orange, would you believe? :oops:

Bought new in 1975 for £1250 on road. Sold in 1978 for £800. 47mpg. Wouldnt start in -8C or less.

First time this happened was when I came off night shift at Glasgow Airport.

AA man sneered that "these cars were not made for our climate". He then removed the 2 plugs, put them on the ground, poured some petrol on them and set them on fire. On replacing them, car fired first time.

Never forgot that and impressed my mate's wife one day by using same trick on their car to start it.

 

PS Railways, TomB.

Funny how a little bad (or hot!) weather causes problems.

However, on the other side of the coin, was impressed the day I went to work in Glasgow from here on one of the coldest mornings of the century in late December 1995.

Air temperature here (a third of the way along the Edinburgh-Glasgow line) was about minus 14C. Train arrived OK and got to Glasgow no problem. No heating, though!. In Glasgow city centre it was like being in Moscow or Warsaw. The snow on the ground was so cold on the pavements it was like walking through dry, grey flour. A record temperature of minus 20C was recorded at the city's airport that morning.

Some trains had to be cancelled because the automatic doors would not work in the low temperatures. Always impressed that my trains made the run, though.

[andy 0]

Ice is ice, all you clever people who can get up anything seem to forget that. Last night you could hardly stand up in the road down here, let alone steer or brake a car on it. You can't get traction in some circumstances. I helped push a guy with traction control who was certainly not revving his engine in the slightest, he had no traction whatsoever, very similar to me who was trying to push him! His rear wheels were turning slowly, slithering him sideways, not forwards at all and that was only a slight incline.

[dinkus 10]

Anybody seen the episode of King Of The Hill when it snows? There's a fantastic comedy driving moment :lol:

 

Ah, there is indeed very little traction on ice itself, but if you press hard enough on the ice, it melts and thus provides grip from the road underneath.

 

So if you have a big car and skinny tyres, you get grip because you melt the ice under the wheel.

[veeDuB_Rado 0]

Awww no fair, I wanna play on the snow!

[Kevin Bacon 5]

As Andy said, Ice is Ice and many road heroes come a cropper when they're deluded into thinking their car has more grip than everyone elses.

 

All you can do is ensure the tyres are in good nick, inflated appropriately and use a little common sense. Follow people in the inside lanes where the slush and grip are, rather than chancing it in the outside lane.

 

Saw two incidents today on the way back from work earlier. A Tigra was wrapped round a concrete base in the central reservation because he slid off the road from going too fast and a HGV got half way up a hill and then lost traction, slewing side ways across both lanes and then stopped completely. Both caused the A12 to grind to a halt! HGVs are normally OK in snow due to their weight but not in this case, which proves snow is unpredictable and you have to concentrate hard.

[logicaltuning 0]

my volvo handbook recommends a thinner set of winter wheels, this is why snow spec rally cars always have thinner tyres - cuts through the snow, wide tyres = bad = bigger surface area.

 

my rwd volvo is sound in the snow, drives nice, easy to control, slides nice out of corners, simple

 

my corrado on the other hand hasnt been out in the snow, its not road legal :lol:

[andy 0]

I've saw a Citroen AX spin in front of me on a roundabout yesterday, the ice on the road hadn't melted all day, it wasn't being driven fast, its just ice. Some people at work rave about 4 wheel drive, yep great for going forwards, it doesn't help you stop though. My closest call to death was in a coach in the alps, fishtailing down a snowy hairpin-infested mountain road. Excellent driver, full opposite lock, left to right all the way, you could hear the abs chattering flat out and we were still speeding up. ABS or driver skill is no match for Gravity + Ice. We had to use the wall and the side of the coach as an extra braking device.

[craigowl 0]

Andy said

Last night you could hardly stand up in the road down here, let alone steer or brake a car on it. You can't get traction in some circumstances.

 

Competent winter road maintenance authorities help a lot up here, too. :wink:

 

Its not as if there wasn't plenty of warning for these last two snowy occasions in England. Up to a week's notice, perhaps.

 

However, the Met Office is only right about 85% of the time, so there is always the chance you can waste money by acting early.

A truckload of salt used to cost £10k.

 

Presalting can be three times more effective than trying to do it after the snow has fallen, though.

 

Some authorities will try and save money by waiting to see if the warnings are really justified. Especially early in the season if a hard winter seems likely :roll: By then it may be too late and the gritters can't get out onto the roads because of the roads not having been presalted and everything is now snarled up. Even gritter drivers cannot get to work then!

 

IMO dealing with snow in England seems not much better than when I worked down there forty years ago.

We do have rumpuses up here every two or three years when it snows during the rush hour around Glasgow, but things do seem to be better organised or easier to deal with.

[dinkus 10]

Yeah, for some reason 4x4 drivers (not everything with 4x4 - mostly the school run types) think that just because they have 4 wheel drive that physics don't apply to them :roll:

 

I just tippy toe around if the road is icy... it saves finding out how much grip you actually have.

 

Edit: The roads have actually been fine around here - there was a bit of packed snow on my road, (10m or so) then everywhere else I've driven has been gritted.

