Ferrari0324

I drove through Arizona last Dec. on my way to Cali. You guys had some pretty crappy weather, still better than what us New Jersians get.

TurboMustang

With my Danger Ranger I find that sand bags just give me worse gas milage... I put em in there cause they provide a little bit mroe traction.. but not much... Take it from an upstate New Yorker, in snow you're not going to be able to drive like its summer, no matter what you do short of installing metal spikes in your tires, period.

thxultra

Be careful with sault. If it seaps out you are looking at rust. I would recomend getting sand or kitty litter.

Orion_240

I put some sand in the back of my car the other day... Happens everytime I go to the beach!

[IMG]local://upfiles/15212/9718A6CECDBC4C4282C52AB5E4293AE0.jpg[/IMG]

Turbo_stangGT

is that a fact?? if so that suxors..

r3velation

now i know this is a nub question, but i'm not an expert. what do the sandbags do? do i have to worry about these kinds of things? maybe cuz i'm from santa monica i don't need to worry about snow and this thread doesn't even concern me but i'd still like to know just as a fellow enthusiast.

Sleeper05

No it is not fact. The high-carbon steel used in most helical springs for cars will need to be depressed beyound any limit the car could actually do, and have to stay there for literally decades for the creep to alter the properties of the spring...unless you store your car at over 700 degrees Centigrade for a week or two, which would likely spheroidize the steel and allow it to quench in a softer, more ductile form when you let it cool.

Stang Skeleton

Actually, though some of the information you have stated is correct, the idea behind is actually INcorrect. As logic may determine, loading the additional weight once or twice will virtually have no effect on the springs in terms of wear, BUT if you do continue to put a significant amount of weight on the spring and/or shocks, by the nature of the material, it will in fact cause a more noticeable wear than not doing so. The effect of this can easily be seen in everyday application in the "settling" of springs. The reason that springs settle is because they do NOT maintain 100% initial function and strength as they do initially when they are manufactured. Driving hard, often, weight, all are variables that are directly proportional to the wear/settling of the spring. The same goes for shocks but incorporates pressure and fluid. A material that would undergo deformation and then reassume its initial position after decades of depression and 700 degrees centigrade would be so rigidly stiff and non-absorbent that it would completely defeat the purpose of having springs to absorb load. Finding a material that would carry a more realistic spring constant while maintaining such endurance and comfort wouldnt be impossible, but would likely cost a fortune and would not be implemented by auto manufacturers in production vehicles. But this is just IMHO

Sleeper05

.

PM me if anyone is interested in further responses...too long and technical for the open forum.

Norm Peterson

I'm thinking that things like energy per unit volume, alternating stress (or work done per cycle), and mean stress have more to do with springs settling than creep might. But I'm just an oldstructural guy working in a field midway between civil and mechanical.


More on the original topic, for my RWD car I'd always used a hundred lbs or so of barbell plates wrapped in a blanket so they wouldn't slide around. Maybe toss an oldcylinder head as wellon the worse days. Worked well enough for where I live (a flat region that doesn't normally get heavy snowfall) that I never did bother with snow tires for my ~4 mile commute.

Personally, I don't think you even want to make the car as easy to get going in snow as, say, on an onlywet road. That just makes it easier to get yourself into trouble in any number of ways. So don't overdo the extra weight thing. If ~150 lbs doesn't seem to be enough, it's time to either re-think your winter driving or it's bad enough to just stay home. Trust me on that.


Norm
(transplanted New England native)