It Begins: Winter's Fury

[philmcneal]

Originally Posted by Ted Hart

Just place a piece of (waterproof?) cardboard-like material under your windshield wiper (both?) when you leave it. Come back to a snowed in mess...remove the material...turn on heater, drive on! -RDU area driver - Ah! Double post! I'm faster than this site!

omfg why didnt I think of that? genius!!!!!!!! pexi glass will be my material.... i just hope that some drug addict doesn't nab my stuff for a hit of some of the "so called" good stuff.

snow was so bad i got stuck so many times but lucky its passing away now... i was pretty close into buying snows until I found out the weather got better

it did suck when I had to only travel at 20 mph in the snow while everyone else is zooming by me at 40 mph.

oh and mpg is the worse so far... could be my first 40 mpg tank.

[onegammyleg]

Originally Posted by Ted Hart

Just place a piece of (waterproof?) cardboard-like material under your windshield wiper (both?) when you leave it.

All cars here have wipers that lift up off the glass and point away from the glass , like bug antennas.



They dont stick to the glass that way.

[red91sit]

I'm giving up on good gas mileage for the winter, I really have a very low tolerence for cold, I'm actually wearing my winter coat and hat right now (in the 70 degreee house) haha. So i will be starting my car early, also for my year of car, if it is driven with out some warm up time, the trannies are known to die. :-(

[red91sit]

haha, i dont' like it up here, i'm getting OUT of here as soon as I graduate.Z

I know idling the engine in the morning isn't good for it, increased wear and tear, more emissions, and longer warm up period, but If I start driving it with out warming it up, it will stay in first gear till about 20mph instead of the warmed up shift point of around 10, The other thing that's not good is when i use Overdrive, If it is super cold (winter) the shift into 4th takes about 10X as long as usual, I'm guessing this also means the band is getting around 10x the wear :'(

I do have one of those natural heaters, but she's really not a fan of people. In my car i have a space heater set on a timer to help with the interior warming so I only have to get the motor/tranny to about 70 instead of 190 for the T-stat to open, so that saves some gas, but overall, not real happy with my current setup.

[red91sit]

Originally Posted by theclencher

One trick I've found with automatics is, when you are used to the car and know when it should shift, often times when it's cold and the shifts are delayed, you can accelerate to the normal shift point (or somewhat above) and lift the throttle; it'll shift, maybe not right out of the driveway but for sure within the first mile.

That nice Oman winter front should help.

That's how i alwyas drive my car to get it to shift lower then it other wise would haha, she just sounds so nice crusing at idle speeds. when it get into the 1500-2000 rpm range, it gets kinda noisy.

[philmcneal]

does anyone know the mpg hit from Low rolling risistance tires to snow tires? I guess my coasting ability would be deminished by a lot? Even when the roads are dry and clear?

[rh77]

So, Thursday night I returned to a bunch of ice on the car -- I mean on all surfaces. I started chipping it away. With 18F and 20+ mph winds, it was, shall we say, "brisk".

Ted -- the heat onto the windshield was referencing the defroster once the car warmed, which tends to loosen-up the ice a bit -- but I didn't start the car right away. The old radiator took forever to warm up, but the new one actually worked well with retaining heat. BTW, no offense, but RDU-area drivers are crazy, and the traffic sucks!

I chipped-away at the ice as usual, but this time, something went wrong and I cracked the windshield My wife says that this is the 3rd one on the car, and for some reason they're weak. I'll say.

For those of you that live up North and park outside,. Forget Coroplast or fancy Winter aero treatments. I have a perfect solution, and it's free! Just pack the front grille area with snow.

I know this because of that Winter storm everyone was talking about. I live about 35 miles Southeast of the Airport. When I got in, the 2nd wave of the storm gave that part of town a dusting of snow. The Interstate was bone-dry and things were moving along nicely. As I drove South, the snow started. By the time I got home, there was 6" on the ground and the plows must have been on break. I was fine with it, but most everyone else just didn't get around very well.

Thankfully the new LRR tires were great in the snow, but to keep the back-end going the right direction required constant throttle jabs (killing FE in the process). But that kind of driving, by default, proves very difficult to get good FE -- everything is against you.

Farther to the South had it worse the next morning: we had about 10" total with 2-foot drifts, some local areas had 16"+. I heard that parts of OK had even more than that by a lot.

Winter driving lessons started early this year, but despite the road conditions, the snow looked good in the sun that morning.

RH77

[Ted Hart]

Originally Posted by rh77

Ted -- the heat onto the windshield was referencing the defroster once the car warmed, .... BTW, no offense, but RDU-area drivers are crazy, and the traffic sucks!







RH77

I agree wholeheartedly! NC's drivers started to suck (ie, insane!) when the Yankee drivers began to move into our state! RTP had a lot to do with it!