[Closed] 4x4s in the snow

So that's £50 000 for a Range Rover or £100 for a set of chains for the car. Yeah, OK

You're not married I take it? 😉

your problem there is that even a landy isn't heavy enough to provide anything like enough traction to push much snow. We used to use a Unimog with 2 tonnes of stone/salt in the back and chains and still run out of traction in 2ft+ snow.

A Unimog might be a wee bit hard to park in Sainsburys!

When did you use one? They look like a lot of fun!

What gets me is the housewives in Volvo XC/BMW X3/5/ Range Rovers who think they can charge around like normal then when they hit some ice things go really wrong. Grrr.

Yup, no matter what vehicle and driver aids you've got on a non-studded tyred vehicle, there's no getting around the laws of physics - despite all the BS the manufacturers come out with. IME, once you're sliding on polished ice, a lot of the end result comes down to luck.

(fwiw, my opinion is based on 30 years driving of all sorts of stuff)

i would suggest its mainly down to tyres.

fat and flat on modern 4x4s, and therefore pap as they compact the snow and you have NOOO grip

skinny steelies on any 2000 ish or older 2wd will be better, and cut through it.
and not as much of a fat lump to loose control of.

i would hypothise, that if you got a 4x4 that was about 1.5T, not the usual 2.5-3, and then put skinny/mud/not-motorway-specific tyres on it, that would be your best bet.

even skinny tyres on a 3T soft roader would be ok i reckon.
not something moronic like this: [img] [/img]

You're not married I take it?

However, as others have mentioned, four wheel drive may help get you moving, but when it comes to stopping, you've still only got four wheel brakes, the same as any other car.

As has been said. Low ratio, difflocks, very soft tyres and a nice big diesel and you can creep down hell of a hill. I would argue that the another big virtue of my Landy is thefact that I can stuff it into a bank/hedge if all alse fails and it comes out as tidy as it went in.

i would hypothise, that if you got a 4x4 that was about 1.5T, not the usual 2.5-3, and then put skinny/mud/not-motorway-specific tyres on it, that would be your best bet.

Indeed, with good all-season tyres my 1300kg 4WD is great fun and very controllable, except for poor ground clearance. And it's stopping is faster but less controlled without the ABS, more controlled but about 2 car lengths longer with the ABS. With proper studded tyres I reckon it'd be even more amazing. I think one of my favourite cars in the snow was my pug 205 with 145 all-season tyres - I'd regularly walk past 4x4s even with all terrain tyres (presuming the driver must be useless) but almost always ripped the front bumper off in more than 6" drifts 🙂

However, as others have mentioned, four wheel drive may help get you moving, but when it comes to stopping, you've still only got four wheel brakes, the same as any other car.

You also usually have more suitable tyres. Which makes a huge difference.

However, as others have mentioned, four wheel drive may help get you moving, but when it comes to stopping, you've still only got four wheel brakes, the same as any other car.

Yea, last winter I was getting a bit complacent and very nearly came to grief with the two other 4x4 in front of me. I'd got Bridgstone snow tyres on, ABs, EBD and ESP - but once you're sliding down a 1 in 10 black ice covered hill, you're stuffed! Once your ABS thinks the vehicle is stationary (at, say 2 or 3mph), it stops working and you very slowly slide into things. (I'd wondered why there were 2 other 4wds parked in the ditch 😕 )

surf matt - in my yoof i lived in the peak district. My old man had access to such toys as a Unimog with blade and snow blower, tracked vehicles, 8 wheeled vehicles and lots of landrovers and quad bikes.

They still have the Unimog i think but have sold the snow blower, they are crap in wet UK snow unless you have mega horsepower available to the front PTO.

They've given up trying to clear snow up to the house, just compacts to ice so they leave cars at the bottom and use a landy with full chains, even with that they were reliant on foot for over a week last winter and the cars didn't make it up for the best part of 5 weeks

I like your style, Matt. 😀
NATO Green paint and dents on every panel. The perfect Winter car.

What you really need if you have to get somewhere. Be it snow, across a lake of through the worst mud/sand is a BV206.

Its not 4x4 but it might be tall enough to get through the snow:
http://www.vitalbmx.com/videos/member/michael-mooneys-6ft-tall-mtb,6504/tallbikefreak,42682

but once you're sliding down a 1 in 10 black ice covered hill, you're stuffed!

