Car Park Fun

[toasty]

Chaps,

We have a big car park at work, which when I came to work this morning was:
a) empty
b) covered in snow/ice

I spent a while ploughing it up in my S' !!

I've never really felt this phenomenon on the road (but have heard people speaking about it) but if the front cannot get traction you really feel the power shift to the back (it's really obvious and it works too)

Amazing also how even ABS is of little use when the ground is so icy, I had real difficulty stopping the car once it was moving, but steering didn't seem so affected

...so I just kept doing big circles!!

Hopefully no one else saw me, I don't think most people around here (they all drive diesel mundaneos) would understand!

-Dan

[Joshie]

Sounds like a great laugh - fun isn't it when you have a large open slippery space with nothing to bang into.

I once tried this in the North East in a car without Abs. Marking out the car park and then trying to stop from 20MPH. I found the best way was to use the handbrake to get the car spinning. This certaily reduced the stopping distance - honest.

Wouldn't like to try it on the open road though

[toasty]

I remember being at the top of a slight hill in Victoria Park near Bath once.

It was really icy and I had my Cavalier Gsi at the time.

Decided to put it in reverse with the clutch down and roll down the hill forwards using the brakes to regulate my speed.

I figured that if I started sliding I'd let the clutch up and hopefully the wheels spinning in the wrong direction would melt a hole through the ice.

....luckily I didn't have to, probably wouldn't have worked anyway

Nice idea about sending the car into a spin though, conservation of energy and all that would dictate that you could decelerate whist spinning rather than going in a straight line, so I suppose it would work. (of course it wouldn't work on a hill.)

Talking of science, the obvious thing to do would be to fill the car up with useless (and heavy) things.

Then if you found yourself going too fast and the brakes didn't work you could throw things forward out of the car and Newtons 3rd law of motion would do the rest.


MENTAL NOTE: Don't be a passenger in icy weather if the driver is a physicist!