Antifreeze on tyres for grip in the snow?

[rovercoupe]

Was chatting with a old boy the other day about the stuff in a can you spray on tyres when stuck in snow and he claimed that it was a fairly common thing to paint the tyres with neat antifreeze and it gave them extra grip in snowy conditions. 
I have never herd of this so wondered if there was any truth in it?

[GingerCat]

Very doubtful. Just get winter or all season tyres. 

[ditchman]

always carry a couple of hesian sacks in the boot..for when you get stuck

[Dave-G]

34 minutes ago, rovercoupe said:

Was chatting with a old boy the other day about the stuff in a can you spray on tyres when stuck in snow and he claimed that it was a fairly common thing to paint the tyres with neat antifreeze and it gave them extra grip in snowy conditions. 
I have never herd of this so wondered if there was any truth in it?

He'll have been one of the long weight and sky hook merchants.

[martinj]

38 minutes ago, rovercoupe said:

Was chatting with a old boy the other day about the stuff in a can you spray on tyres when stuck in snow and he claimed that it was a fairly common thing to paint the tyres with neat antifreeze and it gave them extra grip in snowy conditions. 
I have never herd of this so wondered if there was any truth in it?

t'wouldn't last more than a minute and as a child of the 50's and 60's I never heard of that trick, Grandad (who lived oop north in Liverpool)  had tyre chains in the boot that was all I knew about for added grip

Just now, martinj said:

t'wouldn't last more than a minute and as a child of the 50's and 60's I never heard of that trick, Grandad (who lived oop north in Liverpool)  had tyre chains in the boot that was all I knew about for added grip

TBH we all knew about the dangers of ice and snow but, as a boy racer, we had to scare the **** out of ourselves once or twice each winter to re-learn respect for it

[figgy]

If you get stuck use your sodding car mats, shake the snow off and put them back.

Or buy soft easy fit snow chains

How simple you want it 😋

[Wylye]

Aluminium grain shovel, bag of Nitram and some hessian bags would get you anywhere. Proven!

[Westward]

Using antifreeze or any other stuff to partially melt the snow is a bad idea. That's why deploying fleets of gritters before a snowfall causes so much havoc.

[old man]

16 hours ago, rovercoupe said:

Was chatting with a old boy the other day about the stuff in a can you spray on tyres when stuck in snow and he claimed that it was a fairly common thing to paint the tyres with neat antifreeze and it gave them extra grip in snowy conditions. 
I have never herd of this so wondered if there was any truth in it?

Maybe a big No No. Antifreeze toxic to cats!

[bluesj]

I know someone that usually spends this time of year in Sweden teaching people to drive on snow and ice, he was saying wipe white spirit on tyres helps with grip in the snow and ice.

[Dave-G]

1 hour ago, Westward said:

Using antifreeze or any other stuff to partially melt the snow is a bad idea. That's why deploying fleets of gritters before a snowfall causes so much havoc.

I think UK gritting is relative to predicted temperature: risk of ice rather than snow.

Edited February 7, 2021 by Dave-G

[Walker570]

I had a set of plastic tyre chains once and they where brilliant but after twenty yards you didn't need them.  Just learn to drive on it.  In 1991 (Dec) I set off to Hereford at dawn just a pithering of snow. By the time I got to the M5 it was 10 inches deep on the M42.  I drove all the way back to Leicetershire squeezing past abandoned vehicles on the ice covered Motorway and only had to walk the last half mile because there was a big ash tree lying across the lane and a drift 4feet deep.  This was in a Volvo 740 Estate on standard tyres.  The right foot has a lot to do with it and how you use the two pedals.    Painting stuff on your tyres is for the birds, crazy.

[Westward]

3 hours ago, Dave-G said:

I think UK gritting is relative to predicted temperature: risk of ice rather than snow.

They don't think that deeply. Any threat of snow or temperature below 1 degree or so and out go the gritters. As Walker says above, it isn't hard to drive a normal car on pure snow, even when it's a good few inches deep, but when the snow lands on salted roads and starts to melt underneath, chaos ensues even if it's only a couple of inches deep.

What they should do is wait for the snow to stop, plough if necessary and then apply grit. Y'know, like they do in countries that get real snowfalls.

