Cold, snow flurries, and wi-fi

[altivo]

Gary had another rehearsal day. Thursday he works with the Kishwaukee Ramblers, a trio he has played with for a number of years. I occasionally fill in with them when needed, but am not a regular, so Thursday is my day to do laundry and other solitary tasks. Today I wanted to take my car somewhere, as I haven't driven it for a couple of weeks. (And it's good for vehicles to be run regularly, so I try not to go longer than that.)

So I dutifully cleared the leaves off the windshield and checked the tires. The low pressure warning light came on last time I drove, and when I got home I checked and found that the pressure in all four tires was indeed 3 or 4 PSI lower than it should be. They weren't likely to all be leaking so I put it down to the sudden temperature drop we've had, from 60s and 70s wham, right into the 30s. Pumped them back up to within a pound or so of the recommended level, but I didn't want to go all the way up in case it suddenly were to warm up again. (It didn't.) Anyway, the warning light did not come on, and the tires don't look flabby, so I guess 31 is almost as good as 33 PSI. I'll push them up farther tomorrow.

Took my laptop, tablet, and phone with me and drove into town to the public library, where the wi-fi is about ten times faster than what we get at home. They actually encourage users to "borrow" their bandwidth by parking in front of the building these days, since it saves having to mask up to go into the library itself for that purpose. Ran all the updates and patches to Android and Linux in far less time than it would have taken at home, then packed things up and drove back. Total round trip about ten miles. Time saved maybe as much as three hours.

And the gas mileage on the 2016 Fusion I bought used in September when my Escape finally bit the dust (or turned into into rust, as it were) still shows on the trip meter as 28.3 mpg, which is pretty darned good for a car with 98K miles on it I'd say. It's only an interim solution until the Maverick pick-up I ordered finally comes in (April, it sounds like, if I'm lucky) but I'm finding there's a lot to like about this car.

Comments

[hrrunka]

Do you do a swap from summer to winter tyres? It's the law in Germany, but here most folk don't bother as we don't get enough snow...

[altivo]

Not generally necessary here either. Roads are plowed and salted when it snows, and many vehicles have all wheel drive or other provisions. Studded winter tires used to be a thing but they are prohibited in many places now because they damage the road surface. I occasionally hear tire chains on the road out front, but those are also rare.

The Fusion has a computer aided "traction mode" that is supposed to be good for slippery conditions due to any cause. As a front wheel drive only, I'm not sure how that works, but if enabled it is supposed to kick in when needed.

My Cherokee had four wheel drive but I rarely turned it on. The Escape that replaced it was front wheel drive and never had a problem in winter conditions. Over a 15 year period I got stuck once in our own unpaved, uphill drive, but a little judicious shoveling and some kitty litter got it free.

The Maverick hybrid will be front wheel drive but with four selectable computer assisted modes for conditions. I'm a very conservative driver, so I expect that to be more than adequate.

[hrrunka]

I think the winter tyres are usually a slightly different grade of rubber with a coarser tread pattern to handle snow better. They tend to wear out faster if you use them all year long, so folk in Germany keep a set hanging on the garage wall (if they have a garage), and take them along to be swapped at the end of October and back again in mid April.

Here, the tyre places sometimes offer "all season" tyres which are some sort of compromise. As far as I can tell they satisfy the requirements in Germany, but they're not quite as good in serious snow...

[altivo]

"All Terrain," "All Season," and "Snow" tires are sold here. I've never concerned myself with what the differences might be. Now that I'm retired from daily work, if there's snow on the roads I just stay home until it's cleared. But truthfully, I grew up in Michigan where snow was pretty common before this climate change stuff was so serious. We learned how to drive on snow when it was necessary, and how to avoid it when it wasn't necessary. The big secret that so many people never get is just "Slow Down."

[hrrunka]

Here, we see the same sort of thing during the first few wet days after a dry spell...

[moonhare]

When the cold weather arrives, the low pressure light appears on all of our vehicles. Like you, I check the tires and find they are consistently ‘low’ within one or two psi.

My truck is rear wheel drive and I put ballast over that axel to improve traction. I remember my mom always used bags of feed, or hay bales, in her station wagons. I also have a locking differential (G80) that does a nice job on slippy roads.

[altivo]

Yeah, I remember putting weight in back for better traction. My grandfather used to put bags of topsoil or fertilizer there I think. For years I drove cars with the engine in back over the rear wheel drive: Corvairs, VW Bugs. Never had a traction problem with those. (Ralph Nader had problems with them, but I never was in any kind of crash while driving one, so I dunno.)

[moonhare]

My brother’s friend had a new Corvair, back in the 60’s, and he loved that little car. I was surprised to see how GM promoted these when I saw this little video on TCM a few years back: https://youtu.be/WmPpry8JiK0

Our ‘88 Plymouth Voyager was the first car we had with front wheel drive. It never had a problem with snow.

[altivo]

My family went through three Corvairs back then. They served as the "second" car that my mom used for shopping and errands while my dad was at work with the larger car. That was about when I was just learning to drive, and the third Corvair was a red convertible with manual transmission. Of course I had to drive that. The main consequence of which was that I learned to drive a stick shift early on and every car I've owned before this present one (seven of them, I think) had a manual transmission. When I bought the last one (2007 Ford Escape) and told the sales guy I wanted a manual, he called me "One of a dying breed." But he found one for me. I knew the Escape was on its last set of tires when I ordered a Maverick hybrid. Then it became clear that Ford was really running slow on producing those and the wait could be (and has been) months. I took the Escape in for service and inspection, and they found it was so badly rusted underneath that they could not put it on the lift. Hence the Fusion as a "temporary" form of transportation until the Maverick finally arrives. I went for the lightest, most inexpensive used car on the lot, not expecting much from it. I've been impressed though. A lot has improved since 2006 when I bought that Escape. Of course it's an automatic transmission, with one of those silly override modes where you can force it to shift manually. But going to a hybrid I'll be giving up the stick shift anyway. The Maverick comes with eCVT, no shifting of any kind other than forward, neutral, park, and reverse. And those are controlled by a rotary dial on the center console, not even a shift lever. ;-D

My friend Dan, last year of high school (locker partner, co-editor of the yearbook with me) had a Corvair too. His suffered either from a faulty generator or needed a replacement starter, so we often had to start it by pushing it by hand. Advantage of the lightweight compact car: two of us (and I was a skinny kid back then) could get it going enough for him to pop the clutch and it would start.