164 Snow Day

[Richard Welty <rwelty@domain.elided>]

the 164 was an opportunistic late summer purchase, after a different plan
for a transportation upgrade was trashed by circumstances beyond my
control. when jan ben advertised his 1991 164 base model (w/automatic) at a
lowish price i decided to go for it, as i had no idea what to do about a 4
season car with winter approaching.

i spent some time fiddling to come up with adequate winter tires. the car
came with 4 falkens on alloys and 4 steel wheels with 3 all season
firestones and a micheline MXV 4 mounted. i'd considered gambling on a
winter on the all seasons, but first one and then another lightly treaded
firestone decided not to hold air, and i decided not to shovel good money
after bad by paying to fix questionable tires.

i had 2 old pirelli winter 190s in a discontinued tread pattern and an
oddball size (185/70R15); i got these mounted in place of the two really
bad firestones and put them on the back. (in 2 good/2 bad tire situations
in the winter, i always put the best tires on the back so the rear end will
stay behind me in a crisis. front drivers will swap ends quickly if the
only good tires are on the front when you hit the brakes going downhill
when the traction is bad.)

last week, i put two Sempret (damn, i can't remember how to spell it)
ice-grips on the front, in the OE size of 195/65R15. the car has been
driving well since, but tonight was the first really miserable snow day
since i got the tires into place.

as an old line saab driver (previous owner of a 1973 Saab 99 4 door, 1978
Saab 99 5 door, and 1979 Saab 900 turbo 5 door), i give the 164 two
enthusiastic thumbs up as a snow car (when properly shod, of course.) works
great, no fear, predictable, i can put it where i want, and blow past all
the frightened rabbits i was sharing the road with (well, the most
frightened one was a passat, not a rabbit, but even so, it was still a vw
product.)

my wife admitted to being suitably impressed -- this was after she told me
i was making her nuaseous and after she told me i was crazy. this was key
-- i now trust this car/tire setup in snow well enoguh that i'm willing to
drive agressively at my decision-making speed (make a decision, execute,
make another decision, execute, ...)

richard
--
Richard Welty                                         rwelty@domain.elided
Averill Park Networking                                         518-573-7592
              Unix, Linux, IP Network Engineering, Security
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