[martinj]

3 hours ago, Walker570 said:

I had a set of plastic tyre chains once and they where brilliant but after twenty yards you didn't need them.  Just learn to drive on it.  In 1991 (Dec) I set off to Hereford at dawn just a pithering of snow. By the time I got to the M5 it was 10 inches deep on the M42.  I drove all the way back to Leicetershire squeezing past abandoned vehicles on the ice covered Motorway and only had to walk the last half mile because there was a big ash tree lying across the lane and a drift 4feet deep.  This was in a Volvo 740 Estate on standard tyres.  The right foot has a lot to do with it and how you use the two pedals.    Painting stuff on your tyres is for the birds, crazy.

You did well. I drive a 4WD these days which makes life a lot easier in snow and ice but, even though you might have cracked it, there are still all the other people out there who just can't handle it.

[rovercoupe]

As I thought not much proof of it working, the white spirit idea is intriguing, how or why it would work is a mystery to me! 
 

ps I don’t generally need to worry about the snow given I drive a lada. 

[Dave-G]

2 hours ago, Westward said:

They don't think that deeply. Any threat of snow or temperature below 1 degree or so and out go the gritters. As Walker says above, it isn't hard to drive a normal car on pure snow, even when it's a good few inches deep, but when the snow lands on salted roads and starts to melt underneath, chaos ensues even if it's only a couple of inches deep.

What they should do is wait for the snow to stop, plough if necessary and then apply grit. Y'know, like they do in countries that get real snowfalls.

Lol there's hell to pay round here if the roads weren't gritted before even a light dusting of snow - maybe its because many of our residents have never experienced snow and almost every way out of the city is uphill, many still failing to round in BMW's and Mercs. I got a rollicking off a copper for passing cars stuck on an ice packed road by driving on a grass verge while I was using snow tyres in my cab to keep working. He said I should rejoin the stream of traffic waiting or get nicked for driving on the virgin snow covered footpath... while pedestrians walked on the packed ice. I took a diversion up a side street to get round them.

[Walker570]

By far the very best little motor I owned on snow was a Honda S800 in the 60s.  I did put some off road tyres on it becaue I was rallying at the time. We had a pretty heavy fall of snow and I drove down to Bromyard in the Cotswolds to have a look at a rally route I was organising and came across a Police 1100 stuck on a hill. I pulled around them on the grass verge , jumped out and asked if they wanted a tow. They both looked at my little sports car in amazement. I hooked my tow rope on the 1100 and pulled them up to the top where they had been called to an alarm. I said "Cheerio" and drove off through the drifting snow.  I think that was the very best car I have ever owned and it got wrecked by some idiot pulling out from a side turning and writing it off.  Wish I had one today.

[old man]

5 hours ago, Walker570 said:

I had a set of plastic tyre chains once and they where brilliant but after twenty yards you didn't need them.  Just learn to drive on it.  In 1991 (Dec) I set off to Hereford at dawn just a pithering of snow. By the time I got to the M5 it was 10 inches deep on the M42.  I drove all the way back to Leicetershire squeezing past abandoned vehicles on the ice covered Motorway and only had to walk the last half mile because there was a big ash tree lying across the lane and a drift 4feet deep.  This was in a Volvo 740 Estate on standard tyres.  The right foot has a lot to do with it and how you use the two pedals.    Painting stuff on your tyres is for the birds, crazy.

As does the tyre width, modern tyres being wider don't cut through to the road surface as well as the old narrow ones did. 

Us oldies were used to the stuff and had to get to work. 😇

[Walker570]

1 minute ago, old man said:

As does the tyre width, modern tyres being wider don't cut through to the road surface as well as the old narrow ones did. 

Us oldies were used to the stuff and had to get to work. 😇

Yes, have a look back at the tyres that Saab fitted to their rally cars once snow started to become an issue. Seriously narrow tread and their drivers drove on snow sometimes six months of the year.  I had wide tyres with studs on my rally car but found a set of the narrowist tyres available, standard tread did better in snow.  The studs became helpful on blackice or very hard packed ice surfaces but were not infallible, it was always down to those two pedals.

[old man]

2 minutes ago, Walker570 said:

Yes, have a look back at the tyres that Saab fitted to their rally cars once snow started to become an issue. Seriously narrow tread and their drivers drove on snow sometimes six months of the year.  I had wide tyres with studs on my rally car but found a set of the narrowist tyres available, standard tread did better in snow.  The studs became helpful on blackice or very hard packed ice surfaces but were not infallible, it was always down to those two pedals.

