The shitlist: Budget buy winter transport search begins...

[forddeliveryboy]

Disco II doesn't have a diff lock - it has traction control - which may have kicked in if he hadn't lifted off every time the wheels started spinning. You've got to understand the tech, which he clearly doesn't! I've seen Disco IIs get through incredible sections off road thanks to that traction control. They do have incredibly wide tyres though (255s IIRC, compared to the 205s mine now wears) which really don't help.

So a Discovery now needs TC to climb out of an almost level side road through three or four inches of slushy snow? Can't have been much grip there in the first place, I'd say. So much for four driven wheels if the tyres are no good. Which is the point I've been making. Good tyres, right size, half-sensible vehicle, driver with experience and a working brain.

 

Whether it's two or four wheel drive makes much less difference than the BBC always suggests, unless you're towing. As your speed builds, many lumbering 4x4s become very hairy on snowy roads.

[Richard]

Disco II doesn't have a diff lock - it has traction control - which may have kicked in if he hadn't lifted off every time the wheels started spinning. You've got to understand the tech, which he clearly doesn't! I've seen Disco IIs get through incredible sections off road thanks to that traction control. They do have incredibly wide tyres though (255s IIRC, compared to the 205s mine now wears) which really don't help.

 

The traction control on my FWD Transit lifted off for you as soon as the wheels started spinning, which meant that the van immediately lost any momentum it had and you had to reverse all the way back and try again- remembering to turn the traction control off this time.

[dollywobbler]

The Disco TC is a bit more advanced than that Richard - it doesn't cut the power but brakes the spinning wheel. Most traction control systems as you say just cut the power, which is actually a hindrance if grip is very hard to find as you can't do 'wheelspin but moving.' 

 

Winter is usually the time that many BMW X3s and X5s end up in ditches, because the owners think "4x4 SO INVINSIBLE INNIT." The ridiculously fat rubber fitted to those things is exactly what you don't want. A nice Series 3 on skinny tyres would be far better.

[twosmoke300]

One of the best 2wd vehicles I have ever driven in the snow is my boxer 1.9d van.

It was fitted with winter 4x4 tyres up front and running about 20psi and would just keep going. Think having zero power and all the weight up front helped. I remember passing a stuck freeloader up a hill near my house. Made me smile.

Oh and it's got a Bosch pump so it's running on veg, nach.

[forddeliveryboy]

One of the best 2wd vehicles I have ever driven in the snow is my boxer 1.9d van.

It was fitted with winter 4x4 tyres up front and running about 20psi and would just keep going. Think having zero power and all the weight up front helped. I remember passing a stuck freeloader up a hill near my house. Made me smile.

Oh and it's got a Bosch pump so it's running on veg, nach.

Reminds me of years ago in a Triumph 1300 rwd which I thought would be crap in the snow. It had cost me £150 and wore four newish 'Pneumant' communist tyres. I was out late on snowy night and had a steep hill through a town to get up - no way round. To my surprise it martched straight up, right past a Range Rover which was sliding slowly backwards, all four wheels spinning slowly.

[Minimad5]

I thought my Lada Riva was going to be utter shite when SNOW KHAOZ appeared.
But to my (and everyone else) surprise it was fantastic ! . I do hope the BX is just as good this year, if we have a repeat snow fall.

[twosmoke300]

One thing I have learned from enduro / Mx riding over the years is that low tyre pressures are the way forward - literally!

[brickwall]

Aside from the Rangie, the Hillman Hunter and the Audi 100 were brilliant in the snow. The Granada was good as well.

[phil_lihp]

My mk1 Honda CR-V was superb in the snow we had around 2009/2010 - absolutely loved it.  Relatively thin tyres, decent (non-winter) tread and automatic 4x4 which only kicked in when needed got it around icy, snowy roads others couldn't manage in normal cars.  I won't say it's a real off-roader because it isn't, no diff locks or hi/low range but it was capable enough.  It did help that I got quite experienced driving in snow as I worked in the middle of nowhere down a long, rutted lane on the edge of a moor. 

[dollywobbler]

I thought my Lada Riva was going to be utter shite when SNOW KHAOZ appeared.

But to my (and everyone else) surprise it was fantastic ! . I do hope the BX is just as good this year, if we have a repeat snow fall.

 

Should be. I really rate those Riken Snowtime tyres. Just don't let the turbo spool up if traction is limited.

[londonm]

urm....

http://www.gumtree.com/p/cars-vans-motorbikes/offroader-suzuki-sj-van-16/1030168334

 

 

 

hear for sail is my sj 1.6 van 

ther is no tax or mot 

its got a 3" shackel lift 

1.6 vitara engin in it bin dun well 

its got a nikki carb 

spring over axel convergin 

2"body lift 

bmw lether seats 

it has plenty ov spers like 

radiater 

carbs 

wofel bords 

half shafts for diff 

rocker cuver 

visgus fan 

every thing you need to off road 

ther is no wheels coz thay are for my jimny but ther is tyres 

ther is no v5 just wating on it 

 

 

this one is probably a safer bet though 

http://www.gumtree.com/p/cars-vans-motorbikes/suzuki-vitara-4x4/1031035627

Is this ad a piss take or real? if it's real the seller must be special needs.

[DSdriver]

I had a test drive of a Citroen CX estate (ex ambulance) today as I thought it might make a useful winter driver when they salt the roads which isn't good for the DS Safari.

Fortunately common sense prevailed.

[forddeliveryboy]

Should be. I really rate those Riken Snowtime tyres. Just don't let the turbo spool up if traction is limited.

Does anyone pull of the turbo pressure pipe if it blows too soon, too hard?

 

Is this ad a piss take or real? if it's real the seller must be special needs.

