I rode in a friend’s Ferrari (1978 308) recently and while I love how it sounds… I often can not get enough of the turbocharged sound. So if you love the sound of turbochargers doing work here you go:
Link for you RSS peeps.
It may be an older video of ours, but I love it and cannot get enough.
Update: Apparently I decided to post this exactly two years after uploading it to YouTube. Odd.
Since I’ve been doing quite a bit of driving in the snow I figured some of you might have too. I have some tips but today’s tip is: the right most pedal is your friend.
Brakes are nice but if your car is oversteering hitting the brakes will most likely bring your car into a full spin (weight transfers to front wheels). Keeping on the gas will cause your car to straighten, as the weight transfers from the front to the back wheels. This of course assumes your front wheels are pointed where you want to go.
I’ve seen a few people in the past week slide unexpectedly and continue going in a straight line, only to hit the brakes (instinctual, I empathize) and go off the road. If only they calmly pressed on the gas a bit and steered where they wanted to go.
There is an exception: really powerful cars that are RWD/AWD. Really powerful cars have the tendency to lose traction in the loose stuff because of the right most pedal. However, coming off of the gas completely will cause more harm than good stability-wise, so you should learn to left foot brake. But that’s for another post. Good luck out there and keep safe.
Watch this and look at how thin the tires/wheels are. Link for RSS.
In most cases the wider the tire the more traction is achievable. However in really snowy enviroments (ie Rally Sweden) thin tires can get more traction than wide ones. How? This works because the thin tire is putting a much higher pressure (PSI) onto the snow surface compared to the wide tire. This makes the snow compress and the tire/wheel sink down into the snow. Wouldn’t this just slow you down? Going straight…sure, but the problem in snow is stopping and turning, not going fast in a straight line. Snow builds up around the outside of the wheel and infront of it, so when the car needs to corner/stop it pushes against the snow. This increases the possible traction. This is the same concept as using ruts in motocross or with your car in mud. You can apply much greater cornering forces without losing traction.
There is yet another reason they use thin snow tires. The snowy rallies in the WRC are in areas that also develop a nice layer of ice under the snow. They use this ice to increase traction, mostly for straight line acceleration, and when I use acceleration that means in both directions (hint braking and throttle+). They use the ice by putting metal studs into the tire. The studs work just like cleats for grass sports. They dig into the ice (again because there is a ton of pressure applied to them thanks to the mass of the car) and allow force to be transmitted through them. But in order for the studs to get close to the ice the tire has to dig through the snow, and so that’s yet another reason thin snow tires are used in the WRC.
I had a problem this winter: whenever I would go out and play in the snow with my WRX, snow would be melted by the tires and refreeze on the wheel well. I was wondering if you could give me some insight in how to prevent this. So leave a comment, tell me how to fix my problems.
I was thinking that maybe a wax coating would prevent it from happening.
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