Weather.... late 2009

[Anthony Darby]

someone may have said this already but the UK aslo comes to a standstill when we get snow. Gritting now only happens on main roads. My mother hates snow and ice.I have never broken anything fingers and toes crossed.

Depends where you live? They certainly grit ours, and it isn't even a minor road. Certainly car types cause problems in snow and ice - BMWs and Mercs because they still insist on the prehistoric "rear wheel drive" and by design are useless in these conditions.

[Paul T]

Maggi,

Are you serious about the "wrong sorts of leaves" on the track causing train problems?

[Maggi Young]

No, Paul, it was an excuse given  for train chaos in Autumn a few years ago....in England somewhere, not a place of wild weather at all.... caused by "the wrong sort of leaves on the line"..... I kid you not... you really couldn't make it up! 

[Paul T]

I know that you can grow up "on the wrong side of the tracks", and hanging out with the "wrong sort of people", but I didn't realise that there were good and bad leaves as well.  Do the wrong sort of leaves hang about and beat up "nice" leaves that venture too close to them? 

[ranunculus]

I know that you can grow up "on the wrong side of the tracks", and hanging out with the "wrong sort of people", but I didn't realise that there were good and bad leaves as well.  Do the wrong sort of leaves hang about and beat up "nice" leaves that venture too close to them? 

In the modern parlance, Paul ...

'Hey man ... D'ese leaves r well bad ... dey r sicker more'  Oak K Yew beech, man.  Respect!'   

[Paul T]

Cliff,

No respect.  The standards for this board have really fall'n!!  The whole place is in Ash's as we speak.   The jokes are getting cornusier and cornusier as time goes on. 

[ranunculus]

Balsa ...   

[Paul T]

You need acting classes..... that was a really wooden delivery, Cliff.

[TC]

 Certainly car types cause problems in snow and ice - BMWs and Mercs because they still insist on the prehistoric "rear wheel drive" and by design are useless in these conditions.
[/quote]

I have found the opposite to be true.  For the first 8 years of motoring I had the standard rear wheel drive car - Ford Anglias and Morris Minor Traveller.
Back in ancient times-(1960's)- we had weeks of lying snow in the Glasgow area.  I could get up snow covered roads by the simple expedient of engaging the hand brake,choosing second gear and controlling the rear wheelspin by manipulating the handbrake. I admit that the steering was iffy but no more so than in a front wheel drive model.  Time and again I could get up hills that defeated mini minors.  Another tip was to put a 1cwt bag of sand in the boot over the rear axle.  Since 1973 I have been driving front wheel drive models and my few encounters with snow on the roads have left me floundering on hills unless I could get up a bit of speed before the grip was lost.  My current car has traction control along with anti-lock brakes.  Maybe this helps but I would rather that the snow stayed on the hills where it looks pretty!  I think that Gote would be the person to give a definitive opinion on this subject

[David Nicholson]

You need acting classes..... that was a really wooden delivery, Cliff.

This has got me stumped

[Sinchets]

 I think that Gote would be the person to give a definitive opinion on this subject

Is there a lesson I missed, while learning elocution? Something along the lines of:
 "The snow in Europe falls mainly upon the Sweden"  perhaps.

[johnw]

Certainly car types cause problems in snow and ice - BMWs and Mercs because they still insist on the prehistoric "rear wheel drive" and by design are useless in these conditions.

[/quote]

I recall only getting stuck in the snow once in my old 1970 VW Beetle.  It only refused to start once, someone had stolen my distributor cap so we pushed it home.

Never tried a headon collision with gas tank to the fore, the gas heater was enough of a threat with the occasional backfire by the driver's window. 

johnw

[TC]

I was not implying that nowhere else got heavy snow but that the Swedes and Finns are among the best rally drivers, being more experienced in Arctic driving conditions than the UK population.  As such, they are probably more qualified to judge on the merits of front wheel/rear wheel drive cars.

[Anthony Darby]

Any car that needs 1 cwt in the boot so it can grip the roads should never have got off the drawing board. I was once asked to sit in the open tail-gate of a Volvo estate to enable it to drive up a hill (the Old Doune Road in Dunblane). It still failed. Wouldn't have had that problem with parents' first car, which was a half-timbered Morris 1000 traveller. It wouldn't have made it up the hill on a dry sunny day! A couple of years ago a friend was driving (too fast?) past the Green Wellie shop at Tyndrum in his BMW M3. He hit a patch of water. The being rear wheel drive, he couldn't steer out of the skid, hit the ditch and wall at the side of the road and somersaulted the car several times. When it came to rest the engine and wheels had all gone, but both he and his passenger were fine. Good advert for the strength of the inner shell.

[Sinchets]

Well the Finns may drive more of the winning cars, but shouldn't we also ask the French, Italian and Japanese as manufacturers from these countries make the top winning cars?  Which came first the rally car or the rally driver?