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.
So unlike the WRC, most of the teams in Rally America are back for the 2009 season. However there was a significant change of vehicle for one of the top contenders. Tanner Foust drove to second place at this years Sno*Drift in his Hyundai Tiburon. It’s good to see that a non-Subaru/Mitsubishi can be competitive.
Travis Pastrana took first place in his 2009 Subaru, but worried about deer strikes through out the competition (it ended his 2008 Sno*Drift lead). ACP rallied his Mitsubishi Evo into 3rd place, although I think he should’ve done better…he’s Canadian. They get a lot of snow up there, eh (har har har I can make canned jokes about Canada. WOAH! Puns too ).
These results make me happy. They give me hope for Rally’s future. Some diversity is present in the field, unlike the Citroen v Ford WRC. I’m eager to see how this season shapes up. Next up for RA is 100 Acre Wood in Missouri. Woo!
Last year I complained about how caked in snow my wheel wells got. My solution for the past year was to get out of the car and use an ice scraper to remove chunks of snow/ice. That worked, but there has to be a more elegant solution. Some people suggested non-stick cooking spray (also for camera lenses I hear). Others suggested wax compounds like Rain-X. So I figured I would try them out.
A few days ago I decided to spray my rear right wheel well with PAM (the oh so famous spray on oil). So far that wheel well has been accumulating much less snow than the other wheel wells (I also didn’t spray that well), so the initial trial seems promising. So over the next few weeks as it snows and I go and play in said snow I’ll be testing out various chemicals to prevent buildup.
Before I get started officially, I was wondering if you had any ideas as to what else would work? I’m looking for cheap/elegant solutions.
So far:
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.
So it snowed a bit here in Rochester and the snowfall beckoned me for a little late night driving. I grabbed the video camera and set out for my first drive on snow in the all seasons this winter. There’s even some footage of it on YouTube! Hooray:
Link for you RSS peeps.
Remember be safe and keep warm! I’m so excited for the upcoming winter (it’s still technically fall!).
Around this time of year I always debate whether or not I should get snow tires for my car. I know Mark has a set and puts them on (and refuses to take them off until practically the summer), but I’m always wondering whether it is worth the money.
On one hand snow tires offer a perception of safety in the snow (I’m told it snows a lot here in Rochester but I do not agree with that statement). On the other, I’ve gotten along just fine without snow tires (All seasons) and had a ton of fun doing it.
I do not need them for accelerating (AWD helps a lot in that regard) but I could benefit a ton in terms of Braking and steering. So should I stick with my all seasons (that worked wonderfully last winter) and experience with them or should I invest a few hundred dollars for snow tires (and probably wheels as snow tires for my wheels are a bit pricy)? What do you do?
Snow is, by far, my favorite type of weather. I just love it so much. With snow coming soon (it is supposed to flurry this week) I figured I would start watching snowboarding videos and then I came across a video I had seen before: Ken Block Driving With Snowboarders. You should watch it and become just as excited about the upcoming winter as I am.
Link for you RSS peeps. Oh how I cannot wait until it snows for both driving and snowboarding in.
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.
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