Will I survive this winter?

[chrisl]

Well, I can say one thing after a slightly nerve-wracking experience today...

Pilot Super Sports royally suck in the snow. I nearly got stuck on a hill that was shallow enough I barely even noticed it was there (until I realized that I was having real trouble getting up it).

[Mad1723]

Today was real bad as far as weather goes. Freezing rain, highways were almost frozen solid and snow was packed up tight, making it hard to go through it for traction. Gotta say the car is really predictable and, for the love of god, keep the traction control ON if you plan on driving in real snow. Don't be a hero with this car, it has a real tendency to slide. The TC has kept me in a straight line in more than one situation.

Today's weather was bad enough that I almost slid 2 lanes across when turning at a slow speed into a boulevard. Funny enough, still able to take off from a complete standstill with the first gear without spinning the wheels. Don't know if it's the tires or if it's just that I'm really careful with the throttle. Probably the throttle, considering the following fact:

When you can spin your tires in 5th gear going 40 MPH (about 2K RPM), it's slippery

[humfrz]

Originally Posted by chrisl

Well, I can say one thing after a slightly nerve-wracking experience today...

Pilot Super Sports royally suck in the snow. I nearly got stuck on a hill that was shallow enough I barely even noticed it was there (until I realized that I was having real trouble getting up it).

Dang ...... I'm glad you made it up "the hill".

For general information:

"While Pilot Super Sport tires are designed to allow sports cars, sporty coupes, performance sedans and supercars to achieve their full potential in dry and wet conditions, like all summer tires they are not intended to be driven in near-freezing temperatures, through snow or on ice".

But you knew that ..... it just got reinforced....

Yep, I swear, summer preformance tires can be stopped on a road with a 1% grade and 1/4" of snow.....

humfrz

[chrisl]

Originally Posted by humfrz

Dang ...... I'm glad you made it up "the hill".

For general information:

"While Pilot Super Sport tires are designed to allow sports cars, sporty coupes, performance sedans and supercars to achieve their full potential in dry and wet conditions, like all summer tires they are not intended to be driven in near-freezing temperatures, through snow or on ice".

But you knew that ..... it just got reinforced....

Yep, I swear, summer preformance tires can be stopped on a road with a 1% grade and 1/4" of snow.....

humfrz

Yep, I knew that, but unfortunately, I still make poor decisions from time to time. It was fine when I left (though perhaps a bit threatening), and I washed my '07 Outback (which, conveniently enough, has Blizzak WS70s on it, so it would have been fine) yesterday, so I didn't want to get it dirty. I wasn't expecting snow, and I wasn't expecting that the Super Sports would be quite that useless if a tiny bit were to fall (there wasn't exactly a lot of snow on the ground - maybe an inch or so).

Ah well, lesson learned: ALWAYS take the Outback if there's even a tiny chance of snow in the forecast, even if I just washed it....

[nyfries]

got like 10cm of snow of snow 2 days ago. took the frs out for work in the morning, came back to it the next day at like 5am, the car and entire neighbourhood it was it was snowed in, even the big streets wasn't plower at all.

my car has the stock summer michelins. I made it home driving 30km and under the whole way. it is super easy to spin it out.

the worst?

it got stuck literally half a meter away from my garage, my driving has a very slight incline and the rear wheel just couldn't get any tractions.

i had to leave it outside.

Gonna start looking at winter tires.
Seeing the trouble i had on such a slight incline, will i still have trouble going up big hills in such a light cars?

i drove the work gmc rwd panel van yesterday and we almost got stuck on at incline, the van had winters on

[Mad1723]

Originally Posted by nyfries

Gonna start looking at winter tires.
Seeing the trouble i had on such a slight incline, will i still have trouble going up big hills in such a light cars?

I've had spin in 3rd on an incline with winters on in Montreal. Believe me, you will get stuck without winter tires.

[Suberman]

Originally Posted by chrisl

Well, I can say one thing after a slightly nerve-wracking experience today...

Pilot Super Sports royally suck in the snow. I nearly got stuck on a hill that was shallow enough I barely even noticed it was there (until I realized that I was having real trouble getting up it).

Newsflash.

[chrisl]

Originally Posted by nyfries

got like 10cm of snow of snow 2 days ago. took the frs out for work in the morning, came back to it the next day at like 5am, the car and entire neighbourhood it was it was snowed in, even the big streets wasn't plower at all.

my car has the stock summer michelins. I made it home driving 30km and under the whole way. it is super easy to spin it out.

the worst?

it got stuck literally half a meter away from my garage, my driving has a very slight incline and the rear wheel just couldn't get any tractions.

i had to leave it outside.

Gonna start looking at winter tires.
Seeing the trouble i had on such a slight incline, will i still have trouble going up big hills in such a light cars?

i drove the work gmc rwd panel van yesterday and we almost got stuck on at incline, the van had winters on

You should be fine with good winter tires and cautious driving - the difference between them and summer/all season tires is pretty staggering. If you have any really steep, icy hills on your normal route, you might consider throwing a couple bags of sand in the trunk. The extra weight in the trunk will help a bit, and then if you get stuck anyways, you can always try putting some sand down in front of your tires to help (it won't get you far, but it isn't a bad last resort).

