RWD Snow-Car Stories

[mrogerc]

Reading threads about the Marauder's ability or impossibility to manage snow made me recall a funny thing about my childhood and coming of age in the 60's and 70's: Almost every car on the road was RWD, and darn near all of them were outrageously front-heavy. We also had crappy bias-ply tires, and did not even have studs here in Minnesota after the law changed.

No traction control, no all-season radials, no front wheel drive. You might have snow tires, but many did not. 4WD was rare, yet somehow, against all odds, PEOPLE STILL DROVE THEIR CARS!

Yes, PEOPLE DROVE ALL WINTER IN CARS THAT WERE MUCH LESS CAPABLE THAN OUR MARAUDERS.

This thread is dedicated to those cars, and the lengths we went to keeping them on the road and ourselves moving in the cold. Please add your own old-time snow story. I will start with my favorite.

The car was a 1964 Pontiac Star Chief. It was 1978, and I had my licence for a all of one year and some change. I was parked, badly, in the lot of the local hockey arena. I did not realize that in the heavily falling snow, I parked with the front end of the car downhill--a terrible mistake given that the 389 ci engine weighed about as much as a black hole.

When it was time to go home, I tried backing up with my bias ply, cheap, fair weather tires, but to no avail. One wheel just spun uselessly. No one was around that I felt socially confident enough to ask for help. (If I showed you my yearbook picture from then, you would understand)

Being a stupid, but resourseful, young man, I took the cheap window scraper, the kind with the wooden handle and pathetic blue plastic "brush" on one end, and jammed the sucker between the front seat and the accelerator pedal with the tranny in reverse. I then jumped out, pushed the car from the front, and when it found traction, ran back in, pulled the scraper and drove home.

Certainly not the brightest thing I have ever done, but I felt pretty proud at the time.

[Bluerauder]

Yes, PEOPLE DROVE ALL WINTER IN CARS THAT WERE MUCH LESS CAPABLE THAN OUR MARAUDERS.

This thread is dedicated to those cars, and the lengths we went to keeping them on the road and ourselves moving in the cold. Please add your own old-time snow story. I will start with my favorite.
My story goes back to 1967. I took the family car to school on a day that my father was working the night shift at the firehouse. At that time, we only had one car and it was a 1962 Chevy Bel Air Station wagon. He carried about 200 pounds of tools in the rear well all year round. The snow started early and was about 3-4 inches all over by 3 PM.

Anyway, on the way home I was on downgrade toward a 4-way stop. This was my first experience in snow and was going too fast for conditions. As I approached the stop sign, I hit the brakes and got nothing. Just about the same time, I noticed a car coming from the right and he was going right through. I did a quick calculation in my head (at least this is how I remember it :D ) and figured disaster was imminent. I was on a T-Bone course.

Quickly I turned the wheel hard left and hit the gas. The car went into a spin. The tool weight in the rear probably helped and the sideways slide slowed me ever so slightly. I was door to door with the other car as he passed ... not a scratch. I continued to spin through the intersection and came out the other side. Somehow I managed to straighten her out after a full 360 and continued on my way. Of course, my heart was pounding loud enough to drown out the AM radio.

My father was on the porch when I got home ... probably a little worried and ready to go to work. He asked .... "How are the roads?". I replied, "Not too bad; but slick in some spots". I flipped him the keys. Dad never knew about my "Close Encounter of the Fourth Kind" :rofl:

That single incident gave me a real appreciation for snow and ice and vehicle reactions. Fortunately, this lesson in experience didn't end up in the body shop. :D

[Paul T. Casey]

