FWD low on grip - Solved !

[Mux213]

Oops, just noticed you already read the german law thingy

[EE80Liftback]

Thanks anyway Mux, it does worry me a little since driving a 20 year old car with dutch licence plates I'm sort of asking to get pulled over for this. However, as long as it's not (close to) freezing out there it should be ok...

As you say winter tires are worthless 350 days a year and I am not planning to go abroad very often in the near future.

[EE80Liftback]

Yipppiieeee !!!

I got two new Michelin's on the front and the two old ones in the back. One of the Vredesteins has moved to the spare wheel (which had a 175/70/13 tire on the unused rim ).

The car handles much much better... I don't think I'll ever brake for a corner again ;-) I'm really stunned that the difference is that big.

It's not only the cornering that has improved. There was some play on the steering which I blamed the steering box for but even that got less...

Thanks to you guys for all the advice !!!

[Ivan141]

I love it when things are as simple as they seem!.. congratulations on sorting that problem out, and havelots of fun on your roadtrip!

[Mux213]

Tires are the most important thing on the car

[Red]

EE80-
Glad it was that simple to fix for you!

The German laws actually sound a lot like what most or many of the US states with winter snow have. Here, if a "snow emergency" is declared you are simply not allowed to drive without snow tires, which is partly why the "4 season" rated nonsense became popular. Someone got that legally accepted as a snow tire and the poor fools who buy them believe it. (As I once did.) In some of the moutain passes, travelers are not allowed up in winter without road flares and snow *chains*, finding them as they slide down over the edge in the dark apparently is not good enough.

I suppose if it snows while you are in Germany you can always take a lay day and stay over someplace. Then in the morning, as the local police chief why they haven't cleaned it up yet, allowing snow to block the roads for more than a few hours would be simply inefficient. (That should either embarass or infuriate them into removing it.<G&gt

[EE80Liftback]

Actually I don't really think I'm going to be in Germany for more then a couple of hours since I'm only passing trough on the way to Denmark. If the weather stays as it is it will be no problem.

[Mux213]

Red, it's very unlikely steven will get into troubles in germany aslong as he sticks to the main roads, salt is sprayed regularly and roads are cleared. Only on heavy snowing you run into serious problems. If you have good quality tires then grip usually is fine. You don't get into trouble until you actually start driving on snow or iced up roads.

Offcourse driving in bad weather or on iced up roads.... Going further up north its a different story. Denmark usually is still okay, I've driven in Denmark in the middle of winter with alot of snow and it was fine.

Norway on the other hand.... Thats a country where the temparature is such that it really pays to drive on snow tires or even spiked tires (Owh they are great!) a couple of months a year so they don't spray salt on the roads. Its not uncommon to find main roads covered with a mix of sand, mud and half melted snow.

Now I took a company car to Norway once in February a couple of years ago (Seat Ibiza). It had brand new front tires mounted right before I left, I think they were even winter tires too..
I have never been as scared in my life driving that car around. Talk about having 0 grip most of the time while everyone around you drives normal 90kph on spiked tires.

Luckely I didn't have to drive much, just from the ferry to my mates house, to the place where we were staying in Oslo... The rest of that week I drove around in my mates car

I did drive from Oslo to another port about 200km more to the south, can't remember the name but those roads where cleared...

Offcourse what I did was way illegal