Every time we get a new snow I tear ass around our cul de sac and out to the first light. I tell the kids it’s because I’m gauging the road conditions but I’m really just being a kid myself
-
Having trouble using the site?
Contact support
PSA: Stay safe out there folks. Share and discuss cold weather driving, maintenance, home/personal safety tips here.
- Thread starter Blue Sky Country
- Start date
If you only have one set of chains they need to go on the front otherwise all four, always four high unless you're out in the mountains four wheeling I have never used chains on my 4x4 truck and I live where it snows, do use studded tires in the winter though. Just put it in four wheel drive and go slow, most of all watch out for the other idiots.
Luckily for NOW it's coming down as rain and NOT freezing on the roads. I don't know how, it's 29 degrees. Not much moving out there and that's a good thing. They're still calling for it to get nasty tonight. For those who are going out for Valentine's day activities, please be careful.
Fuck that noise. We picked a perfect time, completely by chance, to take a vacation to fl
True "black ice" laughs at your lack of respect.
True "black ice" is a rarity yet the most frequent excuse for crashing.
You could have perfectly safe high speed roads one minute than have a rising sun add just enough heat to create a nightmare in an instant.
The phenomena wont last long but for its duration shit is a mess.
Last experience with it was about two months ago....I was helping a buddy out by responding to a crash out of area knowing the responsible patrol was in a more distant area of his patrol area.
As I was getting to the crash scene, a downhill just being lit by a rising sun, I started to feel it in my tires that things were shit. I saw the crash scene and started to ride the breaks letting the ABS do its thing. being careful to let off if ABS was unable to keep the correction. I was lucky to get stopped in the 1/2 mile I had to pull into the break down lane and watch a family walking out of the woods through the snow, leaving their car buried behind.
The snow was a day or to before, the roads were perfectly clean and dry, beautiful clear skies, the sun brought moisture through the pavement and it immediately froze on the surface of the pavement.
There is nothing you can do, nothing to give you expectation its coming, only a feeling that you are no longer in control.
I left my car in the break down lane with lights on, I had the family get in the tow truck and move a quarter mile down the road, I waited in the snow hoping my soon to be replaced car doesnt get crushed because instead of getting a brand new car in that case I will get someone elses turn in.
Sure enough Im looking back at oncoming traffic and a big SUV does an immediate right face and plows 90 degrees through the guardrail and goes airborne off a steep embankment....horrifying to watch in real time.
I hump back staying on my side of the guardrail and see the SUV on its roof, front now facing the highway, slide the 30 feet down to its level and all I heard was a little girls voice asking "What happened? What Happened?"
The good thing is I was able to help the 3 kids and the Dad climb out of the car.
Half way down the hill the car came in for a nose first landing which caused it to somersault ass over front and had it plant on its roof between two large trees. Had it hit either tree that sudden impact stop would have been bad.
I think landing and planting it on the roof they all just rode their seatbelts from seat to roof and the nylon did its safety thing.
Black Ice says FAFO.
No, she rides scooted up to me as close as she can get. Which happens to put the other side of her ass against the door handle.
I live at 7000' in Wyoming at the base of the mountains. I don't know a single person that has studded tires. Maybe a couple of people that commute 80 miles each day might have them. I don't know anyone that has a winter set and a summer set of tires, again maybe the commuters might have them. People down south and back east think that we all have special equipment for the winter when really we just have experience. People drive on shit tires here all the time. As far as tire chains go, everyone I know owns pretty much the same style and you never use them unless you are a rancher or you are elk hunting. There are signs saying that chains are illegal on pavement. These are the only chains that I own. They weigh 16 pounds a piece.
Attachments
We get paid for "potential" and I think we do pretty well considering.
We can be our own worst enemies and there are those that fuck it up big time.
As far as careers go its like being married to a Playmate in a rent free house with a boat and gun collection included but for some its not enough and they ruin it for the rest of us.
Every day is a fun day considering the guys I work with and the fact they do the job. Even through the worst when people would apologize to me for current events Id tell them "No way, they make it worthwhile".......truth be told though with the current changes Im seeing in the tides when its my time Im pulling the plug.
Please direct all questions in relation to driving on snow and ice to 308pirate as he is the foremost expert on the subject, he drives an Accord so obviously he knows how to drive in deep snowy conditions.
Back in 2015 the Northeast had the winter from hell.
It snowed Jan 27 or there abouts 12 inches plus than every 6-7 days for the next 4-5 weeks we got another twelve inch plus of snow.
They were midwest plains type storms the likes of which we dont usually get combining heavy snow with wind making the shit fly horizontal rather than vertical.
I had a Crown Vic at the time running only summer tires. In the first storm I thought I was going to be fucked.
