On Sat, 11 Apr 1998 08:42:21 -0400, Larry Macy wrote:
>>I live in Aurora (southern edge anyway) The salt can be washed off. They
>>mix it with
>>sand half and half. I have never driven my '70 B in snow, but I grew up
>>here, so I am used to
>>snow driving. If you are not used to it, then you may very well wreck
>>your B.
>I have to agree. Learn the means of driving on snow and ice. The locals
>can give you more tips and instructions than I can here.
>>As they are
>>RWD and pretty light I would guess that it would not go very well in the
>>snow anyway.
>Wrong. I have to disagree. It is because they are light that they go very
>well in the snow. I drove the Midget from Gillette WY to Greely CO in a
>snowstorm once and never felt the slightest bit at unsorts. the biggest
>problem is the same that is inherent with all clutch operated vehicles.
>Be careful how much gas and how much slip you give the clutch. If you
>spin the wheels - you spin the wheels. I used to drive in the worst
>weather as well as the best.
My experience has always been that if you have a light car, you will
slide very badly in the snow. You don't want to float on the stuff, you
want to cut down to the bottom to the pavement if possible. The whole idea of
putting bags of sand or chains in the back of your car is to give you more
weight. The FWD cars do better in the snow because the weight of the
engine is resting on the front tires.
The MGs do have the advantage that the tires are very narrow, thus the weight
is not
distributed over a large area, and that helps. Same idea as the old US Army
jeeps
with those super skinny tires; good for mud, sand (few feet deep) and snow.
Bad for deep (4-6+ feet) sand.
My toyota (old RWD) is so light in the backend that sometimes when you
let off the gas the rear-end breaks loose because of the resistence from
the engine through the automatic transmission. You have to put the
car in neutral or give it gas to get it stablized again. (fun to drive!:)
Andrew Lundgren
Lundgren@iname.com
http://www.maindrag.com/~lundgren
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