👍 Remember it well, thick fog too.

[Fisheruk]

23 hours ago, martinj said:

t'wouldn't last more than a minute and as a child of the 50's and 60's I never heard of that trick, Grandad (who lived oop north in Liverpool)  had tyre chains in the boot that was all I knew about for added grip

TBH we all knew about the dangers of ice and snow but, as a boy racer, we had to scare the **** out of ourselves once or twice each winter to re-learn respect for it

I was working the winter in Sweden in 1969, my brand new company car was a Ford Cortina, with cross ply tyres. -35c pack ice and dry snow. I was pulling Sarbs and Volvos which were stuck with my chains, their studded tyres were useless in deep dry snow.

I still keep a set of chains in the back of my pickup from November to March, rarely use them but they are there just in case.

Edited February 7, 2021 by Fisheruk

[Vince Green]

My old propane bottle and blowtorch has come in very useful

other than that a trick I learned living in USA was a couple of lengths of old carpet works most times. But over there, every year, people died in stranded cars and it was normal practice to keep a load of old newspapers under the back seat. A single sheet of newspaper is as warm as a blanket when put over you and can save your life.

You can literally get buried in 4ft of snow if you get stranded somewhere over there and some people live in crazy rural locations miles from anywhere .

Edited February 8, 2021 by Vince Green

[Westward]

15 hours ago, old man said:

Us oldies were used to the stuff and had to get to work. 😇

With you there.

Back in the 80s I worked for a US company based just outside Boston. I was there once in winter and stayed the weekend at my boss's house. We got up on Saturday morning to about 18" of snow, so after coffee we set about clearing the driveway. Pretty soon a snowplough came through and soon after the postman was along too. We finished the drive by about 10 and had breakfast, after which we put the trash bags into the station waggon and drove up to the town tip to dump the trash. Seemed like half the town was there doing the same thing.

The point is that life was back to normal within a couple of hours. There was no "chaos" or "havoc", and no main lead item on the news, not even a mention, because it was an entirely normal event which happened several times every winter. Much as it was in this country in the 60s.

Spending huge amounts of our money deploying fleets of gritters to throw salt all over the roads before it snows is nothing to do with whether or not it's a good idea or helps anything, it's simply procedure because the public sector is obsessed with blame avoidance. If they don't grit the roads and 1 car crashes all hell breaks loose, but if they have gritted the roads and 30 cars crash in the ensuing chaos caused by fresh snow lying on melting snow, it's always the drivers who get the blame.

It's the same blame shifting principle as when you renew your SGC and the FEO comes out yet again to check the same house, the same security, the same cabinet in the same location as everything was the last 4 times it was checked.

[steve_b_wales]

My mate bought snow socks for his vehicle a few years back and according to him, were brilliant. Much easier to put fit too.

[old man]

1 hour ago, Westward said:

With you there.

Back in the 80s I worked for a US company based just outside Boston. I was there once in winter and stayed the weekend at my boss's house. We got up on Saturday morning to about 18" of snow, so after coffee we set about clearing the driveway. Pretty soon a snowplough came through and soon after the postman was along too. We finished the drive by about 10 and had breakfast, after which we put the trash bags into the station waggon and drove up to the town tip to dump the trash. Seemed like half the town was there doing the same thing.

The point is that life was back to normal within a couple of hours. There was no "chaos" or "havoc", and no main lead item on the news, not even a mention, because it was an entirely normal event which happened several times every winter. Much as it was in this country in the 60s.

Spending huge amounts of our money deploying fleets of gritters to throw salt all over the roads before it snows is nothing to do with whether or not it's a good idea or helps anything, it's simply procedure because the public sector is obsessed with blame avoidance. If they don't grit the roads and 1 car crashes all hell breaks loose, but if they have gritted the roads and 30 cars crash in the ensuing chaos caused by fresh snow lying on melting snow, it's always the drivers who get the blame.

It's the same blame shifting principle as when you renew your SGC and the FEO comes out yet again to check the same house, the same security, the same cabinet in the same location as everything was the last 4 times it was checked.

IMHO, a lot is about personal responsibility?

We were all aware of our responsibilities and the need to get to work under our own power or things were scarce? Had to learn quickly and make do and mend if required.

Nowadays, a lot seem to wait for others to source everything they require? Tht's what we have bred?