The roads are so bad....
 

The roads here are covered with ice. Its like driving on a sheet of ice...some trucks have laid some salt down but it does no good. I almost skidded off the road 30 times on my 5 mile trip home from work. This car is a heavy slug to stop :D . Glad to be alive!! oh and by the ABS sucks and makes the car wanna skid more...do your self a favor...pop the car into 2 and hit the trusty manual switch. :rolleyes:

I drove out after an ice storm years back where just the crown of the road was enough to start the car sliding towards the gutters and the SVX acquitted itself quite well, especially considering it was only equipped with well used all season tires. Getting started wasn't a problem, but you had better know well in advance where you wanted to slow down and turn or stop. I saw many many vehicles slide through red lights and stop signs that morning and was lucky enough not to be rear ended or T-boned. Driving on ice takes planning, patience and a good bit of luck, because even if you manage to avoid running into something, you still have to worry about other cars running into you.

Honestly, I doubt any other 90's ABS system designed in the 80's would cope any better on pure ice. I'd have to wonder if even todays ABS systems would show much improvement on ice? Unless it is augmented by some sort of inertial or radar sensor, just relying on wheel speed sensors alone probably isn't going to be reliable enough.

KuoH

It's all in the tires.
My ABS functions superbly, when it functions.
However, my tires grip the ice somewhat well while slowing down, so I almost never use it unless I want to show off.

I never figured out what the manual button does.. or the shift lock one.

Press the manual button and select 2 or 3, and the tranny will bypass 1st and start in second. Lower torque going to the ground improves traction in low traction conditions, but the larger gear being used at low rpm from a stop creates more heat

Shift lock allowsyou to select a shifter positon from park without pressing the brake pedal for example if your battery dies in park, and you need to shift to neutral.
Also useful if you like pushing your car around instead of turning it on all the time.

Don't get too overconfident in those tires unless they're the 007 variety with on demand spikes. The differences in the types of ice you encounter matters more than the brand of tires. On "sticky" ice, where there is a nice relatively grippy layer of frost that could permafrost your tongue to the pavement, you have a good chance of stopping under full control if you're careful. Wait until the sun comes out or the temperature rises near the freezing point and starts melting that top layer, and your chances of shortish controlled stops goes right out the window.

KuoH

Glad you're safe Tom. :) AWD definitely doesn't make you invincible out there even with a good set of snows!

-Chike

I have a feeling my AWD is acting weird :rolleyes: .

I dont light up the front tires ever even when i floor it in the rain or from a stop. But for some reason it feels like its not working as it should. I was stopped on a hill waiting for a truck to pass by so I wouldnt get salt thrown at my car...and when i gave it a good amount of gas the car slipped then the rear kicked in...i mean it was really icy so that had to be why. Ah well whatever :D

Granted that but there's no ice worse than black ice, which covers our freshly scraped, 30*F roads.

MY point is the ABS only works as well as your tires, because it only functions under the conditions they fail.

Doesn't help if your brakes suck allready too like mine do. The SVX is a very difficult car to stop in bad weather like snow and ice...you gotta know when to slow down and pace your self...at least in mine ya do.

That's a given, but I don't find it difficult to stop at all.
Again, tires.
My old all seasons put me all over the road even in light snow.

I think my tires are decent...i wouldnt call them great but they wear niceley and i havent had too many issues with them. They did well in the snow last year and I dont have the funds for snows otherwise would definitley do that. My brakes probably need to be bled...havent had it done since i bought it.

My brakes have not been bled as long as I've owned the thing. I imagine if you are locking the wheels up you wouldn't need to worry about that right now.

About what speeds are you averaging?

Round here everyone is scared (rightly so) and the speed limits drop like 30% so I rarely find myself doing better than 35 unless I find some big-headed 4x4er to tail.

I drove home my usual 32 miles home from work only problem I had was ice coming out of the street I work on (steep hill)

Took I-684 & the Hutch home averaging about 35 mph people were driving past me like lunatics at like 80 but I'd rather play it safe

Mr bro in law said two hours earlier I-684 was full of accidents and was closed

only thing I can say is I miss my truck for the snow but the T-bird held its own until I got to my dirt road then I was SOL it was one sheet of ice and stupid me tried to drive on it and of course got stuck

I got the car out then parked it in the 93's spot and parked the 93 on the street a few blocks away

Roads here were icy this AM, and the main routes had been salted. (Today's lunchtime agenda: Car wash with undercarriage spray.) I can't cite a particular instance when ABS has saved my bacon, but like AWD, I'd rather have it than not. No doubt the state of the art has advanced, but the essential technology was derived from the "anti-skid" systems employed to great effect on passenger aircraft. (Consider the thousands of wintertime landings: How often do you hear of a jet locking its brakes and losing it on a snowy runway?) My problem is the old habit of pumping the brake pedal when I know traction is iffy.

dcb