There is a method to (hopefully) regain control but it's totally un-intuitive. When a vehicle starts to slide on ice, snow, whatever, the usual human reaction is to brake (and if it's a manual vehicle, drop the clutch) which as all us expert MTBers know is the worst thing to do 😯 What you need to do is blip the throttle to get the wheels rotating again to regain control. Easier said than done when you're starting to career down a hill...

Well I needed difflocks just then! Coming out of an iced up field with a ramp onto the road (on which a Fiesta in front of me crashed into the hadge!) and it wasn't having any of it. Difflock on and still sliding but made it okay. For a moment I thought I was stuck!

mattsccm - Member
As has been said. Low ratio, difflocks, very soft tyres and a nice big diesel and you can creep down hell of a hill

Agree, but you still need some traction between tyres & surface to achieve this. Near zero/zero traction surface and control can be lost, and as psling says the remedy just goes against the grain - using the throttle in that situation just does not make sense in the brain, but it works if you catch it early enough.

Locked centre and rear diffs, plus snow setting and max height on the suspension worked for the Disco in the Alps. 2 feet of snow up a hill was just about OK, but you just can't see what you're driving into (ditches and the like) so I really wasn't all that keen.

I used high ratio difflok just now - Low would have spun the wheels even more. Fully sideways as I finally made it!

blip the throttle to get the wheels rotating again to regain control

Indeed, done it and its somewhat terrifying, especially when you can feel the back end sliding and you're fighting natural reactions, with your brain screaming noooooo at you as you press the throttle 😯

As has been said above, its ALL about the tyres - we used to get the FC Montego vans nearly anywhere we wanted all year round due to sump pans and AT tyres.

Running Grabber AT2's here - just need some ****ing snow... robbed.

Any advice from the experts on here about descending a steep snowy track in an automatic 4x4?

My wife just had a fun experience in her new (to her) X Trail. she had it in 4x4 lock and also selected 1 in the auto box to limit her gear range but still felt the car running away down the slope, braking then just caused the car to skid - not a fun experience.The snow had been compacted down and she got up the track fine, but descending was not fun, especially with 3 kids in the car.

I'm sure more appropriate tyres would make a difference and we're looking into those, but are there any techniques which would help?

Cheers

Mango - just really, really slow and very very smooth - no dabbing of brakes, etc. That's all you can do really. Lower tyre pressure will help it grip a bit more.

1st gear in an auto will be too high to be of much use even if selected manually i reckon

My brother just finished pulling a Disco and a Defender out of the warehouse unit he uses, in his Vauxhall Combi It's possible there's a smugger man in scotland but I'd be surprised.

Reverse is usually lower than 1st if you havn't got a low box, but you've got to be brave!

Going down, the car can only go as slow as the grip allows, whether you are trying to slow it with the engine or brakes (assuming either type braking is being applied to all 4 wheels evenly).
Using engine braking might help a bit as it's likely to be smoother.
The basic physics says that reversing won't make much difference either (although since the engine is likely to be in the front the weight distribution on a hill might make a bit of a difference I suppose, but unlikely to be much).

The solution is better tyres or some shoveling + brushing 🙂

OK, so to pull it back to the usual STW question - what tyres? I have a Disco3 with OEM Goodyear which, to be fair, did well in 12" of snow last year. They did shuffle a little on the ice, but overall not too bad. Having had a blast around today again fine, but i am thinking about alternatives. Grabber AT2 or Yoko AT-S are in play at the moment, but so is a set of Winter Contacts? What's your view; winter tyres or a reasonable off-road tyre that I can also use, well, off-road?

my old man swears by Avon Ranger Ice or plain old Ranger AT

There is a method to (hopefully) regain control but it's totally un-intuitive. When a vehicle starts to slide on ice, snow, whatever, the usual human reaction is to brake (and if it's a manual vehicle, drop the clutch) which as all us expert MTBers know is the worst thing to do What you need to do is blip the throttle to get the wheels rotating again to regain control. Easier said than done when you're starting to career down a hill...

Indeed. letting the wheels roll will always allow more control than having them locked (hence the reason for abs). It's a technique I have to employ occasionally going down my steep little back street when it's snowy - it's narrow and has corners, so if I brake I just go straight into the wall. As you say though, easier to do when the consequences aren't fiery death (would just be a dented car in my case since the speed is low).

or some shoveling + brushing

Isn't that technically known as Curling?

Probably best not to attempt it with a car...on a public highway.

But you NEVER brake going down a slippery surface. or touch the clutch for that matter.
My LR, which has an Isuzu 2.8 diesel in it which has a very low drive ratio moves so slowly in 1st , with no throttle that the speedo won't move. If you tackle down hills likethis with some planning.ie go in slow, what you can cope with is amazing. My bottle goes before the grip on icy roads. Drop the tyre pressure as well to say 10psi and its great fun.