[chrisl]

Originally Posted by Suberman

Newsflash.

I was pretty surprised at how much they suck, to be honest. I wasn't expecting them to be good, but I thought they'd work OK for getting home in <1" of snow if I was careful about it (since there was pretty much no traffic or significant hills on the route).

I've seen tests where all seasons didn't do much better than summers on snow/ice, and I've driven around in snow on all seasons a bunch (my outback has HydroEdge low rolling resistance all seasons on it during the summer, and I usually don't switch over to my winters until a couple of snowfalls, so I've driven them in the snow a fair amount). The gap from summer performance to all season is a lot bigger than I thought though (and the gap from all season to winter is similarly enormous).

[Mad1723]

Winter tires have compounds that are better suited for winter driving by staying softer at lower temperatures(duh!), the thread pattern is also quite different. While summer tires tend to have as much rubber as possible making contact with the road, winter tires tend to have a thread pattern to evacuate snow and go through it as much as possible (Lots of ridges and small grooves on winter tires for example).

If summer tires were good on snow, they would not have invented winter tires

[navanodd]

Originally Posted by Suberman

Just by the by anyone with an automatic and TC fully off tried winter mode? Do you get good traction then because that starts the car off in second gear, softens the shift speed and I think slows down the throttle response.

I definitely find snow mode on the auto helpful for keeping rear end traction. The gear engagement is much slower and smoother, and the reduced torque always helps. Another benefit that I find is that starting in 2nd gives much lower revs and less engine noise, making it easier to hear the transition when your tires start spinning at a standstill.


There's still one thing that I struggle with on this car. I can feel the rear end traction once in motion no problem, but I have a lot of trouble telling where the breakaway point is for static grip before I see action from the speedometer. Perhaps because of the non-studded tires or me being used to a traditional open diff resulting in one wheel spinning at double speed when traction is lost. I always pull away in low grip situations with my window down for this very reason - to listen for traction.

[ZDan]

Originally Posted by Suberman

The only discernible effect was, as I expected, a slight increase in polar moment towards the rear axle (I placed the sand at the back of the trunk (against the seatback) to minimize this. That way the weight is over the axle and not lifting the front axle at all.

The car was slightly trickier to reign in when stepping out.

The "as I expected" betrays bias. People tend to experience (or *think* they experience) what they *expect*. Blind A/B/A testing would be better, but of course not hugely practical!

The effect on forward traction was precisely zero.

"Precisely" implies you made *precise* measurements. Did you?

Weight over the drive wheels will help a bit, but even 100 lb. added only gives you 4% more drive grip, which you may or may not notice.

This is unsurprising since the factory weight distribution with driver has to be close to 50/50 (unladen is 53/47 f/r, but you can't drive an empty car.)

Weight distribution is nowhere near 50/50. http://media.caranddriver.com/files/...e-napoleon.pdf (55.2/44.8 full tank, no driver). They claimed 53/47 for the car with driver and passenger and a full tank, but as-tested weight distribution with fuel and driver is 54/46. That's not very good in snow... 100 lb. at the front of the trunk even with the rear wheels improves this to 52.2/47.8. Better, but not HUGELY so. 47.8/46 = 1.04x the grip. Might make the difference, might not.
May as well put the weight as far back in the trunk as possible. The car will still be more drive-traction limited than front grip limited. Might put another .5%-1% on the drive wheels.

The "problem" is the Torsen diff is too tight.

I don't think so. The torsen is "torque-sensing", in low-torque situations, lockup should be light.

The only real trouble with this car on snow is lack of straight line grip. That just had to be the Torsen. Nothing else could affect only the straight line grip.

In a straight line, the torsen is ensuring that you don't get a 1-wheel spin and that both wheels are contributing as much as they can before they both start to spin. It is HELPING. Of course when you do break traction, you spin both wheels and lose all lateral stability instead of only spinning one wheel and keeping some lateral stability. But for sure the torsen is close to maximizing the available drive grip.

The PROBLEM is poor static weight distribution. The best solution is good winter tires, which you already have. Putting weight in the trunk in the form of sand or kitty litter or other material that can also be used as traction-compound will also help. I did that with my old 240SX with similar weight distribution and no limited slip.

In my S2000, with Torsen diff, 49F/51R distribution with driver and fuel, on Dunlop WinterSport tires, never a prob

[tomato86]

I haven't been posting much on the forums lately but about 2 Sundays ago I got stuck 4 different places for a total of 6 hours. It was truly a day I missed my Evo.

[humfrz]

Originally Posted by tomato86

I haven't been posting much on the forums lately but about 2 Sundays ago I got stuck 4 different places for a total of 6 hours. It was truly a day I missed my Evo.

Welcome back ....

Too bad you got stuck so many times.

What tires do you have on your car..??

humfrz