snow chains

Hi,

Well someone had to ask about them, so I guess it may as well be me ;)

I was driving home yesterday and managed to get stuck in snow just yards from home! Some kind soul had to push me. The embarrassing thing was that the road was more or less level and the snow was not that deep.

I tried to be gentle with the steering, brakes, etc and use high gears but the ABS and ESP lights flashed on occasion. I only got the car late last year (Ford Mondeo 2L diesel) and hadn't got round to buying winter tyres. I am sure that tyres would be a good first step but I am under no illusion that winter tyres will make my car invincible.

Even if the council grit the main roads (which they didn't!), that still leaves the problem of getting from home onto the main road, and that was the bit that defeated me yesterday.

I'm wondering whether a set of chains would have stopped me getting into trouble? I had a google but some sites suggest chains are awkward to put on but others say they are much improved now. Which is true?

Are there any makes to look for or to avoid? I will probably look to buy new tyres first but wondered about chains as a last resort?

TIA

Reply to
Fred
Loading thread data ...

I think for that kind of use snow socks make more sense. Something like these.

formatting link
(no connection with or recommendation of this supplier, just the first hitfrom google)

Tim

Reply to
Tim

chains are not to be used on clear roads (metal slides easily on wet tarmac) and can be a pain to fit/remove, so unless you are really remote they are not too good for the UK. Costco sell Michelin snow grip things (like a net that fits over the tyre) that can be easily fitted, I imagine that the snow socks are rather similar, a set for two wheels is 50 quid (you only need them for the driving wheels). A couple or four winter tyres would be the better bet though.

Reply to
Mrcheerful

I've run winter tyres for the first time this winter, on a FWD car I've had for 5 years and know well. It's usually rubbish in the snow. I bought a cheap set of s/h wheels and winter tyres on ebay.

They have made a HUGE difference. I drove 60 miles on Saturday night in the snow, and passed loads of abandoned and wheel-spinning cars on every hill, yet I had traction and controlled braking for the entire journey.

I'll certainly be fitting them again next year!

Reply to
Alan Deane

I've never owned any car on any type of tyre that couldn't handle level roads no matter how deep the snow. In fact I've rarely had any problem even on quite steep hills if you drive properly. I remember my first car back in about 1979 which was a Mk 2 1300 Escort estate. Not much weight over the rear wheels and supposedly no good in snow but it would go anywhere. I set out one winter's day from Chorleywood in really deep snow to go somewhere, I forget where but it involved going down Solesbridge Lane which takes you down into the river Chess valley and back up the other side on some really steep hills. I slithered my way down easily enough and as I reached the bottom I could see cars parked on the left on the upslope as far as the eye could see. Naively I assumed there must be some sort of meeting going on. Maybe a car boot sale. It never occured to me they were all broken down.

So I trundled all the way up the hill on the wrong side of the road with absolutely no problem using second gear and gentle throttle looking at all these people sat in their cars and wondering why the hell they were doing that until I got to the very top of the hill and there was a guy with a tractor pulling cars up over the crest one at a time. As he was blocking the entire road I eventually had to stop and then of course I couldn't get going again but a quick push from a couple of people and off we went and once I had even a bit of traction I could accelerate back up to speed again on packed snow on what must be a 1 in 15 gradient. I finally realised that the entire line of hundreds of yards of stationary cars was people waiting to be pulled up the hill by the tractor. God knows how long most of them must have had to wait there.

That snowy winter the steep gravel track leading to our house defeated nearly every car that tried to get up it but the old Escort sailed up quite happily every time.

My current Focus 2.0 with ESP traction control and ABS is an absolute hoot in snow. In fact it snowed quite hard the night I first got it in March

2003. In the wee small hours at about 3 am when the roads were empty and sensible people were asleep I went out for a blat down the local single track roads in the fresh snow. Hurling it into corners with the ESP light flashing so hard on the dash it lit the whole car interior up, the front and back drifting out and then kicking back in again as the ESP corrected everything with delicate touches on the brakes on individual wheels, juddering off the rev limiter as the tyres lost grip in the snow with the throttle hard down and then picked grip up again on clear stretches and the ABS hammering away as I nailed the brakes into the snow drifts. God that was fun. Finally as I went faster and faster I overcooked it just a smidge as the tyres lost traction on a painted zebra crossing and I just kissed the kerb with a left hand tyre. Not a mark on the rim when I checked next day but I must have just touched the rim protector on the tyre and I figured that's enough fun for one night and went back home.

Theory says that the wide 205 tyres on that car ought to act like skis and you really need skinny tyres with knobbly tread to bite into snow but the Focus doesn't give a damn. It just copes with everything you chuck at it and laughs at bad conditions.

Maybe you have really really crap tyres for some reason that just don't work in snow.

Reply to
Dave Baker

Its not the snow that stops me its the f*****g muppets who abandon their cars on roads I want to use

Regards

Reply to
TMC

I don't understand where the idea for high gears came from. Perhaps something to do with the accelerator response of automatics. A manual in a higher gear requires more clutch work to get going and when wheel spin is inevitable can be shown to make it worse. Gentle pedal work in a low gear gives more control. I hold onto lower gears even when moving at steady speed.

Forget the notion of more torque in a lower gear. It is a *capability* that *can* be used good conditions but completely irrelevant in this context; it's straightforward that even if a lead foot with no sensitivity whatsoever lets the engine spin away at 6500rpm (and I am sure there some), the wheels rotate at half the speed in 1st compared to 2nd.

