REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

It's that time again!

POSTED BY: FREMDFIRMA
UPDATED: Thursday, December 2, 2010 19:27
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VIEWED: 734
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Wednesday, December 1, 2010 5:30 PM

FREMDFIRMA



In respect to I-94 being closed a while thanks to a tremendous amount of road based idiocy sparked by people FREAKING THE HELL OUT when a single flake of snow hits the ground, I give you this...
http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=77

Fact: Your SUV does NOT have magical physics-defying properties, it's goddamn top heavy, has a shitty truck-frame based suspension and it weighs SEVEN THOUSAND POUNDS, to forget this is to endanger yourself and everyone around you.

Fact: Your hi-beams or super brights might enable YOU to see, but they blind EVERY DAMN BODY ELSE, and are very likely to cause an accident as people try to move to where the damn things aren't BLINDING THEM by bouncing off their side mirrors which are very difficult to adjust while trying to drive the car - an accident YOU will wind up part of cause your goddamn SUV weighs SEVEN THOUSAND POUNDS and has the stopping distance of a fucking tractor trailer.

Fact: If you go too slow, you WILL GET STUCK, phony halfassed 4WD notwithstanding, and you will endanger folk who must accellerate AROUND you in order to avoid becoming stuck themselves, as well as risk being rear-ended by them when you inevitably bog down - not to mention if you get THEM stuck, then you will have a very enraged person who's pissed at YOU specifically in close proximity to you, with no escape... in a snowstorm - think that's a good idea ?

These facts brought to you by the Drive-Like-You-Have-A-Fucking-Clue Association.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Wednesday, December 1, 2010 6:01 PM

CHRISISALL


Quote:

Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
Drive-Like-You-Have-A-Fucking-Clue Association.


Your association is clearly lacking in educating the ass*ole driving public.


The Speed Racer Chrisisall


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Wednesday, December 1, 2010 6:32 PM

THEHAPPYTRADER


It doesn't snow where I live and I've never had to drive in it. I vaguely remember some odd saying about turning being different or kinda backwards or something? Just for my own curiosity, what is the right way to drive in snowy or icy roads? Is there much a difference between that normal driving?

If it varies car to car, I have a small front wheel drive, manual trans VW (96 GTI specifically). I don't anticipate really needing to know how, but it would be nice.

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Wednesday, December 1, 2010 6:57 PM

FREMDFIRMA



Well, each car is different, but I'll try and give you some key points.

Traction will be a little more of a problem for you, since you have both maneuvering and power delivery on the same pair of wheels, and the "pivot point" of your car is further forward due to the weight being front loaded.

One thing to take into account is that unlike heavy rain, snow creates drag - which means you'll have to drop a gear range and try to find a balance between keeping enough forward momentum to not get stuck, while not putting so much power into it that you break traction and lose full control.

Yet that very drag is also helpful if you DO start to slide, because the friction will brake you, and there's two ways to handle it depending on the situation.

If you are about to hit something and need to regain control immediately, snap the wheel hard in the direction of the skid and downshift, then feather the gas and pull out of it when the tires grip - I do recommend practicing that trick in a factory parking lot or something first, it's not QUITE as easy as it sounds.

Better if the situation allows to just let off the gas, follow the skid with the wheel and gently move back to your original direction as you regain control - don't worry about the back end, with a small front wheel drive car, it's gonna follow the nose anyway.

The hard part for you is gonna be turning, since your power and control are both on the same set of wheels, so what you wanna do is let off the gas completely when you must make a turn, approach from the outside, let go of the gas, and turn slightly more than usual to counterbalance the forward momentum and lack of traction, then ease up and take as flat a line as possible through the corner and feather the gas as you come out of it.

That help any ?

-F

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Wednesday, December 1, 2010 7:46 PM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)


Also, keep your movements - of the steering wheel, the accelerator, the brakes - to a minimum, and try to do any inputs SLLOOOOWWWWLLLYYY and deliberately. Don't weave back and forth, and if you turn the wheel and nothing happens, let off the gas and DON'T turn the wheel more - if you don't have traction at the front, turning the wheels more doesn't give you traction - but it will cause your car to lurch suddenly once you DO gain traction again, and can easily lead to you going into a spin or into a ditch. Or into oncoming traffic.

Your GTI is actually quite the ticket in snow and ice - it's small, it's maneuverable, it's relatively light, and front wheel drive tends to be quite forgiving, up to a point. The car is set up to understeer - at the limit, the front end will "push", or tend to keep going straight when you turn the steering wheel (Oversteer is when you turn into a corner and the rear end breaks loose and slides, resulting in you "fishtailing" around the curve with the ass end of the car hanging out). There's an old saying about the difference between the two: Understeer scares the driver; oversteer scares the passengers. Junior Johnson said it differently: "Understeer is when you hit the wall with the front of your car; oversteer is when you hit it with the back end."

Mostly, just remember to slow it down and try not to make any sudden moves.

This Space For Rent!

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Wednesday, December 1, 2010 8:21 PM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important


Hello,

Having lived in South Florida, and now in Arizona, if I ever found myself driving through deep snow, I probably would make many mistakes.

I suppose the best I could offer would be to drive as though I was driving through a deep puddle of water and hope for the best.

--Anthony

Assured by friends that the signal-to-noise ratio has improved on this forum, I have disabled web filtering.

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Wednesday, December 1, 2010 10:58 PM

THEHAPPYTRADER


Quote:

If you are about to hit something and need to regain control immediately, snap the wheel hard in the direction of the skid and downshift, then feather the gas and pull out of it when the tires grip - I do recommend practicing that trick in a factory parking lot or something first, it's not QUITE as easy as it sounds.


