ABS & the ice

[Jim Bowen 1]

corrado is 1st car i've had with ABS and now its icy i'm not sure how well it works

 

when i've had to slam on the brakes on a dry road i'm sure i've felt what i assumed was abs kicking in. felt juddery and pedal went loose/felt weird

 

but just now on the ice, had to brake for a turning, was braking in a straight line and it just locked up and i had to deal with it myself. Couldn't feel any sign of ABS at all?

 

should it be good in the ice? whats your cars like?

[Critical_Mass 10]

Im not sure about you braking for a bend and the ABS locking up. But if you have to brake hard on ice it will stand more a chance of not locking up then normal brakes, but there is still no guaranteed your car wont slide.

 

The brake juddering is the ABS working btw.

[Jim 2]

Whenever i've put on the brakes in a Corrado on an icy road, the pedal immediately firms up and gets difficult to push any more, and you hear the ABS going beserk / juddering away as it just can't seem to cope at all with absolutely zero grip!

[Kevin Bacon 5]

My old BMW E30s had the same ABS system as the VR6 and behaved in the same way i.e. good in the dry and wet and not so good on ice / snow.

 

As Jim says, ice is a big challenge for our ancient ABS. Modern cars with traction control and individual wheel braking stand a better chance.

[vwdeviant 0]

Modern cars with traction control and individual wheel braking stand a better chance.

 

Not much. watch a new shape 330c almost stack it last night.. drivers fault for ignoring the "Police slow" signs posted on an un-gritted road with a leaking water main at night!

 

He just abou kept it on the road but didn't see the sheet ice till too late, slammed on the anchors and off he went. Just like Torville and Dean, but silver and less gracious!

[12 DEG BEN 0]

On snow and large iced surfaces abs makes very little difference. On snow the abs allows the wheel to turn and in doing so crushes fresh snow continuously which means it constantly has no grip where as no abs cars locked wheel grinds the surface and builds up snow infront of it. On large ice it makes no difference at all. Laws of physics say no friction is no friction. This applys to extreme situations of course. My 2000 polo gti hated snow. Abs went crazy and it had an electronic locking diff which ground away like abs whilst accelerating.