Blizzard brought POLOs to a halt?
Blizzard brought POLOs to a halt?
Hey peeps! Just curious about how did you guys manage driving through the blizzard on Wednesday evening, my 9N sport kept on doing wheel spins, but once I whacked it to 2nd gear it was going great.
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tornado_ally
- Silver Member
- Posts: 257
- Joined: Sun Oct 12, 2003 8:59 pm
- Location: London
No 9n, Fat bus queue, lots of traffic, cold feet and a very grumpy Ally once I got home because i had to get off and walk home 3 miles in the slush and I stil got home before any bus!
I was quite chuffed. I thought I was going to be in for a bit of a nightmare with the snow (just fitted new wheels and summer tyres - great timing eh?) and was warned that the grip in snow would be poor.
Turns out that the little Polo is light enough to just dance over the surface. It's even good fun playing about with the gears and throwing it about a bit...
Anything would be better in the snow that my old MR2!
G
Turns out that the little Polo is light enough to just dance over the surface. It's even good fun playing about with the gears and throwing it about a bit...
Anything would be better in the snow that my old MR2!
G
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Tahrey1043
- Bling Bling Diamond Member
- Posts: 5184
- Joined: Thu Sep 18, 2003 1:15 am
- Location: Birmingham! Enjoys: The pseudo-G-Smiles provided by a 1.6 Megane Sport valver...
- Contact:
Decided to rotate tyres today as the fronts (november '02 vintage) were looking decidedly more worn than the rears (august '03) and been having some slip on wet corners. Still perfectly legal, but i'd prefer 8mm up front and 3.5mm at the back rather than vice versa. Plus they should now all wear down to the limit at about the same time... dunno if that's a good idea.
Anyway.
Encountered the second day of snowy ice around Birmingham, when it was still pretty arse on most routes (missed the first hellish evening, luckily - just watched out the window). Still tramlines of ice on a busy, salted section of one of the most major routes into town even. However, even with those crappy 3 - 4mm treads up front, and bugger all weight over them, Polo lapped it up. Hardly any slide except for one or two slight over-squirts of throttle (in 3rd, at 15mph) in a straight line.
((And when I *wanted* it to slide of course!))
Just leave it in 2nd to get going, hardly any throttle (ooh, enough to idle at 1500rpm ish - or no throttle at all if you're feeling leet), very gentle with the clutch, leave it at a moderate bite until the speeds match *before* lifting off fully, and away you go. Somehow you've just gone from zero to 10mph without so much as a slither. Keep it up, change at the absolute earliest point, keep a speed cap governed by the feel through the cheeks of your trousers, steer slow and smooth, and start braking while still in the next town along from your junction. No problems.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the road, Janet Dickhead in the Merc SL is trying to turn left up a very slight hill and has floored the automatic from a standstill. She can't seem to figure out why the car's not moving even though the speedo is registering triple figures. Fun to watch, but you can see that the pedestrians are all slowly moving out of reach of the gentle arc of the back end.... (that observation is true, by the way, which is why i said janet not johnny - twas a lady driver. I also found that the route i took was jammed with slithering traffic, turned round, and had to negotiate that same corner for a detour - without any slidey trouble! Well... unless you count her cousin in the Rover who ended up two feet from my rear bumper as she thought my it-doesnt-feel-safe-any-faster 25mph cruise was too slow. Stayed there all the way down to 10mph, until I wound down the window and waved a few non-obscene back-off gestures... Nice one genius, its icy, so let's go tailgating at still-lethal speeds.... jeez)
Had my time with the slidey later on. Nice empty car park after leaving work, no peds about, plenty of welly, first, reverse, and handbrake, no more than 15mph, like putting your skate boots on. Marvellous. Don't even have to worry about the "jolt" of suddenly resuming a straight course when cocking it up on a dry road. And some *very* icy sideroads at walking/jogging speeds for a bit of low-risk skills practice. Gotta get it in sometime. Have to learn some control. Rather have a little risk of bouncing harmlessly off someones bumper but eventually learning how to control the skids, than follow my mum's policy of abandoning the car and crawling on her hands and knees at the first sign of frost, then being totally helpless in a minor loss of traction when having to take an essential journey in 2 inches of snow.
(For the record, it also helped me predict which tyre was the more worn without looking - poor abused front left, surprise surprise, turned up to have at least a half mil less rubber on it than the right, and a lot more eager to break grip with the ice)
Anyway.
Encountered the second day of snowy ice around Birmingham, when it was still pretty arse on most routes (missed the first hellish evening, luckily - just watched out the window). Still tramlines of ice on a busy, salted section of one of the most major routes into town even. However, even with those crappy 3 - 4mm treads up front, and bugger all weight over them, Polo lapped it up. Hardly any slide except for one or two slight over-squirts of throttle (in 3rd, at 15mph) in a straight line.
((And when I *wanted* it to slide of course!))
Just leave it in 2nd to get going, hardly any throttle (ooh, enough to idle at 1500rpm ish - or no throttle at all if you're feeling leet), very gentle with the clutch, leave it at a moderate bite until the speeds match *before* lifting off fully, and away you go. Somehow you've just gone from zero to 10mph without so much as a slither. Keep it up, change at the absolute earliest point, keep a speed cap governed by the feel through the cheeks of your trousers, steer slow and smooth, and start braking while still in the next town along from your junction. No problems.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the road, Janet Dickhead in the Merc SL is trying to turn left up a very slight hill and has floored the automatic from a standstill. She can't seem to figure out why the car's not moving even though the speedo is registering triple figures. Fun to watch, but you can see that the pedestrians are all slowly moving out of reach of the gentle arc of the back end.... (that observation is true, by the way, which is why i said janet not johnny - twas a lady driver. I also found that the route i took was jammed with slithering traffic, turned round, and had to negotiate that same corner for a detour - without any slidey trouble! Well... unless you count her cousin in the Rover who ended up two feet from my rear bumper as she thought my it-doesnt-feel-safe-any-faster 25mph cruise was too slow. Stayed there all the way down to 10mph, until I wound down the window and waved a few non-obscene back-off gestures... Nice one genius, its icy, so let's go tailgating at still-lethal speeds.... jeez)
Had my time with the slidey later on. Nice empty car park after leaving work, no peds about, plenty of welly, first, reverse, and handbrake, no more than 15mph, like putting your skate boots on. Marvellous. Don't even have to worry about the "jolt" of suddenly resuming a straight course when cocking it up on a dry road. And some *very* icy sideroads at walking/jogging speeds for a bit of low-risk skills practice. Gotta get it in sometime. Have to learn some control. Rather have a little risk of bouncing harmlessly off someones bumper but eventually learning how to control the skids, than follow my mum's policy of abandoning the car and crawling on her hands and knees at the first sign of frost, then being totally helpless in a minor loss of traction when having to take an essential journey in 2 inches of snow.
(For the record, it also helped me predict which tyre was the more worn without looking - poor abused front left, surprise surprise, turned up to have at least a half mil less rubber on it than the right, and a lot more eager to break grip with the ice)