motor

TT · 12-28-2003, 05:04 PM

I know maybe there is no need to open another topic, but I'd like everybody to notice I'm back.. I already answered all the emails and PMs I had, so everything is back to normal for me.

Today was a BUSY day. I was ready to take off from my family town this morning as soon as possible, go to my girl, pick her up and ZAC, the remaining 400 km to be back home

So I woke up at 8 am.. took a piss... opened my eyes.. and..

ARGH!!!!!!!!

And some of you already know I still had my summer tires since here in Lausanne snow is scarce and public transports if needed, pretty good...

Well, obviously it was impossible for me to drive the 100 km to the Alps with summer tires considering it was still snowing very strong (and it went on all day long)

And since it was Sunday, nowhere to go to fit the winter tires..
Luckily I had them on the stock wheels, so no need of special equipment to fit 4 new wheels to the Bimmer... but still, with 0 C degrees, to remove 4 wheels and put new ones in place is not so nice

especially since the stock wheels where in the cave, and there are maybe some 60 or 70 steps to bring them in the garden... and then out in the garage...
In the end I worked untill 11 am LOL.. of course I took my time to do things the proper way and I was also hoping for the snow to stop falling...

Here are the poor 17" saying bye for a while

And the car with the stock 15...

So I was finally ready to go, and with the winter tires I'm used to drive pretty fast despite the snow...

But well.. it's not the same for everybody and sadly there were also lot of foreign cars w/o winter tires and in need of snow chains to climb a little mountain half way toward the Alps... and on the downhill, there were tons of cars trying to stop and installing the chains.. terrible since everybody was scared and basically we did some 5 or 6 km at 1 km/h or less

BTW, I also saw a dumb German driver fitting chains on the front tires of his Merc E class.. as far as I know, the E is RWD

but maybe his one was modded

Anyway, luckily after this little mountain things were better and I was always able to be between 80 and 100 km/h.. pretty good considering it was still snowing very heavily and the road obviously goes up toward the mountains..

And on the north side of the Alps, no snow at all so I was able to go faster w/o scared ppl around.. but still, it was pure ordeal... from Lausanne to my family town there are around 400 km on the Alps' road... the 24th it took us 3:30 hours, going fast but not very fast... today it took 5:30!!! Stressing...

But I was happy to find only 780 new posts to read

and not 7000

Anyway, now I'm back

I hope everybody had a marvellous Christmas

scubywrxr · 12-28-2003, 05:21 PM

Nice pics TT.. great to have u back

gis · 12-28-2003, 05:21 PM

lol,you could have pulled off one huge ass drift on the way home,lol

hope u had a great xmas dude.the pics were pretty sweet aswell,especially the first one

TT · 12-28-2003, 05:23 PM

LOL in the first one you can also see my hard work cleaning a little pathway in the snow for my grandparents

oldsnail · 12-28-2003, 06:04 PM

nasty snow

1zippo1 · 12-28-2003, 06:05 PM

Hey TT,

nice to have you back! Good story to

The part of the German guy with his E-class was funny

He probably looked at the rest who were fitting there snow chains and did it like them :roll:

By the way, in the snow, on a steep hill, isn't it much better & safer to have a FWD car of a 4WD? Because I know that when I go uphill in the winter with my dads car sometimes the front end starts sliding to left & right, even at slow speeds (30km/h) in second gear. The only thing I can do if the nose goes away badly is dump the clutch, get to a standstill and take of in first (on a steep hill in the snow =

)

TT · 12-28-2003, 06:36 PM

By the way, in the snow, on a steep hill, isn't it much better & safer to have a FWD car of a 4WD?

Well, a good 4WD will always be better than any FWD or RWD car basically

the problem on a steep hill for FWD cars is the fact that the weight is shifted toward the back, so the front wheels beeing lighter, have some problems gripping the ground (as if snow isn't enough of a problem

).
I have to say with my 106 and supertiny winter tires, going on the snow was almost incredible.. it was fast, almost no spinning, amazing grip and so on..
But well, this morning while I was testing the winter tires after I fitted them, the streets where empty, the snow was allover, and to pull some perfect powerslides at 2 km/h is priceless.. almost to fun

of course I prefer to powerslide in the wet at speed, but to do it very very slowly on the snow is so natural and funny. And I sure prefer to have a RWD although many ppl hate their RWD cars in the snow... IMO it's very nice to have the front wheels steering while the rear ones can be worked thanks to the right pedal.. on a FWD car all the action is at the front, and the rear wheels are "useless".. you can just use some lift off while cornering, but on the snow, lift off oversteer is tricky and I saw a couple of women spinning their Nissan Micras and such on a couple of roundabouts today... scared they simply lifted the right foot and spinned

Anyway, the safest way is always a good AWD system, able to shift the power where it is needed

But the safest way is not always the funniest

TT · 12-28-2003, 06:51 PM

I doubt somebody will every manage to drag me into a Twingo

TT · 12-28-2003, 07:00 PM

Yeh ok, it was downhill and what you say make sense..., but still, it was so strange to see.. and since the downhill was only a couple of km long, after that I suppose he had to stop again to put the chains on the driving wheels to manage to have some traction on the plain and following uphill?

something tells me it took some 20 hours to him to do that 100 km towards the Alps

TT · 12-28-2003, 07:11 PM

LOL, when I'm here, JW is always refershed pretty often

stracing · 12-28-2003, 09:09 PM

haha
nice you had fun in the snow, guess it doesn't need high speeds to enjoy the thrill of driving.

Nemisis8u · 12-28-2003, 09:12 PM

Welcome back TT. It look like you are having some crazy weather. I wish we had so much snow here in Toronto. Currently its 8 degrees celcius, WTF :x . I went snow boarding a few days ago the snow sucked ass, a good part of the hill was covered in ice. It really sucked when I wiped out, felt like I broke my ass.

Johns · 12-28-2003, 09:18 PM

welcome back, and i hate seein those snow pics!! Im glad we havent gotten snow again

(yet) plus I dont have snow tires and my stock all season tires SUCK!! RWD's in the snow is a BEEYACH if u dont have snow tires

666fast · 12-28-2003, 11:24 PM

Good to see ya back TT, I hope you had a good time with your family!
Sucks about the snow, heh. You can send it here if you want, ours is all melting!

AlienDB7 · 12-29-2003, 12:00 AM

TT, welcome back, we missed you. It just started snowing in Vancouver yesterday too. Love the fresh snow.. and all the driving

My all season tires are getting old, not as good on snow/ice as it used to, especially with all the boxing day purchases in the back

Still, FWD with traction control and ABS works pretty well even with all the mountain driving.

That merc guy was probably putting chains in front to help braking and steering. With traction control, moving forward shouldn't be a big problem.