Date:         Wed, 25 Mar 1998 20:59:54 +0100
Reply-To:     Johan Nyberg <johan.nyberg@ABC.SE>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <Vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         Johan Nyberg <johan.nyberg@ABC.SE>
Subject:      More on traction
Comments: To: vanagon@vanagon.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Hello listees!

Living in Sweden, I do have some experience whith snow. I'm not what you'd
call an "expert driver", but I've found a useful trick when traction is bad.
In short:
If one is stuck because of the rear wheels having poor traction, try not to
touch the throttle pedal at all! Just let the clutch up _slowly_. If your
idle stabilizing circuits work properly, they will try to maintain idle rpm
and the engine is usually powerful enough to get the car going.

It took me three winters of driving and maintaining a vanagon to relize
this, and I've lost lots of studs on the rear wheel tires.

I drive an EV in my work, and the trick works very well with this car too.

Caveats:
I've no idea of whether this works with automatic trannys, probably it
does, and I do have the most powerful (standard) engine available, the 112
hp DJ.

The first time I drove a vanagon ever was after a heavy snowfall, and the
feeeling you get when you can almost see the rear of the car through a side
window after taking a curve too fast is quite impressive.

Zwei Pfennig...



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    Johan Nyberg, Sweden N 59o E 17o 25"
    '86 Caravelle C
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