General Stilo 1 - 1 Snow

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General Stilo 1 - 1 Snow

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first let some pictures do some talking :) (please excuse the cameraphone):

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Snow:

first thing i did was reduce all tyres to 15psi, then using only second gear, let the car descend my rather steep hill on its own accord. ASR was having a happy time flashing at me occasionally and the decent was nice and smooth. All I did next was touch the accelerator, unfortunately this caused the wheels to spin a tiny bit, and that was it, all traction lost and she was now skidding and gaining speed :eek:. Trying to avoid crashing into other cars resulted in me crashing into the kerb at some considerable speed :(.

I parked further down along the hill to inspect damage, and to my utter horror found a 4" long 'chunk' taken out of the edge of my wheels :cry:.

Carried on driving after that and noticed that the steering was very heavy and the car was strongly pulling to one side :bang:. so i managed to limp to a wheel alignment place and they managed to get it driving in a straight line again.

Problem now is that the steering is still heavy and it no longer self-centres. It is also quite clunky/grippy, in the sense that you feel it steer in 'notches'. Im assuming that the PAS is damaged :cry:, but cant confirm until this snow is gone and garages are functional again.

Stilo:

Driving back home snow blizzard was at its highpoint, and despite all the grit, started to stick and quickly accumulate on the surface. The stilo coped admirably with this where other cars spent their time either sideways, going backwards, or just facing the wrong way :p.

Coming back up my hill there were lots of stranded cars scattered at the foot that had obviously tried to climb and failed.

Stuck the stilo into first gear and left it to do its business of climbing the hill with no input from me apart from steering. At this point ASR went into hyper mode and was pretty much continuously flashing, however there was no wheelspin or sliding whatsoever and she managed to climb the hill all on her own! I had kids and people standing in amazement cheering a rather smug me on :D.

So very gutted at the damage done, especially to the wheel which was mint beforehand and may also now be buckled. Im hoping its not going to cost a lot, but ultimately i am VERY proud of my Estella :worship:
 
Haha - you call this snow? :D

Anyway, you shouldn't let air out of your tires during winter. Cold air reduces the atmospheric pressure (or something like that) inside the tyre, so you should rather inflate it some more than on summer tires (if on 15" standard tires) to get your grip back.

Are you on summer tires?

M.
 
Haha - you call this snow? :D

Anyway, you shouldn't let air out of your tires during winter. Cold air reduces the atmospheric pressure (or something like that) inside the tyre, so you should rather inflate it some more than on summer tires (if on 15" standard tires) to get your grip back.
What universe do you live in Morten ;)

Sure cold tyres do tend to start at lower pressure until they warm up a bit whilst being driven.

Lowering tyre pressure is a sure way of increasing the tyres footprint (amount of rubber in contact with the ice/mud/snow etc.) and it's a very rare occasion indeed when this doesn't increase traction.

Possibly different with studded tyre mind you but then I've never heard of anyone using those in the UK :)
 
Argonought said:
What universe do you live in Morten ;)

In Morten's Universe. You should see the ladies...

Argonought said:
Sure cold tyres do tend to start at lower pressure until they warm up a bit whilst being driven.

Lowering tyre pressure is a sure way of increasing the tyres footprint (amount of rubber in contact with the ice/mud/snow etc.) and it's a very rare occasion indeed when this doesn't increase traction.

Possibly different with studded tyre mind you but then I've never heard of anyone using those in the UK :)

I'm pretty sure my Stilo handbook states it aswell (being the higher pressure during winter - I will have a look later), but again we have winter tires (S+M) instead of the other speed ratings. I don't use studs though, as it's very noisy, dusty (bad for mother earth - and Morten's Universe) and only works on ice.

M.
 
If its cold, then technically speaking you'd want to raise the pressures so that the hot pressures were higher, therefore the temperature would be higher, and they would get to temperature quicker, but i'd say only use this on dry roads when its cold. (well thats the racing theory anyway)

In the snow, you'd probably use the wet racing theory, whereas you lower the pressure to get a bigger contact patch, but not too much that the grooves start to close up.

With mine at normal high (for better mpg) pressures yesterday I got caught unstuck a few times, but that was in a foot of snow, some rocking back and forth and going from lock to lock on the steering sorted me out eventually!
 
In Morten's Universe. You should see the ladies...
Can I drop into yours then :)

For day to day driving on winter tyres I'm sure it's correct to set the pressure as recommended (which may indeed be higher than summer tyres) but I was really commenting on dealing with recent events in the UK in which a little bit ;) of snow fell (quickly becoming icy) leaving a lot of cars stuck at the bottom of hills.

You'll tend to get progressively more grip from the driven wheels as you reduce pressure in the tyre. Of course, done to extreme and once out of trouble, then you'd need to quickly find a garage and pump them back to normal as otherwise handling is likely to be rather dodgy.

Incidentally, there's no point in reducing pressure in the un-driven rear tyres as this would increase rolling resistance and therefore make it more difficult for the car to move and get out of trouble.

The best guide is to set the pressures on all 4 tyres to the lower figure of whatever is recommended as this should provide optimum grip in snow and good handling on tarmac (you just use more fuel)
 
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had a wee search on the forum and the replies I found highlighted that any work on the rack had to be calibrated by a Fiat delaer. So i thought the best course of action was to actually take it to a dealer and see what they say about the damage.........and dear oh dear they said it is 90% a bent rack.

They cant confirm 100% without disassembling eveything but the rack and labour comes out at £420 :cry:

This being an accident due to adverse weather conditions, could I claim on insurance? or does that have to involve another car? if so i'll find one to crash into now :(
 
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