It was the only time I had spatial disorientation. Driving along I had to stop at times and get out of the car to find the road edge to make sure I was still riding in line with the road.
Our Dem gov of the time was initiating the early steps of the commie agenda which would get us to where we now are. He was putting out via the media anyone out driving would be arrested (that wasnt going to happen). People must have listened because getting out and taking a leak in the middle of a major interstate was a possibility.
Only guy I saw the whole day was a dude in the break down lane having a panic attack. He was trying to get to NH. He was ten or so miles beyond the road that would have got him there and was now on his way to Cape Cod. I got him a tow and he was happy to take it - He couldn't mentally take driving into a white wall any longer.
Anyway that Crown Vic made it through that storm without getting stuck as well as the next 4-5. Absolutely impressed the shit out of me. SUVs are much better but that sedan did the job.
Getting Really Cold in Arkansas , I have a bad running habit , seldom miss a day and had some long streaks. Learned this screw shoe hack and have shod lots of friends.
Good for running and/or walking in general on ice. aluminum screws that don’t poke through.
Good for running and/or walking in general on ice. aluminum screws that don’t poke through.
Attachments
I got stuck at a gun show (of all places) and had just bought a Ford Focus for commuting back and forth to work. This show was on the other side of the state, they were calling for snow to start later in the day, so I head off to the show. I finish, walk out to 6 inches of snow on the ground. Yep, in 3-4 hours we got 6 inches of snow. I didn't know how to turn traction control off on my 3 month old car. To add insult to injury, it had Z rated summer tires. It takes me a few minutes to read the manual, so off I go. I've got 40 miles to get home. Once out on the main roads, I knew I was in trouble but off I go spinning tires to get up a slight rise. I get on the highway and there's cars abandoned everywhere.
I could travel okay, but once I stopped, it took forever to get going again. Time after time, I'd get stuck behind someone. I don't know what happened but about 5 miles down the road, my ABS light comes on, but I'm not stopping. I get to a place where I know there are motels on a side road. I get off the highway and the 1st motel says they have nothing available. I make it to the last motel and luckily they have a room. I eat from a CVS pharmacy and wake up to a better situation. Get back on the road and I bet there were 50 or more cars and truck abandoned on the road.
The news said this was a surprise storm and total snowfall was measure at 10-12 inches, they had forecasted 1-3 inches.
I could travel okay, but once I stopped, it took forever to get going again. Time after time, I'd get stuck behind someone. I don't know what happened but about 5 miles down the road, my ABS light comes on, but I'm not stopping. I get to a place where I know there are motels on a side road. I get off the highway and the 1st motel says they have nothing available. I make it to the last motel and luckily they have a room. I eat from a CVS pharmacy and wake up to a better situation. Get back on the road and I bet there were 50 or more cars and truck abandoned on the road.
The news said this was a surprise storm and total snowfall was measure at 10-12 inches, they had forecasted 1-3 inches.
Last edited:
I live at 6000' one state over and there is no fucking way I could get out of my driveway without studs.
Texas adds a new dimension. Sometimes it wont rain for months and the oil gets packed down into the pavement. Then it rains and floats the oil up, then the rain freezes and gets sleet on top of that. Its rare but the combo is terrifying.
I left a friends house in Houston one morning, got in my SAAB which was made in Sweden where they deal with snow a lot. I knew it was bad when I skated from his front door to the car. Started it and let her warm up for a minute, put her in reverse and slid backwards down his drive. I hit the street and tried to turn the car...nothing, the wheels just went back and forth and the chassis did nothing. Headed east on I 10 and cars were flying by me, minutes later Id see them in the ditch. The worst was where a family in a station wagon slid up under a tanker of Sulfuric (could have been Hydrochloric) acid and it ruptured and filled the car. The cop directing traffic was green from seeing the remnants. If you dont know how to drive in that shit STAY HOME. Stay home even if you do.
Electric motors also offer very precise and linear control of that torque. If the controller has a good estimate of the magnet temperature, the ability to measure (or at least closely estimate) the current in each phase, and a proper FOC algorithm, you basically have a servo motor in terms of potential accuracy of estimated shaft torque. You can modify those each time you commutate the motor, so for a PWM frequency of 10 kHz, you're potentially getting 10,000 adjustments each second (in practice, it's much slower due to the need for proper bandwidth margin within each loop), but we're still talking about something that can be controlled much faster than a human could perceive.
Modern IC engine ECUs do their best to implement "torque follower" control methods, but without a practical means to calculate in-cylinder pressure (or crankshaft torque), it's just a rough guess. Let's see - instantaneous mass airflow rate is X, so we can estimate that some fraction of that entered the cylinder that's currently firing (and no, it's not as easy as dividing MAF rate by cylinder count since the engine speed is constantly changing), and now we can estimate torque at MBT, but we aren't operating at MBT due to fuel quality so we derate that estimate according to the commanded spark advance... oops, and now everything in that calculation just changed because the engine is never truly running at steady state. F'in' miracle the things work as well as they do.