Quote:

Your GTI is actually quite the ticket in snow and ice - it's small, it's maneuverable, it's relatively light, and front wheel drive tends to be quite forgiving, up to a point.


When... or perhaps if... we can solve the mystery of the 3 1/2 cylinder engine, I would love to try that, somewhere safe of course. Currently, one of my cylinders isn't always firing, and the car can get a mite jerky when it suddenly engages. At least, that's what it feels like, I could be misdiagnosing. It's fairly obvious that something is causing the car to occasionally lose and then regain power, and it's worse about it in the lower ranges. The car is actually pretty stable when I get to around 45, 50+ That wouldn't be ideal for snow/ice... but fortunately we don't get that here.


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Thursday, December 2, 2010 12:40 AM

FREMDFIRMA



Check plug, plug cap, cable, distributor - in that order.

90% chance that solves your problem.

-F

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Thursday, December 2, 2010 1:54 AM

PENGUIN


Quote:

Originally posted by Fremdfirma:

In respect to I-94 being closed a while thanks to a tremendous amount of road based idiocy sparked by people FREAKING THE HELL OUT when a single flake of snow hits the ground, I give you this...
http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=77

Fact: Your SUV does NOT have magical physics-defying properties, it's goddamn top heavy, has a shitty truck-frame based suspension and it weighs SEVEN THOUSAND POUNDS, to forget this is to endanger yourself and everyone around you.

Fact: Your hi-beams or super brights might enable YOU to see, but they blind EVERY DAMN BODY ELSE, and are very likely to cause an accident as people try to move to where the damn things aren't BLINDING THEM by bouncing off their side mirrors which are very difficult to adjust while trying to drive the car - an accident YOU will wind up part of cause your goddamn SUV weighs SEVEN THOUSAND POUNDS and has the stopping distance of a fucking tractor trailer.

Fact: If you go too slow, you WILL GET STUCK, phony halfassed 4WD notwithstanding, and you will endanger folk who must accellerate AROUND you in order to avoid becoming stuck themselves, as well as risk being rear-ended by them when you inevitably bog down - not to mention if you get THEM stuck, then you will have a very enraged person who's pissed at YOU specifically in close proximity to you, with no escape... in a snowstorm - think that's a good idea ?

These facts brought to you by the Drive-Like-You-Have-A-Fucking-Clue Association.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.




*applause*





King of the Mythical Land that is Iowa

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Thursday, December 2, 2010 3:06 AM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)


Quote:

Originally posted by TheHappyTrader:
Quote:

If you are about to hit something and need to regain control immediately, snap the wheel hard in the direction of the skid and downshift, then feather the gas and pull out of it when the tires grip - I do recommend practicing that trick in a factory parking lot or something first, it's not QUITE as easy as it sounds.


Quote:

Your GTI is actually quite the ticket in snow and ice - it's small, it's maneuverable, it's relatively light, and front wheel drive tends to be quite forgiving, up to a point.


When... or perhaps if... we can solve the mystery of the 3 1/2 cylinder engine, I would love to try that, somewhere safe of course. Currently, one of my cylinders isn't always firing, and the car can get a mite jerky when it suddenly engages. At least, that's what it feels like, I could be misdiagnosing. It's fairly obvious that something is causing the car to occasionally lose and then regain power, and it's worse about it in the lower ranges. The car is actually pretty stable when I get to around 45, 50+ That wouldn't be ideal for snow/ice... but fortunately we don't get that here.





Dang, I hoped we'd gotten that taken care of... Best bet at this point? VWVortex.com. Not kidding. It's a forum by and for VW enthusiasts, and they've seen literally everything that can go wrong with your car, and figured out the how and why of it, how to diagnose, and what the fix is.

And it's most likely something small, simple, and silly. That one cylinder is only occasionally getting fuel or spark, it sounds like. Basically, your engine only needs three things to work: Fuel, Air, Spark - all in the right Time, of course (I call it FAST diagnosing - Fuel, Air, Spark, Timing). Figure out which cylinder is the culprit, and you're halfway home. Since it occasionally makes full power, it seem the airways are clear, so the safest bet seems to be either the spark to that cylinder (bad/fouled spark plug, broken plug wire, cracked distributor cap, etc.), or the injector for that cylinder (bad wire, broken harness clip, clogging with debris, etc.)

But in addition to the "normal" stuff that all cars seem to share, there's always the little peccadilloes that are common to YOUR car. F'rinstance, if someone on the Honda boards posts that they walked out on summer afternoon, and their car wouldn't crank over at all, just "click" when they hit the ignition, first thing I'd ask is if there were little crumbled blue bits of plastic on the driver's-side floormat. Sounds crazy, right? Thing is, Honda used to use a clear, hard plastic for the little plastic plug that engages the clutch interlock switch - and when it gets old and the weather gets hot, it crumbles apart, disabling your car. It won't start, won't even crank, and unless you know how to hotwire it across the starter, you're stuck.

And the same thing applies to people who say they walked out to find their brake lights on, even when there was nobody in the car, and it wasn't running. Same exact kind of plug was used on the brake pedal to engage the brake light switch.

And every car seems to have its own little quirks. VWVortex is THE place for your Vee Dub.

Good luck with it.

This Space For Rent!

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Thursday, December 2, 2010 7:27 PM

THEHAPPYTRADER


Thanks, I will certainly check this out later. Had a busy couple of days with more busy days to come (which is excelent news 'cause I can really use the cash and I still haven't had luck finding a full time teaching or full time anything job). Things should calm down a mite in a little over a week (unless of course I am fortunate enough to find more work) and I would like to tackle this issue in earnest rather than deal with the problem and swear a blue streak at my WV on my way to teach children about music.


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