why i wish I still had a Land Rover

On or around Sat, 26 Nov 2005 00:31:48 +0000, Ian Rawlings enlightened us thusly:

you can still get 7.50R16 in some ranges, limited tread choices though.

235/85R16 are the next best thing, I suppose - work well on LWB vehicles and on RR/Discos used off-road.

not convinced that significantly wider ones make sense except for specific conditions where flotation is more important than grip. Probably valid for deserts and heavily-laden vehicles.

Reply to
Austin Shackles
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General Grabbers are available in 750x16, both raidal and cross-ply. The raidals have a more agressive tread, but I wore a set of 4 out in a disappointingly short time. I'm now back on Avon Rangemasters -

750x16 and sensible money from Bronco - what a blessed relief! I've had various tyres on over the last 4 or 5 years and there's no doubt about it, the Rangemesters suit 110's very well indeed.

Richard

Reply to
beamendsltd

My truck's currently on Technic Tracker 750R16, remould copies of BFG MTs if I remember correctly. 60 quid a pop, I didn't want to spend much cash on tyres used for off-roading after a set of BFG TrakEdges got shredded within a few months of me buying them by stones. I ignored the gouges in the tyre walls thinking it'd be OK but a tyre ripped along one of the gouges while I was doing 80 so I won't be doing that again.

The Technics have been good, excellent off-road, although initially I had 5 tyre deflations in one month due to pixies, various more realistic theories abound revolving around the tubes and the ribbed interior but nothing that rings true given the events I experienced. They're fine now and have been for a year and a half, only showing signs of major wear on the outer edge of one front, so I'll be getting the tracking checked ASAP.

Reply to
Ian Rawlings

It's getting like America in Bristol these days - every junction and almost every roundabout now has traffic lights (there are over 100 posts in the centre alone now!). As a result many of the driving public have no idea about safe or sensible driving.

IMHO, A skid-pan should be part of the driving test too.

Regards,

Simonm.

Reply to
SpamTrapSeeSig

Not much more on the North Pennines part of Cumbria either. Couple of cm of wet snow lying when I got home last night in the wee small hours.

The same couldn't be said for the M74 in the morning though. Couple of inches of snow, road conditions pregesively degraded down to compacted snow and the heavies were starting to struggle up the, very slight, hills. It wouldn't have taken much of an "incident" or much more snow to turn the M74 into a linear carpark.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Well I guess it depends where you are. Our gritters are proactive and reactive. Out before the frost comes down and when the conditions close in, like they did in Febuary this year,

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start from 23 Feb up), they just keep driving round in the hope of keeping at least some form of track open. They do give up on the higher routes fairly quickly. If it's drifting you just can't win and they risk that by going further up by the time they come to get down, say 30mins later, not being able to. They try to keep one route open bewtween the town and the two villages and the lowest of the outgoing routes but it's not unusual for all outside connections to be closed at least once or twice a year.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

"Austin Shackles" wrote

And most seem to be very chunky and therefor noisy on road.

I use wider ones to try to stop my vehicle churning up the grass paths on the allotment. Others use normal cars and would not take kindly to me making ruts. :-)

Reply to
Bob Hobden

The salt doesn't help but we havn't had any "bad" winters since the early 80's, over 20s year ago. In broad terms anyone younger than their mid 30's simply won't have had to chance to drive on snow or ice, salt or no salt.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

We had a good one last year in stoke on trent when they decided they didnt want to grit anything and then it all froze solid. Lee_d will vouch for this as he probably worked for about 48 hours non stop sorting it all out.

Last year was the first time i'd ever driven on proper ice (I'm mid-20's). I dont ever plan to go out in a car again when it's like that! (though i might go out for a play in the landy this year).

I managed to slide about a mile without hitting anything. It was downhill and i managed to get a stalled car round 2 roundabouts. I'm still scared of one of the set of bollards i almost hit.

I can remember cars spinning off all over the place on the dual carriageway while i trundled along very slowly whilst muttering my full weeks quota of swear words one after another and gripping the wheel very tightly.

Reply to
Tom Woods

In article , Tom Woods writes

That's a very interesting point. Last time we had serious snow here in Bristol (as Dave L. pointed out), we hadn't had all the 'street furniture' dumped at engineered pinch points and junctions.

Bristol is very hilly. If we have a real cold snap, I wonder how the Council plans to clear all the car wrecks to make room for the emergency services?

Do a skid-pan course. It'll get you grinning like an idiot and give you practical skills which, like riding a bike, can last a lifetime. As others have said, snow and ice needn't be that bad if you know how to handle them.

Regards,

Simonm.

Reply to
SpamTrapSeeSig

I spent some time in Bosnia in the 1990's and got alot of experience driving in bad snow, and ice, there simply wasn't any snow ploughs/gritters. I was mostly driving an early 110 land rover then and found it very capable. I felt impotent in my rear-wheel-drive jaguar on friday. If we are going to have alot of this kind of weather and if it's going to be a regular feature due to climate change then I'm definatly going to get a 90 if I can, or at least one of those little suzuki things (do they have permenant 4wd? centre diff lock?

