More to lock or......

[Neil Swanson <75377.3445@compuserve.com>]

OK so,

Now we keep hearing stories of others near misses.  I'm not playin' cop
here and I have surely driven too fast for conditions myself.

But Quattro does not mean you won't hydro-plane.  It is in BOLD type in the
owners manual. WARNING  blah, blah......

 80mph in the rain is perfect hydro-planing conditions even with quattro. 
I've felt it and it ain't tough to do.

I don't think it was me, but maybe I did imply Micheal was going too fast
for conditions. But if a road has a 70 mph speed limit, you and others
always go 90 mph, you slowed to 60mph for safety because of the weather and
you still lost control with quattro at a lower speed with very little
warning, then yes, you were going too fast for conditions.  

At our WDS Tim O'Neil recannted a few stories people he knew had told him
about what happened and where and at what speed etc.   His answer was
"nobody can save a car in that scenario"  "you should have been going
slower".

Dave Lawson feeling the rear end come around from what sounds like a very
gentle lift of the throttle, too fast?  Wrong tires?  Maybe both.  Doesn't
really matter because by his own excellent post he he knows that for that
road and his tires he had just gone past the limit of adhesion.   Nature
and physics had overcome his contact patch.  The tail of his 200 comn'
round to meet the front at 20mph?  Tires/speed /raod/weight transfer? 
Something didn't jibe and for a moment the car said "20mph is too fast for
conditions".

The post from Steamboat, the D60 Dunlop driver: same thing.  But what an
ideal place to find the limits of you car on snow/ice with those tires at
those speeds. I'm so happy you didn't find the outside of the envelope on
the street.

We all know that a Quattro will gather speed in a straight line in absurd
conditions.  The scarey part comes when you then have to turn or stop.  You
better know the road condition and try to contain the thrill of gettin' up
to 50mph on a straight when you need to be going 15mph to make that turn. 

'Nuf of that.

Jeff Goggins post about why it is hard to gather a sliding Q was the
clearest explanation I've yet read.  And I think from my own experience
that it relates more to the non-torsen 50:50 split cars than Torsen.

At the NEQ WDS from watching the torsen cars and riding in them I'd say
they broke into oversteer far sooner than a non torsen car.  Chris Miller
had all seasons on his '91 200.  Ask him about the point of no return on a
glare ice skid pad.  As I've said before an S6 w/Z-rated tires on snow/ice
slush is a POS.  Only parked in your driveway isn't too fast for
conditions.

  My '88 5ktq was understeering badly.  I slowed my pace on the skid pad to
a crawl just to keep one arc around the pad.  The first thing the car would
do when I tried to get more speed was to understeer. Adding lock of course
didn't help. As I unwound the steering and lifted very slightly only then
would the car go to oversteer.  As you would expect.  Different scenario in
the torsen cars.

So come on guys, safe speeder, hooligan, wacko, whatever group you fall
into.  We have all gone too fast for conditions.  Even when we thought we
were OK in our Quattro super surface craft. And we have tall tales to tell
about it. But friction circles don't give a damn.  Sometimes we have to
slow down.  Let the SUVs go off first.

Neil, probably driving too fast.