Also helping is that Teslas are heavy. Mass hurts traction on dry pavement (due to the tires' non-Newtonian relationship between normal force and lateral grip), but helps on snow and can help on ice (particularly with studded tires).
Saying "is there anything they wont fear monger" would imply that it is thing. Pretending we have some deep understanding of it is stupid.
A lot of them can. Many of the cars I deal with at work have cylinder pressure sensors (integrated in glow plugs in diesel engines) and pretty much all of them have ways to measure or calculate crank torque.
Who implements in-cylinder pressure sensing in production vehicles? Last I'd seen, Beru was working on it for diesel engines (glow plugs as you state), but I haven't seen it yet deployed. Lemme guess - we're talking about something German.
Today was brutal this winter is just awful. It's 79 with crystal blue skies and I had to turn the AC on dammit!
Yeah, I'm at 28F and freezing rain. I salted the driveway and so far, it's staying ice free. Don't care about anything farther from my house. My guess is it's going to be brutal over night.
That’s about what we had in sw fl today. It was terrible. I can’t stand this heat and humidity
I was being facetious I love hot weather I prefer to live in Reefs board shorts and T-shirts year around coming from the shit hole of Chicago freezing my nuts off as a kid
I grew up in northern hellinois too and lived in sw fl for about 4 years. I’ve learned that my problem with weather anywhere is humidity. Hot, cold, mild temps are all ruined for me with high humidity
This is the difference between North Dakota brutal cold and just cold in Wyoming. When it's below zero and there is humidity I can't warm up. No humidity and 5 mins in a warm truck and I'm good.
Same here. I’m good with just a heavy hoodie in the low 20’s here in Co(if I’m active). Anywhere there’s a sort of high humidity level the temp I’m comfortable at goes waaaay up
I'm curious about your driveway... and what you drive. I don't know anyone who drives with studs. My Xterra can drive from a dead stop in any snow that isn't touching the frame (probably close to 18 inches or more) with BF Goodrich K02's unstudded. I have a Chevy cruze that could be helped with studded tires when driving up my moms driveway, which is probably 20⁰-30⁰ in some spots (she lives pretty much at the base of a mountain). I've made it up that hill with snow on it a few times though and I don't even have full winter tires, just 3 snow peak rated all seasons. Going down that hill can be pretty fun when it's icy, but getting up can be a chore sometimes since it doesn't have 4WD. Is driveway maintenance just not a thing with you?
Small GM diesels. Higher output 2.0L (and i seem to remember some of the 1.6) I4 fitted to some of the pre PSA Opel models (mostly Insignia over here). No idea if anyone ever uses those engines in the states, gather you aren't really big on diesels in the smaller cars. No idea how precise the sensors are (good enough to throw codes if a cylinder isn't running right)
I drive an F350. My driveway is three miles long, gravel, and has a rise of about 1000 feet with a bunch of sharp turns in steep areas. It also goes around a lake. So the problem isn't snow, which I can get around fine in, it is that ice forms in really bad places, and since it is gravel, I plow it with a base. It's just a tough road, and if I had put it in, I would have done it differently. But no, we keep it really good, it is just that when it ices, like a couple of weeks ago, you basically get steep sheet ice. At its worst, the studs do nothing and I either put on chains or deal with sliding down a hill for a hundred yards.I'm curious about your driveway... and what you drive. I don't know anyone who drives with studs. My Xterra can drive from a dead stop in any snow that isn't touching the frame (probably close to 18 inches or more) with BF Goodrich K02's unstudded. I have a Chevy cruze that could be helped with studded tires when driving up my moms driveway, which is probably 20⁰-30⁰ in some spots (she lives pretty much at the base of a mountain). I've made it up that hill with snow on it a few times though and I don't even have full winter tires, just 3 snow peak rated all seasons. Going down that hill can be pretty fun when it's icy, but getting up can be a chore sometimes since it doesn't have 4WD. Is driveway maintenance just not a thing with you?
This is a regular winter for us....funny how you guys make national news for this type of weather.
This is just a normal Tuesday
This is just a normal Tuesday
Yeah, small diesels are rare in the US (even less common than hybrids and EVs). We got a diesel Cruze for a few years, but GM sold maybe 5,000/year here in the states, and it's not clear if these got the same technology as your Opels in Europe.
VWAG also appears to have used this technology in production, but for some reason, diesel VWs are far less common in the States than they used to be
It's not clear to me if the Beru/BorgWarner glow plugs are actually good enough to calculate IMEP (AKA "cylinder pressure"), or if they are just used for something like gross misfire detection.
