I've been driving in that crap since 1968, with a short reprieve of 2 winters spent in central Africa - where loose sand on the road can be just as bad - and for 3 months of the year hydroplaning can be a very real problem - as can slippery climy MUD.
It has been done on STANDARD CAB pickups in the past, so why not????
Note, I said "on a straight road". You could have a totally flat tire on the rear of many vehicles and not notice it untill you had to turn.
That CANNOT happen with a bad tire on the front.
What is the advantage to the tire salesman (and every other tire related source that I can find) to tell people to put the best tires on the rear? I'm not talking about salesmen that refuse to sell you 2. I'm talking about tire dealers ranging from local shops, to major manufacturers, to the on-line dealers that will happily sell you 2 tires and recommend that they go on the rear.
Goodyear, Michelin, Dunlop, Firestone, etc. Sure, they would prefer that you buy 4, but even they say that if you are going to replace 2, put the new ones on the rear.
What about sources like Popular Mechanics, MSN-Auto, numerous auto forums and law websites that cite accident studies, etc. - Sources that make no money on tire sales and have no incentive to have you buy
4 tires - or any tires at all for that matter.Do they all have ulterior motives or are they all just flat out wrong?
It's also curious that all sites related to drifting say the best tires go on the front...so that the back end can skid. Not exactly what you want to happen with a passenger vehicle.
For sure. I drove home last night on a lot of unpaved roads during a really heavy rainstorm - driving on that lot was very like driving on snow. Mixture of slippery clay stuff and sand. Good practice for the six months of white stuff we tend to get up here, though! :-)
cheers
Jules
There are more factors involved in driving safety, and tire utilization, than simply hydroplaning. IF Hydroplaning was the only, or even MAJOR factor involved in tire safety I'd agree with the "experts" - but it just ain't so for the vast majority of drivers.
When you adopt a narrow enough view on life, all kinds of things can "make sense", and not necessarily always be right.
My long weekend trip this weekend included, both ways, a stretch of road some 45 miles without a 5 degree turn to left or right - all on paved roads. That's 90 miles in 2 segments - and several stretches of 15 miles or more in a straight line as well.
LOTS of places you can drive 25 miles in a straight line within Ontario - Get into manitoba and Saskachewan, and there are stretches of over 100 miles at a time where you are driving virtually straight.
And all it takes is a couple of miles with substantually reduced tire pressure to totally destroy a tire -
What did I say that makes you think that I think hydroplaning is the only factor involved in tire placement?
What makes you think that hydroplaning is the only factor considered by just about everyone one else who says that the best tires should go on the rear?
As I'm sure you know, based on your considerable driving experience, both competitive and "normal" that there are lots of other conditions that can cause a tire to loose traction.
Are you saying that every organization, manufacturer, person, whatever, that says the best tires belong on the rear are of the same (and mistaken) narrow mind and that you are the only one that sees the bigger picture?
Except for the last two years (moved to Alabama in '08), I've driven in snow since I got my licence ('67) too. It's funny here. They canceled work on a prediction of snow. I showed up because I didn't bother to check the web site since there was no snow (it did start in the late afternoon).
They obviously had more space than brains. Interior space is rather important these days.
Makes a lot more sense to put the spare in the cab and the gastank under the box, instead of putting the gastank in the cab like several major manufacturers have done in the past.
I still vote for the old "side mount" though.
It makes more sense to put them both under the box. Same design for many models, even.
I don't think there is room on mine, but it's probably a good place for most.
ote:
Yep, side mount at the rear of the bed. Don't have to unload everythign to get at it there.
Harry K
The only way I could pull donuts in my Subaru was to put it in 4-wheel drive.
Growing up we used to practice skidding in snowy parking lots, not just for the fun, but also to get used to it. There's no panic when it happens in real life if you've experienced it in a "safe" situation.
I miss those days.
When I was in the Coast Guard our last week of Boot Camp was a driving class put on by the California Highway Patrol. They would flood the parking lot and send us out to drive on through "neighborhood streets" outlined with cones, portable stops signs, etc. One of the vehicles was a 70-something Firebird that you could spin around on dry pavement, nevermind on a flooded street.
