10/10'ths In The Snow/Winter Driving Tips (longish)

[Wolff <wolff_b@ix.netcom.com>]

I went on a trip to the eastern Sierras this week in my '91 200 tq. I
have never driven in snow before, so I learned some things.

#1 "Dry snow good. Wet slushy snow bad" say road warrior.

#2 The wet slush is much thicker ahead of the snow plow. (Hello McFly!,
DUH!)
I passed a snow plow and as I started back into my lane under
acceleration, the thicker slush in the right lane "grabbed" the right
wheels and spun the car to the right. I got off the gas and counter
steered. I was "slushtroplaning" briefly, but it was so thick it
scrubbed off speed quickly and the rear came back in line. I was only
sliding for less than a second I would say and used less than a half
turn of steering wheel to correct it. Definitely learned my lesson on
that one though.

#3 Make sure you have "All Season" windshield washer fluid or it will
freeze.

#4 Make sure your cooling system thermostat works. My temp was actually
running below all the hash marks on the gauge until I stuck some
cardboard between the AC condenser and the radiator. (The aux radiator
still kept it pretty cool.)

Other observations:
    A turbo motor is the way to go at 9,000 feet. I ate Suby's and SUV's
for breakfast, lunch and dinner. BTW, I saw hundreds of those pesky
little Suby's. I figured out why they always have those odd amorphous
dents in the quarter panels. It's from going off the road into
snowbanks. The SUV's of course were as numerous as the Suby's. I watched
with humor as SUV owners were out in the cold installing chains on their
"Wonder mobiles". I could see the creases on the owner's foreheads as
they thought "I wonder why I didn't get the 4wd option?"  Sadly, Q's
were extremely under represented. I saw a total of four. One '86/'87
Alpine White 4kq (looked just like mine that was sitting at home). We
drove together for a while in the snow on highway 88, trading places a
few times. That was fun. Other Q's:A V-8, a beater 4kq and an A6q. 
    I liked the "outside temp" function of the climate control. Lowest
temperature I saw was -4 degrees F. This was on a sunny morning to boot.
The nighttime temps were supposedly -26 deg F according to the woman at
the ranger's station. I was afraid of freezing the coolant in the Q, so
I covered the car at night after running the engine. This actually made
a 30 degree difference. I the morning, when I pulled the cover off, you
could watch the climate control sensor drop from 35 or 40 down to 10 in
about a minute. 
   The ski sack/sock? was very handy. I'm glad I took the 200. 
   Oh, BOW, the "Beartracker" saved my butt once. I was just tooling
along with the speedo needle only half way around. Yeah, I know, it does
go to 170 mph full scale =8-)   The "beartracker" suddenly starts
beeping loudly and lights up like a Christmas tree. I slowed down and
about 30 seconds later a CHP whizzed past. It doesn't seem to false
much, but it does miss 'em too.
    Back to quattros. We wanted to go down to Mono Lake for a close
look, so we parked at the top of the hill and got the skis out. We got
about a half mile and the ski's froze. Oops, forgot to get slippery
stuff  before we left. We will have to buy some. We went back to the
car. I chickened out on trying to drive down as the snow was up to the
air dam for sure and there is a Jeep track hidden under all that snow.
Actually, I wasn't worried about getting down there so much as getting
back up the last hill. I definitely did not want to be stuck out there
with the sun going down. The next day we went back, but were too tired
from skiing all morning to try to ski down there, so I drove. By now
other vehicles had been through, so I wasn't worried about high siding,
just getting stuck. We had no trouble going down, or back up to the base
of the steep part. I had my wife get out and walk up to the top to video
the raging hill climbing Quattro. She reported that it was steep and
slippery enough to make it hard to walk up. There was a tour bus up at
the road which had disgorged countless sightseers to witness the Q
either get stuck, or fly up the hill. Actually, they thought I was stuck
since I was waiting at the bottom for my wife to get up there with the
video camera. She waved and I took off. It was completely anticlimactic.
I just drove right up as though I was on asphalt. No slipping or
wandering. Just straight up. I didn't even lock the rear diff.

You've made it this far, so here are some vid captures of the hill
climb:
http://www.digiweb.com/~wolffb/quattro/snowq1.jpg
http://www.digiweb.com/~wolffb/quattro/snowq2.jpg

Questions:
Any other winter driving tips I should know about?

Why aren't you supposed to use chains on 215/60/15's? and Why would you
need to?

Is there a way to measure the specific gravity of non-ethylene glycol
anti-freeze, or should I just switch back to ethylene glycol type
coolant?

Wolff