They haven't bothered with spelling in English schools for decades, now. May well be a reasonably intelligent bloke, just a Mancunian.

 

 

Aside from the Rangie, the Hillman Hunter and the Audi 100 were brilliant in the snow. The Granada was good as well.

 

Audi 80s are great, too. I put it down to more suspension travel and softer springing - its chassis is from 1973.

[oman5]

I'm a firm believer in winter tyres. the volvo 240 is the first car I put snow tyres on and it makes a hell of a difference. so long as you don't have to stop behind someone stuck on a hill revving the crap out of their BMW wondering why its just sat there spinning, it just keeps ploughing through. 

Both my 740s would bog down instantly when faced with snow.

 

Budget 4x4 for winter? one of these swift-shape subaru justys. 

 

we had one for 5 years.  lightweight car with skinny tyres, part time 4x4 that only sends drive to the back wheels when the fronts are spinning and they just don't get stuck.  reliable, 40 mpg and a heater that can set fire to your legs 5 minutes after a cold start. 

The original justys are good too but tend to dissolve very quickly. 

[Cavcraft]

I thought my Lada Riva was going to be utter shite when SNOW KHAOZ appeared.

But to my (and everyone else) surprise it was fantastic ! . I do hope the BX is just as good this year, if we have a repeat snow fall.

 

Built for sub-zero temps anyhow mate and very good in snow.

Regarding someone's (Ruffgeezer?) comment earlier on about fat 7.5T drivers, there wasn't many places I couldn't go in any weather when I drove one for 6 or 7 years.

 

Get a small car on thin tyres and take your time.

[dollywobbler]

I had a test drive of a Citroen CX estate (ex ambulance) today as I thought it might make a useful winter driver when they salt the roads which isn't good for the DS Safari.

Fortunately common sense prevailed.

 

My CX was astonishing in the snow. 2.5-litre petrol auto. Our first winter here, only the CX and my Land Rover could get off our driveway. The BX, which I previously thought was ok in the snow, needed a tug from the Land Rover, while the 2CV needed a push from my wife. There's a lot to be said for a light car...

[ruffgeezer]

Well the worm has turned, I've been offered a fronterror with 12months ticket & 6 months rent for £650... Hard to pass that up really.

[skattrd]

No ... buy Philibusmo's fronterror, then he can deliver it to you and drive back in my XM

[ruffgeezer]

This once has a towbar, and no traces of sheep shit

 

BTW, when did you want to pick up this flywheel?

[skattrd]

I dunno mate - I'm hoping to fit it next week, so I'd better get off my arse.

Hows tomorrow evening for you? I can get over 6:30-7pm? drop me a pm and we can take it from there.

[forddeliveryboy]

My CX was astonishing in the snow. 2.5-litre petrol auto. Our first winter here, only the CX and my Land Rover could get off our driveway. The BX, which I previously thought was ok in the snow, needed a tug from the Land Rover, while the 2CV needed a push from my wife. There's a lot to be said for a light car...

 

A light car with large wheels, good ground clearance and supple suspension is ideal in snow. You're right about CXs - in the 90s I had a non-turbo diesel CX which felt slow yet you always got places quickly. Anyway, I was visiting friends in a seriously off-grid place half-way down a steep valley side one day when it started to snow. It didn't stop for hours, in which time the farmer got stuck in his 4x4 and had to ring his son to collect him in the tractor. A bed was made for me. Since more snow was forecast overnight, after a quite a few glasses of homemade wine I said I was going to drive the car up (a private track) to the road - a mile or so of one in fourish and hairpin bends. I was convinced that if it slid anywhere all the trees would stop a Ski Sunday situation down to the river. And I'd fitted two new snow tyres a few days previously.

 

There was much hilarity that I was so pissed and thought I could climb out unaided by a tractor. I doubted myself when I looked up the slope, but the car just gripped and gripped. There were a couple of hairy moments when the back end (on normal tyres) started sliding sideways down the slope on the hairpins, one situation was nasty so I rolled backwards into the back of the corner and set off again. Twenty minutes later I arrived back at the house, elated. My mates were utterly amazed. The next morning I was the only car out of the remote road, bloody scary and I ended up having to charge a drift twice, getting up speed then sticking the suspension to highest and surfing through.

 

I've driven BXs and Xantias in snow and although good, they're not on the different planet which 'real' Citroens are - GSs are almost as good as CXs, so long as you don't mind a cool cabin. I've driven 2cvs and GSs at crazy speeds in snow through Europe, with their amazing suspension with very low centres of mass. Nothing could ever keep up - it was most fun on mountain passes where it was like being in a Ferrari, up or down.

[Junkman]

Once upon a time, I was on my way back from the future East Germany to my back then home Belgium, with my CX 2500 GTI, when the snowfall got so severe that near Erfurt the Autobahn became a car park due to lorries jacknifing. So I left the 'Bahn for some Bundesstraße running parallel. I followed the B7 towards Kassel in a fuggin blizzard (Continental style, not the British OMGSNOKAOS Kindergarten), which, as we all know, leads smack through a mountain range. So here I went with that Citro on Winter tyres, feeling all ace and like Ari Vatanen and shit, when all of a sudden an Audi V8 Quattro overtook me on the outside of a serpentine bend with about twice the speed I was doing, V8 thunder and and all that kind of rot, it was phantastic. This little incident forever changed my view of the CX being a good Winter car. The CX is a potentially lethal piece of shit no matter what the circumstances and I urge you to not just avoid this tosh, but boycott it. The only reasonably safe way to own a CX is in 1:18 scale.

 

Trust me, people who have anything good to say about Citroen CXes just don't realise how close a shave they had.

[dollywobbler]

You do keep going on about that don't you? Maybe I should get a T-shirt made up. "I owned a CX and survived!"