[andy 0]

Andy said

Last night you could hardly stand up in the road down here, let alone steer or brake a car on it. You can't get traction in some circumstances.

 

Competent winter road maintenance authorities help a lot up here, too. :wink:

 

Absolutely, I'm right on the south coast, we hardly ever get snow. They grit the Motorways ok but anything smaller than that and your struggling. This was a particularly heavy dump of snow on an otherwise clear day, the roads were below freezing all day and the fresh snow just melted into it, the gritters were just getting out after about 15 mins of snow!

[dinkus 10]

It was amazing watching the road-clearing in Toronto... it was snowing hard for about 3 days and nights solid and there was a good 3' of snow, but they were so well organised that there was never more than 50mm of snow on the road.

[Andi 2,147,483,647]

The UK is pretty pathetic...

 

Bit of snow and report of snow drifts, and motorways closed..

Bit of rain, and we flood. Motorways close.

Bit of sun, and the tarmac peels off. Motorways close for resurfacing.

 

And we're ripped off majorly on car tax, fuel tax, congestion tax.... *sigh*

[Jim 2]

Tell me about it. Our roads are a joke.

 

I got stuck in major traffic on the M6 GOING to Chester (3 accidents apparently) on the 28th and then hit major traffic on the way BACK down the M6 today. I was tearing my hair out. Decided to give up and use A roads as much as possible.

 

Oh, and was somewhat surprised to be passed by a Rolls Royce Phantom with the plate '12 MH' on the M6 Toll - the owners pulled into the M6 Toll Services at the same time as us though and they didn't look familiar / famous - no one I recognised at least!

[craigowl 0]

Andi said

The UK is pretty pathetic...

 

Bit of snow and report of snow drifts, and motorways closed..

Bit of rain, and we flood. Motorways close.

Bit of sun, and the tarmac peels off. Motorways close for resurfacing.

 

I can assure you as an older person that the media in the UK for the last few years have really got on the bandwagon when it comes to generating negativity and hysteria about bad weather, health problems, etc, compared with years ago.

 

IMO they are succeeding in making us believe we are a nation of losers who cannot cope with anything whatsoever and that the next armageddon is approaching scarcely before the current one subsides.

 

Freedom of the press, I agree with to some degree, but our media are allowed to brainwash anyone who listens/reads into believing we are a nation of no-hopers. I believe there should be government action to control their extreme negativity - it can wear a people down like water dripping on a stone.

You have to be really well-informed and judicious to keep things in proper perspective these days in the face of such an onslaught from, even the so-called responsible/quality media like the BBC.

[Kevin Bacon 5]

So true Craigowl!

[chubbybrown 0]

TomB said

P.S 2CV perchance?

 

Related

A Dyane - Orange, would you believe? :oops:

Bought new in 1975 for £1250 on road. Sold in 1978 for £800. 47mpg. Wouldnt start in -8C or less.

First time this happened was when I came off night shift at Glasgow Airport.

AA man sneered that "these cars were not made for our climate". He then removed the 2 plugs, put them on the ground, poured some petrol on them and set them on fire. On replacing them, car fired first time.

Never forgot that and impressed my mate's wife one day by using same trick on their car to start it.

 

PS Railways, TomB.

Funny how a little bad (or hot!) weather causes problems.

However, on the other side of the coin, was impressed the day I went to work in Glasgow from here on one of the coldest mornings of the century in late December 1995.

Air temperature here (a third of the way along the Edinburgh-Glasgow line) was about minus 14C. Train arrived OK and got to Glasgow no problem. No heating, though!. In Glasgow city centre it was like being in Moscow or Warsaw. The snow on the ground was so cold on the pavements it was like walking through dry, grey flour. A record temperature of [rainbow]minus 20C [/rainbow]was recorded at the city's airport that morning.

Some trains had to be cancelled because the automatic doors would not work in the low temperatures. Always impressed that my trains made the run, though.

 

Gosh those were the days Craigowl,

I was out that day in Altnaharra,a cool -27° 8)

 

 

As for four wheel drive on Ice,you can keep it,

give me 2wheel drive anytime and No abs.

Newer trucks toil as they are not over engineered anymore,

no double drive,non lifting non drive axles by drive axles and No diff locks,just electronics that mimic a program that try to emulate a diff lock.

 

One thing for sure Craigowl,

With the De-iceing The airport feels safer than Altnaharra !

 

Roy

 

Roy

[A20 LEE 0]

very nearly crashed a company Touareg today. A 2.5 ton 4x4 and it can't handle a bit of slush because VW fit Bridgestone performance tyres :roll: Just slid down a gentle sloping road straight out onto a main road. Luckily there was no traffic so i could hang a left. To make it worse, a Hyundai Coupe handled it with no problem.

[craigowl 0]

chubz said;

I was out that day in Altnaharra,a cool -27°

 

Don't worry, Roy, I'll always remember you were a man that was there and that your brakes froze! 8) Cool, or what?!

 

Bet the folks out in the wilds are glad to see you and your truck at this time of year. Know I would be.