For some reason, they only let me drive that one once. ;-)
Yep, those were the fun days. I learned on country gravel roads in snow country. Actually did a 4-wheel drift on a highway once (that was enough). Not planned, not wanted and left creases in the seat covers. Dicing with another car a bit in Texas in my new 1969 Volvo and went into a corner that had a good sprinkling of gravel over the blacktop. 90 degrees of sweat equity :)
Harry K
I only really lost it once.
I came into a 90 degree turn that I had done a hundred times at my usual speed - what was certainly faster than posted. It was kind of back road near a small muni-airport. Perfectly dry, sunny day.
What I didn't know was that the fire hydrant right around the bend had either leaked or been flushed or something as there was standing water right past the curve. The rear end came around faster than I could do anything about it and I resigned myself to sliding into the fence.
That's when I saw the offending fire hydrant in my path. It punched a hole in the side of the car behind the door and bent the support post into the seat back. It was 65 Dodge Coronet with a "half post".
Kind of like this, but blue.
(snip)
BTDT, or tried to at least. Promptly got rousted by the local PD. Talked my way out of a ticket, but was told that if I was ever caught doing it again, he'd write me up for reckless. He did not buy my 'learning experience' excuse.
Chuckle. Did a similar thing to a 73 Ford wagon once, after making the wheelbase several inches shorter on one side tagging a very-well-hidden-by-shadows telephone pole, while driving down an unfamiliar urban alley. Found a Real Big tree, dug out some carpet scraps and a big log chain, tied off that corner of the frame, and proceeded to pull most of the bend back out. This was in the crush-control eye on the frame, not the box rail itself. Car never did drive quite right after that again, and ate the tire on that corner pretty rapidly, but I was broke, and you do what you gotta do to get by. I don't think the telephone pole even noticed. Drove the car (mainly around town) another couple of years.
The reason "I" like to have the better tires (and traction) on the front of my front-drive cars is so that IF the rear end starts to come around I have the traction on the driving wheels to get the power to the road to get the front end out of the back end's way and get the vehicle back into full control, going in the direction I want it to be going. You cannot do that with excellent rear tires and slightly less than excellent front tires. Also, if the front wheels are having a bit of trouble getting the car going exactly where you want it in the slop, with slightly inferior tires it is simple to just pull the handbrake a titch, or stab the service brake with power applied and get the rear end to slide so you can hang it just where you want it in a turn. That maneuver is also pretty difficult if the front tires are inferior to the rears. Works OK if they are equal in condition - and can actually be easier if the rear tires have a bit less traction than normal. In other than a overloaded front wheel drive car, the rear ALWAYS has less traction than the front.
You want to come up on a flat or slightly reverse banked 90+ degree right turn unloaded (just over a rise) on a freshly gravelled road at
50+ MPH in an 850 mini. It was "oh crap" and "come on baby" as I downshifted in mid air, hit the accellerator to the floor on touchdown, with the wheel hard to the LEFT, and ploughed a furrow all the way around the corner. If it hadn't happened while I was still young and invincible I'd have crapped myself for sure.Had a few more similar situations 10 years later with the Renault R12, where the longer suspension travel helped counteract the loss of youthfull bravado. You could corner that thing with the outer door handles almost in the gravel, and still hold control, even in gravel. I never had an "off road excursion" with that car in some 50 rallyes. Michelin ZX tires on all four corners. Having the trigger on the handbrake reversed was a very welcome modification - you only used the "button" when you wanted the handbrake to stay ON.
Had the use of "shorty" for a couple months in Zambia in the early '70s. "Shorty" was a VW Beetle that had been rolled and had the roof removed and about 10 inches taken out of the wheelbase. With the greatly reduced weight and higher polar moment of inertia caused by the short wheelbase, it was a real handfull when the roads got dusted with a light layer of fine sand.Cornering, accelerating or decellerating, it was not hard to get the back bumper to try REAL HARD to pass the front one - and not much harder for it to succeed. Downright dangerous little rascal.
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