I was out "parking" in my '74 Duster on a lonely dirt road. I wasn't paying much attention to the weather (go figure) and the windows were foggy. I stepped out of the car to discover that about 2" of fresh snow had fallen. I had no snow tires, and no weight in the trunk. After an hour of trying to get up either hill, and another inch of snow, I walked the young lady about 3 miles to make a phone call to get us a ride home. Another couple hours, another inch of snow I got her home, and my friend and I took one of our firetrucks to rescue the Duster. The fire truck fared about as well as the Duster! (It was a coverted deuce and a half with front drive axle trouble). Fortunately it had a front mounted winch. We would attach the winch to a tree, pull the truck with Duster attached by a chain 100 or so feet, udo the winch cable, find another suitable tree, and repeat the process. About the time the sun came up, we were in a spot where the truck was able to gain enough traction to pull the Duster out. Got both vehicles back to the fire station, washed the fire truck, and thought we got away with one. Somehow at the next training night (about 2 or 3 days later) the chief asked my friend and I to demonstrate the effectiveness of the winch on the fire truck. He explained that someone noticed how good of a job we had done in the snowstrom, and thought it necessary to phone him in the middle of the night to find out what we were doing. He also explained that he too was curious, and drove up, watched the show, and had a good laugh despite the weather and being called from his comfy bed. We ended up loosing our driving priviledges for the fire vehicles for a month, but were regarded as the winching experts of the dept.

[TripleTransAm]

Late December of 1993, GTA tucked away in the garage, and I was on my way back from my ex-girlfriend's place after our usual semi-daily argument (*sigh*, the things we subject ourselves to...). I was in a 1985 Parisienne with fairly good snow tires in the back, regular all-seasons in the front... 225/70-R15 up front, 225/75-R15 in back.

There is a tunnel that links the island of Montreal with the south shore where I lived with my parents until 1998. So there I am, southbound, during an emerging ice/snow storm. The 2-3 minutes of dry calm inside the tunnel was a welcome break from the rattle of ice pellets and large snow flakes that was pelting me on the way down the highway into the tunnel.

As with all tunnels, you eventually have to come up and out of the tunnel... the center lane was reserved for truck traffic and so I found myself on the leftmost lane, heading at legal speeds but perhaps not the wisest considering the state of the roads.

So I'm heading up and out of the tunnel *just* as I'm alongside the truck, and I'm realizing the buffeting of the wind from the truck is upsetting this behemoth I'm driving. The high winds combined with the turbulence of the truck would surely cause a wipeout at this point; I was already travelling slightly faster than the truck so I made a split-second decision to continue my gradual acceleration past the truck, thinking that if I slowed down I risked getting sucked up underneath the truck's trailer or tossed against the guard rail or tunnel wall, whichever came first.

I was not beside the truck more than 2-3 seconds before I cleared his front end (and the turbulence), but the combination of slick roads, heavy crosswinds, and the small but significant power still being applied to the drive wheels conspired to set my Parisienne into a graceful fishtail. Slow slow slow fishtailing... still too close to the truck to lift off and possibly get caught by his front end, but things were deteriorating quickly.

I eventually cleared his front end fairly well (I suspect he might have lifted off once leaving the tunnel and seeing how bad the conditions were, and perhaps also saw me doing my best figure skater impersonation beside him).

The exit of this tunnel arrives at a small island, after which the highway immediately becomes a bridge, to complete the remaining half of the hop from island to south shore. (This dual nature allows large ships to access the port of Montreal crossing over the tunnel portion, and continue on to the St.Lawrence Seaway, while the second half of the river does not require this kind of clearance and hence is bridged). At this point as I'm entering the bridge portion, the car is fishtailing more and more and begin a long graceful 360. I didn't make it to 360 degrees, I'm sure, but the car ended up sliding backward with a slight **** to one side... I was thinking I'm either going to fly off this bridge into the icy water (at this speed) or slam into the median. So I guided the car as best as I could to the center of the highway and stopped just before I would have crunched the passenger rear fender onto the median. All the while, I still had the 18-wheeler's headlights pointing *right* at me.

Once stopped, the trailer went by not more than 1-2 seconds later, as I faced slow-moving oncoming traffic that wisely chose to remain behind the truck as it exited the tunnel. With a break in traffic, I restarted the 305 (hey, I managed to stall an automatic!) and gently turned the car around and continued on my way home, to wait for a clear night on which I could look up and count my lucky stars....


