Off Roading SNOW! Driving, theory, tires, weight. Lets break this down a bit

[JasonCzerak]

FIRST: This thread on the off road fourm but it more geared toward on-road driving. Aggressive on road driving. This naturally applys to off road driving aswell.



I DO NOT want any one chimming in to simple state "slow down you moron, it's snow! be careful! blah blah blah blah. "



This is for the driver who like to drive aggressivly in the snow on road and off.



Ok. that's done



As some of you know, this truck is my first 4x4 full size truck that I drive on a daily basis. Prior to this truck was an '01 audi TT AWD _and_ my old 93' XJ 4x4. That is the jeep that got the $#$@ beat out of it. (The TT was worthless POS in the snow, it was leased, it's gone. Also, the jeep is in storage). This is going to be comparing apples to oranges for the most part. Yes, my jeep isn't my truck, my truck isn't my jeep, so therefore they won't react the same. yes. understood. What I'm trying to learn from your experiences is how you would adpat your driving to a truck vs. a jeep or anyother suv/truck/car



Weight distrabution: I weight in at 7400 pounds fueled and me. I calc out 68/32 ballance. this is not 50/50... duuh



I would like to talk about tires. Brand, style, size, air-pressure.



My truck's suspention is stock. I would like to keep things no more then a mild lift and changes.



Also, I dunno how much of a differnece this will be between short and long wheelbase as far as the CTD is. But this compared to at jeep is huge.







Today was the first real day out in the snow. My tire pressure was up to 65PSI in all corners when I rolled outa the tire store, things feel as firm as things will with a load range D tire (nitto 295/70/17 terra grappler). I have about 3500 miles on these tires now and have since adjusted my driving to compasate for a week sidewalled tire (compared to the stockers). I'm rather impressed with the 2wd ability of this truck in 4-5 inches of snow. 4wd things grip well. Slow street driving is very good.





Highway:

Now, highway, moderate slush on the ground and speeds of 70-75 are acceptable. Changing lanes gets a little flacky. I think I fished my tail end out a little this moring attempting to advoid un-shushed lane. Don't you just love when they deside to stop plowing a lane randomly?



The thing that kinda got me this morning is that a Chevy colorado, with low profile street looking tires (as far as one can tell while moving). was passing me, with complete control at 80-85, and driving in the more snow covered lane, then with me, at 65-ish was pushing the max speed for me and my truck. (both of us, same lane).



Questions:

1: Low profile street tires, for slush better then big old off road tire?

2: What about dropping tire pressure? half way to work I dropped 20PSI out (from a hot 70psi to a hot50psi). I did not get on the e-way to see how well this change does tho. But surface road traction improved by a factor of 2 easly. This includes stopping, acceleration, turning, and combos.

3: It was my rear end that was getting lose on mine, not the front. This basicly a fact of having a 68/32 ballence in a truck? What about just have low rear pressure?





Breaking:



Some say skinny profile the best. I never personaly never had a "skinny profile" short of the stockers, if you call that skinny incomparison to my nitto's. . But what I learn from pro drivers is the bigger the contact patch the best. I think this does apply, should your tred promote _REMOVAL_ of snow from the area your driving on. e. g. aggressve mud/dirt tire. This would explain why I can break shorter distance and accelerate faster when I drop my air pressure.



Debate this?:





Handling and Recovery: (this is a biggie).



From my limited pro driver learning experience... You should _never_ do 2 or more of the 3 basic driving principles at once at 100%.



Example. 100% break. 100% acceleration. 100% turn. . Break before turn, turn. accelerate after turn. Now. combos of both are what you typicaly do. break 100% into turn, hold break at 30% while turning at 70% of your ability to turn (at that speed). and pull out of the turn at 30% acceleration. as you unwind your turn, press more of the go peddle. The line you follow is important as well but that's not important.



What I'm finding is that my truck tends to just wanna push like crazy at moderate speeds that my jeep would do easly. Even if you feel the push, you should react not with more turn, first you release the break or acclerator to an "middle ground" until you recover.