When one wheel spins the system will probably think there is a fault. It is possible that ESP does not help; several occasions I have seen cars moving along slowly with spinning front wheels trying to drag a locked back wheel along.

Reply to
dr6092

Upvote for Snow Socks! Last year whilst wearing snow socks I drove past a 1/2 mile queue of traffic stuck on the inside lane of a dual carriageway who wouldn't try the snow covered outer lane. But as above got out onto the motorway only to be stuck for 8 hrs in jam caused by lorries not being able to get up a slight graident!

Upside? I got them because I live on a steep hill and they proved their worth. They are very quick to put on and not too grubby to remove - unlike chains.

Downside? You can't go over about 30 without throwing them. They are ruined very quickly on tarmac. (I lost a pair coming off snow onto tarmac and wasn't able to find anywhere to stop to pull them off!)

So this year I bought Winter Tyres on steel rims. They are great - much better on snow and ice and also better on damp roads. The downside being watching someone behind you unable to brake as well slide into the back of you :-(

Slatts

Reply to
Sla#s

I think it harks back to older cars with poor torque characteristics. Sticking it in a high gear would bog the engine down sufficiently to not spin the wheels. These days, as you say, it probably just results in even more wheelspin. Both my cars (V6 petrol and a small diesel) pull strongly from ~1000rpm in any gear, so a high gear just equals faster wheel rpm. It makes more sense to stick to lower gears especially as the off-throttle braking effect is greater in lower gears.

Reply to
Andrew

On Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:16:55 +0000, Andrew stammered:

snipped-for-privacy@gi10g2000vbb.googlegroups.com...

Which is one of the main reasons you stay in a higher gear - it avoids hard engine braking and possible wheel locking/sliding. All the ABS and ESP in the world won't stop your engine locking the wheels.

Reply to
Mike P

I don't know what car you're driving but taking your foot off the accelerator is pretty unlikely to lock the wheels, since the motion of the car will turn the gearbox and the engine through the wheels. I suppose it might happen if you stall the engine at low speed on a VERY slippy surface, but that is more likely to happen if you're in a high gear than if you're in a low one. IMHO, high gear = irrelevant nowadays. I'm well aware that current RAC advice IS still to stick to a higher gear - they even suggest pulling off in 2nd gear - the reasoning being that choosing a high gear reduces torque at the wheels. In practice this just doesn't work when the engine has even a moderate dose of torque in the first place, as do many modern cars especially diesels. It just results in higher wheel speed at lower engine rpms, which equals more wheelspin.

Reply to
Andrew
[...]

I don't know what road conditions you've driven on, but taking your foot off the accelerator whilst descending a slippery hill is *very* likely to lock the wheels, especially with a rear wheel drive vehicle.

Chris

Reply to
Chris Whelan

and the lower the gear, the more likely they are to lock

Reply to
Mrcheerful

I'm sorry, I couldn't disagree more. It's never happened to me, in any car, driving in poor conditions at home or abroad. Please explain how the wheels "lock up" when you're in gear, in motion, even descending a slippery hill...? I'm genuinely fascinated to know what you're doing wrong :) Even if the wheels are losing traction, they will continue to turn due to the drive from the engine, unless you stall it due to being in too high a gear...

Reply to
Andrew

On Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:00:11 +0000, Andrew stammered:

Even if the wheels are losing traction, they will continue to

Erm without fuel, ie with your foot off the accelerator, the engine wants to stop. It is being turned via the road wheels. If they have no grip, they have no force, the engine braking force wins, and the wheels lock.

Reading some of the snow-related posts on usenet the last few days, I'm really not surprised why everything goes to shit when it snows in this country.

Reply to
Mike P

Lock is possibly the wrong word, achieve 95% slip & no usefull grip is very easy, empty Transit vans do it in the wet in 2nd, never mind the ice.

Reply to
Duncan Wood

I think you've hit the nail on the head. "Locking the wheels" to me is just that: locked and not moving. If the car is in gear that's only going to happen if the engine has stalled. There's a world of difference between losing traction and locking your wheels.

Reply to
Andrew

If you can find a nice empty place to try it on the ice, then the words are different but the understeer or oversteer is the same.

Reply to
Duncan Wood

The fuel doesn't stop just because you take your foot off the accelerator. How do you think the engine idles when you're sat stationary? The only way what you've described can happen is if you're in too high a gear and the engine is stalling.

Both my cars continue to run quite happily with my foot completely off the accelerator. Unsurprisingly, the engine doesn't just cut out. My diesel will run in any gear up to 3rd purely at idle rpm with no input on the accelerator pedal. Only 4th and 5th are geared so tall that's there's insufficient torque at such low rpm to prevent it from stalling. It even has enough torque to pull off from stationary in 1st at idle rpm; no accelerator, just let the clutch up.

This is the point I was originally making about why the advice is out-dated; many modern cars are sufficiently torquey that starting off in 2nd doesn't reduce the torque at the wheels enough to reduce wheelspin. Instead, you are trying to pull off in a gear that at idle rpm gives around 10mph, which is simply too much speed at the wheels to be trying to pull off on a slippery surface. Unless of course you don't mind completely burning out your clutch in a couple of days of driving in the snow...

Reply to
Andrew

Been there, done that (advanced driving techniques course). Thankfully I've never lost control of a vehicle, except intentionally :)

Reply to
Andrew

MotorsForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.