-- Mark.

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"nec aspera terrent"

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Reply to
MVP

I'm giving serious thought to some time on a skid pan, aside from thursday I've not driven on anything slippy since 1998 and all that was done in a 4wd. i need to learn more about how to deal with it in a rear wheel drive. Was using traction alone to get up many hills, looked impressive as the back end slewed around spraying snow but was coming un-nervingly close to a wall at one point.

-- Mark.

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"nec aspera terrent"

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Reply to
MVP

Good advice. The main thing to be learnt is that when the road is covered in ice the best place to be is in your living room, with a mug of tea. The skid pan skills can help a lot, but ultimately the laws of physics always win.

One thing I didn't learn on the skid pan, but did learn very quickly last week....

Driving on a local road coming up to a junction behind another car. Slow, lots of stopping distance. Noticed the road very icy - no problem. As I am almost stopped, ABS comes in and car just keeps going. And going. And going. No slowing at all - very odd. I realised that autobox is still pushing just a bit, and the thus the car is accelerating slightly when the ABS kicks in, then slowing as the brakes come back on. Net result would have been a 1mph crash if I hadn't slapped it into N.

Reply to
Tim Hobbs

In article , MVP writes

Huge fun. I spent a 1/2 day on the one at Castle Coombe a while back. They had one FWD and one RWD vehicle available, and it was interesting how much harder the RWD was in slippy conditions. It may just be that I'm too used to FWD, as I've only ever driven FWD in snow+ice 'for real' (except bikes, and my record on those in the snow isn't exactly stellar!).

I've had Marge out once in the snow, and in difflock she refused to slide, even going up a local 1-in-5 which we used to avoid the queued traffic on the main road. She's got standard wheels on and ornery town+countrys fitted. I agree with the other posters about tyre width too - modern low profiles are a menace in slippy conditions. I worry about the wife, as she's not a wonderful driver, but insists on the wide-tyred Alhambra for work... I wonder if there's a narrow

5-stud wheel that would fit as a replacement?

Town driving in snow is no fun - one slip adjacent to a line of expensive, parked cars...

Regards,

Simonm.

Reply to
SpamTrapSeeSig

Liverpool was the same on Boxing Day, not a gritter in sight, there had been a few cm fo snow Christmas Day followed by a slight thaw and overnight freeze. Ice rink time...

But I mean a proper winter, not just a day or three with a sprinkling of snow and a frost. A winter when it snows for a couple of days, non-stop putting down at least 12" (30cm for the youngsters), daytime maximums temperatures don't rise above freezing for weeks and more snow.

Ice is nasty, you really have to think very far a head and be extremely gentle, even a slightly dropped clutch can set you sliding... Snow is much easier.

I know the feeling, I slid backwards down a 1:8 the other winter. Not far before the gentle rubbing of the nearside along the verge/wall brough me to a stop but it's not nice knowing there is sweet FA you can do about it. I could have tried reverse and applying power but being only 50 downhill yards from a T junction and a building opposite I didn't rate my chances of being able to stop before crossing the juction and hitting the building...

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Was a choice on friday of my jaguar (RWD) or the wifes saab (FWD), tyres very similar, perhaps wider on the jag, but the wifes ABS is known-duff so the Jag it was. FWD is certainly better than RWD in the slippy, there are many things you can do with the front wheels to improve your traction, not alot you can do in a RWD except find a spinning-speed that gives some forward motion.

Just spoken to a girl I know in scotland, near dunblane, recently got herself a little suzuki thingy 4x4, happy bunny.

-- Mark.

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"nec aspera terrent"

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Reply to
MVP

Spraying snow everywhere is wheel spin. A spinning wheel has far less traction than one that isn't. I still remember the looks on the faces of the drivers doing similar on a hill in Bristol(*) as I slowly drove past them all. Nice and gentle, no wheel spin, 3rd gear, 15mph, 1.3 Fiesta I think.

For Simons benefit, Westbury Road as you come up onto The Downs from the North. I must see if I can find my pictures of Bristol, Park St and around from sometime in the early 80's.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

I never noticed that effect but I slipped the auto into neutral (much quizzical looks from the wife) whenever possible, mostly to avoid that little jolt as it changed up, would have been enough to lose grip. A good practice methinks.

-- Mark.

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"nec aspera terrent"

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Reply to
MVP

Or maybe lacing the boot with bags of cement! difficult in a FWD.

Reply to
GbH

SpamTrapSeeSig wrote so intelligently that the:

Oh how I agree with you. Every county ought to have a skid-pan for practice. FWIW many years ago we used to get those long, cold, snowy winters. The first fall of snow and my father and I used to practice skidding for a couple of hours on a disused aerodrome - brilliant experience ;-)

Reply to
Diane Brookman

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