Questions:

What can be done, short of slowing down to improve this. What am I doing wrong? Or is this just a fact of the truck.





I think this is good for now. Hope you guys spark up some better questions for me to ask



(note on the pro driver stuff. I worked for a company a few years ago that did car show production, they employed pro drivers. These guys can bee see on non-nascar,F1, pro rally circuits. They are second best drivers I suppose. I did do alot of un-offical traning on auto-cross style course when ever I could. Not to brag, but this is were I'm getting my knowledge and so-called experience. )

 

[WyattEarp]

well to be honest, slow and steady and keep your composure while driving on snow or ice etc... when in doubt i always go to 4x4 mode and depending on the road conditions either use 1 or 2nd of course thats even in a automatic truck.

if you begin to slide try not to panic and whatever you do, hitting the brakes isn't going to help if anything will make it worse, i think thats what alot of pple automatically do they hit that brake pedal which lockes up all 4 wheels instead of just being in the begining stages of a slide or skid when the brakes get mashed your for sure going out of control and will pick up speed, but this is just my past winter driving expierences. And i have driven 2 wheel drive vans in winter where 4x4 vehicles slide off the road. but being cautious and focused are very important, even if your sweating bullits at the time don't lose focus of what your doing. Not sure if this will help you any but maybe it will even it is one thing i may have said.

 

[Nate]

Lowering your tire pressure wouldn't hurt either. I have mine at 45 psi.

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

First 65 psi is max pressure on the D range tires and you don't need that much. Plus with the weight distribution of our trucks (as you mentioned) you need different pressures from front to rear. I run 55 in the fronts and 45 in the rears. You didn't say when you were on the highway in slush whether you were in 2wd or 4wd. My truck is the best vehicle I've ever owned in snow - it hardly ever slows me down. I run 285/75r16 BFG AT KO's. In 2wd your rear end will get loose because of the weight bias. In 4wd I almost never notice the rear end getting loose.

 

[PToombs]

#1; 2-300 lbs behind the axle(rear of box)

#2; About 60 psi front, 45 psi rear (roughly, gotta feel for it)

#3;Skinny, agressive tread tires= more psi on the road, better grip in snow,slush, etc.

This are my suggestions based on 20 something years of driving in our wonderful Syracuse winters. I had an s10 pickup that I drove on I-90 at 70-80 mph in some nasty snowy weather. Never went off the road.

Common sense does dictate slowing down some before curves.

 

[JasonCzerak]

I'm in 4wd when I'm in driving at thoses speeds on the eway. the CTD tends to over torque the tires on slippy roads.



Yes, I was getting the rear to get flacky in 4wd.



with the stock tires, I ran 60psi up front and 50psi in the rear dry and wet since they were a hard tire.



But these D range tires feel like spunges on the road, I figure the higher pressure would help that. But at 45psi "cold" all around. they seem ok. when the snow drys. I'll see how things handle on the e-way again.

 

[Bob Cochran]

I don't have 4wd on the CTD but even when I did the thing everyone forgets you may have enough traction to go as fast as you want or even tailgate. Just try to stop in a hurry, CRASH!!! Those that pass you probably are trying there best to do just that wreak. Oh by the way with the heavy deisel up front cannot help put fishtail unless add weight to rear. Just my thoughts; otherwise you seem to have a handle on driving the CTD.

 

[TRAMPLINEMAN]

Jason, get yourself some sand bags, about 300-400 pounds worth, will make a hugh difference. Snowy/wet conditions are always better with skinny tires. The skinny tires will cut thru the snow while wide tires will tend to float on top. The guy who passed you in the lane with the virgin snow has probably been around winter conditions for a long time. The untouched snow most of the time will actually give you traction and handling is improved, one exception would be if there were black ice underneath. The lanes that are well traveled are full of slush/very wet and become very slippery while pulling the vehicle where ever it whats. Like posted above, anybody can drive fast in these conditions, slowing down is what gets most people into trouble. I would highly recommend the sand bags, I think you'll be very pleased.