Bonus bonehead move: 2 months earlier, I was driving the GTA home one late night during a drizzle (Halloween night). The outside temps were around freezing, and I wondered if the roads were slippery. Midway through climbing another bridge to the South Shore, I decided to test this out, and goosed the throttle a bit, at around 50 mph. The dry-rotted Gatorbacks broke loose and the car fishtailed a bit at the engine roared... yep, I guess it's a little slippery, so I guess I'll take it easy on the way home...
(what a moron...)

[merc406]

The 70's......my mind draw's a blank..... :rasta: :D

[CRUZTAKER]

Winter storm of 1978. Akron Ohio. Can't remember what month it was, but it was that week the massive nor-easter pushed through and basically shut down the entire Northeast.

My parents picked this week to move from Akron to Cleveland. Why do people move in the most extreme weather...?:confused:

It was the morning of the blizzard approach and they had pulled the 38' u-haul into the front yard of the house right up to the porch steps to begin the big move. It snowed throughout the day as the truck got a little more rear heavy with each parcel addition. By 6:30 my stepfather figured we should hit the road before things got too much worse. It had probably dropped 6" of snow by this time and the winds were getting fierce.

The first attempt to move the truck it became evident that it was going nowhere. But step-Bob, as awnry as he was gassed it...and gassed it....and in no time at all the truck was up to its axle in front yard. I remember them trying everything to get it out of the yard. They threw every door mat and floor rug we had under the wheels. They threw all the bags of kitty litter we had as well. A call to AAA yielded a 6 to 8 hour wait, and u-haul wasn't answering their phones.

The last thing I remember was having to unload that damn truck into the night. I never saw them get it out, but I do remember the new apartment being empty for a week or so.

The finale to the trip was my mother and I driving up to the new apartment alone in the rusted out '66 rambler classic. This car was what my father provided to us after my parents divorce as transportation while he kept the house and new car.:shake: I used to hide my tonka toys in the quarter panels. Anyway, half way through our 56 mile trek on barren I-77 through this massive blizzard, we loose the windshield wipers. My mother has me hang out my window on the interstate, and wipe the windshield every so often so that she can maintain 25 mph or so. Shortly thereafter, we loose headlights. Apparently the incredible ice and snow build up on the rusty hole littered rambler had gotten into every exposed wire in the engine compartment. Here now I hung out the window with a flashlight in one hand, and an ice scraper in the other....oh how I miss the poverty days....

We got home ok, but it was a long and cold evening. I miss that rambler...I really do.:D

[duhtroll]

Mine's not so detailed. However, I was driving my then-girlfriend-now-wife around town in my dad's '82 Mercury Grand Marquis (loaded of course - the car, not me) one night. It had snowed a couple days earlier and the temps this day had been warm enough to get almost all of the snow and slush off the streets.

We had been to dinner and a movie and we were driving through an incomplete new housing development looknig for a place to, um, admire the moonlight. Since the streets were dry everywhere else I was going around curves at about 20-25 MPH. There were no street lights since this area was not finished, so I missed the fact that we had gone from pavement to black ice and were headed down a hill at about 25 MPH toward a dead end.

Perfect, 'cept for the speed thing, I thought.

Brakes? My '82 GM must have not come standard with those because we glided all the way down the hill and up over the ensuing curb (not too nice on the front axle) only to stop once we hit the snow, with half of the car embedded and the other half on the ice covered pavement.

"Well, we're here," I announced. No reply.

I put it in R and slowly added gas. We backed right out - have no idea how. Dad must have had good tires. I was only 18 at the time so I didn't know anything about those things. I did know that the rears were the drive wheels, though. :)

Needless to say that ruined my quest for the evening, but it could have been worse. I lived 140 miles away and we were in her town - I would have had to call my not-yet father-in-law for help had we gotten really stuck. (I was staying in the basement of their house during my visit) That was before every teen had credit cards and cell phones to call towing services.

-A