Loss of traction, skidding...

Nearly killed me 'n the missus yesterday coming down wet/damp mountain road. I'm always careful on this road as it is very twisty (and has a feckin great drop over the edge!) and have noticed that the car is a bit twitchy on the sharper bends in the wet. We were travelling slowly, maybe 20mph on a not very sharp bend when the car just drifted slowly across the road sideways towards the crash barrier. Luckily nowt coming up at the time. Fortunately I got it under control with the only damage being to me pants.
This morning, same road, opposite direction and opposite side of mountain, nearly at the bottom, with me, wifey and the kids on board when it did the same again on bend to left (yesterday was bend to right). Just lost all grip on the damp road and we almost went side on into rocky face.
My tyres are road tyres, Pirelli Scorpions 205 80's I think and I must admit they are fairly worn although I would say just legal, and not bald at all.
Pretty scary and not sure why this happened at low speed. I thought 4 wheel drive would have given me better traction on such roads. Would tracking and/or tyre pressure have any bearing on this? I'm not aware of the tracking being out, it drives and stops in a straight line and the tyres don't seem to be wearing unevenly. My tyre pressures were set at approx 38psi all round recently. Could this be a bit high and cause less grip? (I've got an appointment tomorrow for 4 new tyres btw!)

Rich

Black ice nothing more than that. No tyre can stop that from happening unless it's got studs in it.

4 wheel drive does not mean better traction. The only thing sticking you to the road is your tyres. I would also say your tyres are over inflated which will make a big difference as it reduces the footprint of the tyre on the surface of the road.

had my disco 2 weeks and slide out the other day-ice !! going 5mph in a little close round a bend driving real careful, it just slide, managed to not go front in, but hit a berlingo van front wing are in to my rear passenger door on drivers side

the berlingo was mullered-light-bumper-wing totaly smashed, i **** myself...by some grace of god, it was my mates van parked up due toa previous smash-i didnt know about, so all i did was damage it a little more, and only my doorr bottom part is dented in, lucky it didtn hit the door edge etc, just need a new door or get the dent beat out

so so lucky that it was my mates pranged van, any random person could of tried to sting the full damage on me and i might not of known to be honest, scary

How long have you owned and driven 4x4s?

yes tyres are to hard

30 on the front
32 on the rear

paul_c said:

How long have you owned and driven 4x4s?

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me, my 1st one nearly 3 weeks owned, was going 5mph , was 2 or 3 inch thick pure smooth solid ice, mate in his 4x4 mondeo slid there too an hour before he told me

Just because a vehicle has 4 wheel drive it does not mean it will hold the road better!! You can have 10 wheel drive but if you have no traction, you have no traction. 4x4s will slide just the same as any other vehicle. A common misconception new owners have, is that their 4 wheel drive will stick to the road like snot! This is not the case.

If your tyres are just over the legal limit, that means they can't have much more than 1.6mm of tread depth. Just because that's the legal minimum, it doesn't mean to say that it's a safe minimum. 1.6mm is NOTHING. I believe the common rule of thumb is to replace your tyres when they have around 3mm of tread depth left. But I wouldn't be surprised if that's stil considered to be a bit on the low side for 4x4s used offroad and/or on poor road conditions.

Given that we live in a nanny state with such variable weather conditions and no legal requirement for winter tyres, I'm really surprised that the minimum legal tread depth for tyres is still only 1.6mm!

he lives in spain

RichM said:

If your tyres are just over the legal limit, that means they can't have much more than 1.6mm of tread depth. Just because that's the legal minimum, it doesn't mean to say that it's a safe minimum. 1.6mm is NOTHING. I believe the common rule of thumb is to replace your tyres when they have around 3mm of tread depth left. But I wouldn't be surprised if that's stil considered to be a bit on the low side for 4x4s used offroad and/or on poor road conditions.

Given that we live in a nanny state with such variable weather conditions and no legal requirement for winter tyres, I'm really surprised that the minimum legal tread depth for tyres is still only 1.6mm!

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If your on Sheet Ice, its like a sheet of glass so tread depth would not of done much as there is nowt for the groves to bite on to.... perhaps this is why it is so slipery........... wonder if this is why AT are better then MT's on compact snow.......

Perhaps someone may tell me otherwhys... it was just my thought

Big Stu 12 said:

If your on Sheet Ice, its like a sheet of glass so tread depth would not of done much as there is nowt for the groves to bite on to.... perhaps this is why it is so slipery........... wonder if this is why AT are better then MT's on compact snow.......

Perhaps someone may tell me otherwhys... it was just my thought

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ATs have a bigger footprint on the surface of the Ice than MTs have. However I pulled a 15 tonne bin lorry up a hill today on compact Snow and Ice using MT's.

Not icy here! Max temp 18 degrees today and I appreciate comments about worn tyres. I wasn't raining and there was no standing water as such, just a damp surface following recent rain. I was surprised at how easy it lost traction...twice. I also take on board that the tyre pressures may be too high (Actually they were 34 all round). Cheers.

goonarmy said:

he lives in spain

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My bad but the minimum legal tread depth is still 1.6mm in Spain afaik.

It's a EU standard now. It's 1.6mm across 75% of the width and around the whole tyre circumference.

RichM said:

My bad but the minimum legal tread depth is still 1.6mm in Spain afaik.

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let me rephrase that, he lives in spain, he aint got ****ty icy weather like wot we does.Still cant understand why any one would want to move away from here

goonarmy said:

let me rephrase that, he lives in spain, he aint got ****ty icy weather like wot we does.Still cant understand why any one would want to move away from here

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Well he didn't go into great detail about the road conditions but imo it doesn't matter whether it was ice or not because if he hasn't got much tread, it can still be a potential problem esp. if there's surface water on the roads.

I don't know much about asphalt mixtures but whenever I've been to Spain, I've noticed how their roads tend to be much more slippery in wet conditions compared to over here. Though, perhaps that was just a coincidence.

Also, they do get snow and ice in some parts of Spain from time to time. (Northern parts in particular and also on high ground.)

My point still stands. "Just over the legal limit" sounds way too low to me!

RichM said:

Well he didn't go into great detail about the road conditions but imo it doesn't matter whether it was ice or not because if he hasn't got much tread, it can still be a potential problem esp. if there's surface water on the roads.

I don't know much about asphalt mixtures but whenever I've been to Spain, I've noticed how their roads tend to be much more slippery in wet conditions compared to over here. Though, perhaps that was just a coincidence.

Also, they do get snow and ice in some parts of Spain from time to time. (Northern parts in particular and also on high ground.)

My point still stands. "Just over the legal limit" sounds way too low to me!

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tread has zero relvance on ice

Had this on a wet road some years back in a peugeot 306-slid sideways across road and bounced off kerb on other side(was just exiting a roundabout at 20 mph)Luckily nothing was coming other way had no control at all-Really F...ing frightening-Turns out Diesel had been sloshed on the road-could this be a diesel spill on this bend of your's?

RichM said:

My point still stands. "Just over the legal limit" sounds way too low to me!

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your point your opion in your ourstanding field of excilance.......... legal limit is a limit set by experts..........(so called)

goonarmy said:

tread has zero relvance on ice

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here here, the groves are for water removal between tyre and road.

Oil and diesel are a killer for grip tho.... had a few off on the bike cause of it.