 

[JasonCzerak]

I think I"ll try the sand bags. I just need a method to securly mount them to the bed.



My dad had a 01' 7. 3PS F-350 2wd that I drove maybe 20% of the time. When it snowed I advoided when I could. The truck was _free_ to drive as in a company truck, so on long trips why not?. To fix the 2wd traction problem, a set of BFG KO's were put on finally! That helped alot. Also for the weight we had 3 tractor front end weight things. I put two side by side and one on top in the middle and 4 bolts though the bed. This helped a little. hehehe, the orignal way of "securing" these things my dad had was to just use the drop in bed liners 2x4 pockets and hoped that would hold the weight... Well ,my dad really never gets on the breaks hard, but I do. and every other time that wood would let go. BAM! there were some huge dents in the cab and tail gate from me



BTW. I won't drill holes in the bed for something as hask-ish of an install. I would like to find a nice looking secure way to hold in place any weight. I have yet to line-x the bed. I think when I do line-x things I'll have to think about winter stuff like this for a long term solution.



I been driving in Michigan snow for the past 10 years. it's a few steps back from MN snow from when it used to snow. What we got lastnight is nothing snow wise.



Yes, virgin snow is fun!. But this wasn't.



I kepted the tire pressure down from 65psi on all 4's. it was at 70PSI hot when I droped things to 50psi. well, apperently the tire cooled off when I did that yesterday. I figured things would still be a "hot" reading at 50psi. So in theory, this morning my tires shoudl read ~45psi cold..... Nope. it's 50psi cold (21 degrees). So this is good. I left things at 50psi cold and the truck handles rather well. I'll have to see how things are when the roads dry out in a few days and I think I may keep this new lower tire pressure.



Yes, I under stand stopping distance very well. I'll typicaly give a tailgater a second thought to tail gating me with some some breaking.



I enjoy the use of ABS for some situations. But the thing that errks me is that when you are breaking and breaking harder to the point were ABS just start to kick in and you let off the brakes all the way. the ABS is still doing it's thing! infact when it's colder out the brakes are still on for a breif moment. what gives about this?

 

[Ol'TrailDog]

The weight has been covered.



And the tire size was broached, but I'll add my two cents. Narrow tires with aggressive tread are much better and safer than phat tires. If you need the phatties for cruising the sand dunes or looking studly at the parking lot, get a second narrow set to swap out for winter.



Most important is driving prudently according to the conditions.

 

[AMink]

I used those sand tubes that weigh about 60#'s each. Just put them where you want them and they pretty much stay. I had about 600#'s last year + the 500#'s of my shell. Anyone notice that tires wear down to almost useless in the snow in about November? :-laf I had thousands of miles left, but not much winter tread. I have done a 360 in a CTD, at low speed. Once a 4 ton truck picks a direction you don't want, it can be hard to stop. It is a pucker factor of about 9, not just for me, but for those anywhere near! It has been shown that big mudders are NOT the best thing for packed snow and/or ice. They work OK in fresh snow, but that usually doesn't last long. If I had to drive in snow all the time, I'd have a set of Blizzaks or similiar with the sipes. Sipes work better on ice than lugs. As Dad used to say, low and slow, and I'll see you in the spring!

 

[CumminSense]

JC -- you want an easy way to hold the sand bags in place in MN? set 'em back there and dump a couple pots of water over them. You'll get 'em out in April

 

[dtygart]

I used to carry a 55 gal drum lashed to the very back end of the bed in my old 4wd Ford, filled with water was about 400 lbs. I could open the tailgate and drain the water out... except we had an unusual (for CA) hard freeze and I carried that thing around for a week on dry roads!

david

 

[JasonCzerak]

Well, most of you got the idea of my thread. there are a few that still insist on going "slow"



There is a huge differnece between "safe" and "careful".