Defender has an anti stall feature in 1st so you can crawl at super slow speeds without having to touch the throttle. Handy in snow.

i used to have 1.9 diesel 205 with skinny tyres, it was great in the snow.

When i was taught to do steep decents in landrovers, they always made sure your feet were off all the pedals, and you let the engine do the work, and apart from occassionally blipping the the throttle you were fine.

Got to drive from Edinburgh to Wales tomorrow - in an Avensis estate - not looking fwd to it. Spent the day watching people slithering around either driving way too slow and dithering or way too fast and over revving.

But you NEVER brake going down a slippery surface.

That's fine if there isnt a T junction at the bottom. This morning I was creeping down the hill in 1st and came to about 15ft from the queuing traffic crossing the T at the bottom. HAD to go for the brakes as there was no room left and I was going too fast to steer. ABS went mental but the steering was still just about usable, all locked but it was 50 % polished ice so I just had to rely on the guy at the bottom predicting it and waiting for me to slide into the space in front of him like a slow-motion rally driver 🙂

...also selected 1 in the auto box to limit her gear range but still felt the car running away down the slope... are there any techniques which would help?

Does the X Trail have a transfer box? If so it would help to select 'low box' and lock into 1st gear. Having said that, the brain advises you're losing conrol well before you actually do lose control so it is probably just a case of practice and confidence! Technique? We've been known to run autos down slippery slopes forwards with Reverse gear selected; allows the wheels to contra-rotate with a surprising amount of control but I certainly would not recommend doing this!! [especially with all the electronic wizardry on modern vehicles] 😕

? We've been known to run autos down slippery slopes forwards with Reverse gear selected; allows the wheels to contra-rotate with a surprising amount of control but I certainly would not recommend doing this!! [especially with all the electronic wizardry on modern vehicles]

**** me! just finished reading this and looked out the window - the snow's back on again and coming down hard (just north of Glasgow).

I was pretty pleased with the performance of the 02 Rav4 I picked up earlier in the year when the snow finally arrived this weekend. We were camping out over beside Dunoon - went to bed under a clear frosty sky, and woke up around 8am with the snow hammering down. By the time we'd packed up, cleaned up and got going, there was about 6-8" of snow lying on the forest track, but we made it out with relative ease, even up the steepish hill halfway along the trail. I'm planning on shoving on some winter tyres in the near future, so I reckon it will cope with our usual winter conditions with ease.

Time to put the mondeo away and fire up my Impreza for the winter. AWD, low ratio box and Michelin Alpin winter tyres for a trip to the lakes this week.

yeah man ditto here, the audis tucked away up the drive its now land rover time woohoo!

Any tips for DIY winter tires?

Do I just buy 1000 4" wood screws, and put them in the tyres from the inside?

What inner tube? Gaffa tape? Does stans work on r16 265s?

defenders are all very well.. but useless if the diesel freezes up like what was happening to them in aviemore last year.If they dont start then whats the point lol.

my snowtrack3 vredesteins are amazing. i was getting drifts around a roundabout in the middle of nowhere last night about 11.30pm.the front end just pulls you back to where you wanrt to go. I wasnt going daft,just trying to suss out what all was happening when it went sideways.something i have never really played about with.I recon i learnt a bit more than if i stayed at home sat on my arse.

Worst bit of my commute was getting into my drive - took 20 mins of digging 🙂

defenders are all very well.. but useless if the diesel freezes up like what was happening to them in aviemore last year.If they dont start then whats the point lol.

May I suggest that "them" are very thick then?

How do you think trucks operate in Alaska? Diesel clouds at minus ten. It freezes solid at about minus 100 - nowhere gets that cold. They just use additives to lower the freezing point. If they can operate trucks in Alaska, they can easily do so in Aviemore.

Not sure about diesel but when my sister in law lived oop norf in the USA they had heating elements in the sumps. You plugged your car in when they were in you garage and the car parks had power points that you plugged into when you were in town.

We used to plug the cars into a socket at my parking space as above in Norway. In Bosnia in the winter our diesel froze but we stuck a kerosene heater underneath the block and it kept it working but perhaps not the safest option 😉

THanks for all the advice re the XTrail I think better tyres and practice will be the key.

Any advice for tyres that allow good grip in snow but also have a fairly low rolling resistance? Or are the two mutually exclusive?