I'm very safe, but not so careful. I have never been in, or caused an accident. I drive like an a. . hole when I want.



As for the tires, I don't think I can justify then skinnys for this amount of snow.



So I'll just adjust to what I got.

 

[RustyJC]

Check out the winter driving writeups at TireRack.com among other places. Winter tire package routinely use narrower cross-section tires. The theory is the narrower tire has higher unit loading and will penetrate the snow (the ultimate example would be a bicycle tire) for better fore/aft and lateral traction while the big, wide tire just wants to float on the surface. The snow tire also is normally heavily siped for lots of biting edges and has a compound that encourages snow to stick to it - snow on snow traction being better than rubber (or a thin layer of water on the tread) on snow.



(And, yes, even though I now live on the Texas Gulf Coast where snow isn't a problem, I did live in central Ohio for 22 years, so I have more than a little experience with driving in snow. )



Rusty

 

[JasonCzerak]

Check out the winter driving writeups at TireRack.com among other places. Winter tire package routinely use narrower cross-section tires. The theory is the narrower tire has higher unit loading and will penetrate the snow (the ultimate example would be a bicycle tire) for better fore/aft and lateral traction while the big, wide tire just wants to float on the surface. The snow tire also is normally heavily siped for lots of biting edges and has a compound that encourages snow to stick to it - snow on snow traction being better than rubber (or a thin layer of water on the tread) on snow.



(And, yes, even though I now live on the Texas Gulf Coast where snow isn't a problem, I did live in central Ohio for 22 years, so I have more than a little experience with driving in snow. )



Rusty

Interesting. I'll give that a read. based on what you said about snow on snow traction. Curious as to how much snow is sticking in the tred on the nitto's.

 

[WyattEarp]

Now guys know why i prefer the 235/85 tire, taller, slimmer , the sand bags will help in the rear in the bed you can afix some wooden pieces to where your sand bags or you can also use cinder blocks(spelling on that not sure) and have them stacked inbetween your wheel wells right over your axle for the added weight.

This is good for going up hill, and also once you learn and take it slow you will find that fresh snow that is wet and packs good is alot better and you will have traction in it as another member said. Now going down hill, here is the key do not get in a hurry what you want to try and do depending on the grade or slope of the road is to try and figure out what gearing and whatever you do, do not try and adjust it after you start going down the other side, you will most likely lose traction and end up in a ditch or worse going somewhere there is a bad drop off. Make sure that when you get to the top of a hill or mountain, go ahead and stop on top if you can, access the conditions on the other side on the down grade as best you can and if you think you need first gear then so be it and so on, and light braking and i mean LIGHT braking if you have to only, I have learned this from driving automatics... I drove a armored 2 wheel drive van for 4yrs and let me tell you that thing will make you a better driver in snow, you learn to comensate for every bend, curve, and bank in the road, i had been in some pretty nasty places with it... The best thing is learning little by little and just applying all that knowledge you learn to driving in the snow, even someone that has driven for years will learn something new each winter.

 

[RHildreth]

For maximum weight transfer to the axle, you want the weight as close to your tailgate as possible. It has to do with Moment and lever-arms.



You multiply the weight at the tailgate by the distance from the front axle, and divide by the wheelbase to find out how much effective weight you add to the rear axle.

 

[JasonCzerak]

For maximum weight transfer to the axle, you want the weight as close to your tailgate as possible. It has to do with Moment and lever-arms.



You multiply the weight at the tailgate by the distance from the front axle, and divide by the wheelbase to find out how much effective weight you add to the rear axle.

And you can find out how much comes "off" your front axels

 

[WyattEarp]

when i posted i did forget that what i had typed was for mostly 2 wheel drive trucks, RHildreth is right as you have to compensate for the cummins engine in these trucks, i have never used any weight in the bed of my '00 as i have learned over years of snow driving how to brake and what gearing to use, especially on downhill grades, going up is not always the best but going down can be a real humdinger to manage