Polar Onslaught 2008: A Monster Review

The snow up here in the Seattle/Tacoma area is now pretty much gone. It is amazing how fast a foot of snow goes away when the temps get back into to the 40s. I’m still trying to figure out if I’m sad to see it go. Because like an Italian sports car, it is rather nice to look at, but after a while becomes annoying to maintain.

So, in keeping with the nice part of the snowfall, here are some links to other area bloggers who posted pictures of their respective locales.

Mr. Completely

The Mad Rocket Scientist

Anthony Pacheo: Hack Writer

Mike at Beer, Computers and Bikes

And even though he’s not really local, Rivrdog

Equipment reviews, minor bitching and Science! below the fold.

Once again, my research into hazardous weather traction tires paid off well. The Yokohama Geolandar AT/S tires I put on by 2WD F-150 nearly two years ago performed quite well, even after another 20K of daily driving. Drive with common sense and you’ll get where you’re going.

On an inspirational note, the tires I selected for Buddy the Jeep performed beyond expectations. But they are the best tires that I will never buy again.

Everywhere in the vicinity between Olympia and our nations border with Canada got at least eight inches of the white stuff. My locale got a ruler swallowing foot of it. And after the plows came through, there were two and three foot tall piles of it blocking the entrances to driveways and even some entire neighborhoods. Also, though there wasn’t much wind to speak of, we did get drifts in some places of over three feet.

None of this fazed Buddy. Spin once, grip and go was the order of the day. The chunky and self-cleaning tread pattern was just amazing.

When I got the lift, I wanted to go to a 32in six or eight ply E-rated tire. My favorite local tire shop had those in the linked pic on sale for $121 and change each, mounted and balanced. For those that have priced M/T tires any time recently, you know that this is a phenomenal price.

265/75-16 is the factory size for most GMC and Chevrolet ¾ and 1-ton trucks (and possibly Dodge as well), and sheer quantity manufacturing was what I counted as the reason why they were so inexpensive. I was told by my tire guy that they were brought in by one of the newer Korean brands and that they were trying to break into the off-road tire market with this tire. He put me in touch with a couple of his other customers who said great things about them.

And all that they said is true. The excellent tread pattern and rubber composition gave this tire very excellent traction through everything I could put it into: Mud, dirt and rocks in the Spring, Summer, and Fall and the white ground cover from this current “weather event”. Even sheet ice would not put these tires out of line if you kept your wits about you. And for an M/T tire, they weren’t even that loud on the interstate pavement.

I had to agree that this tire company had hit a home run with these dark donuts. Until I found out that these particular tires were made by the ChiComs and then imported by the Koreans.

I cursed under my breath, told my tire guy about them and kept on rolling. I’d paid for and put 5K on them by then and was pretty much stuck with them. I’ll just say that these are such good tires that I hope the Chinese army doesn’t put these on their trucks.

I’m going to set these aside for Winter Duty only after this season is over, and now I’m torn between getting another set of the Yokohamas AT/S tires or going all out and buying up a set of ProComp AT’s like Grimm had for daily-driver use. I’ve got a couple months to think on it. Hopefully, the time to reflect will do me well.

In the meantime, if you don’t want to buy ChiCom tires for your vehicle, stay away from the model name Terra Trooper. There is no brand name on the sidewall. In fact, be careful buying any of the Korean brands as I’ve been told that they all deal with the Chinese. Otherwise, if you don’t mind it, these rollers won’t turn you wrong.

Now, for Buddy’s review.

Not much to say other than he did very well. With almost exactly two feet of ground clearance at center, more than that at either end and excellent approach and departure angles, he crested everything I wanted to drive over and stayed headlights forward everywhere I went. My only real complaint is that, unlike the casual curbside demeanor displayed by the unmodified Cherokees, it is a damn competent ORV (thank you to the readers who suggested buying one). All of this is a kind way of saying that the front axle is very, very aggressive.

I wouldn’t call it a mistake to put extremely grabby traction tires on it and then take on the interstate without slowing/stopping to take it out of 4WD, but I wouldn’t call it a good thing either. You will find out that what it is like to have a pair of solid axles arguing about which one is in charge at 3.73 to 1.

Minor bitching point is the lack of weight in the rear. My recovery gear, one spare in the back and another on the roof wasn’t enough to hold the ass end down when we hit the packed ice washboards. I’ll be moving up the purchase and installation of the 32-gallon fuel tank. We’ll see how that works.

Oh, and I’m very glad I got the manual transmission instead of the automatic. Since the throttle is more an on/off switch than a potentiometer, a little squeeze to release the clutch helped on the sheet ice.

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This storm’s Idiot of the Week was: Subaru owners!

Previous Snow Idiot awards have been given to the owners of Ford Explorers and the drivers of BMW X-Series. This year saw heavy competition, but in the end, it was the Subaru owners my a mile.

I saw a handful hit the ditch shortly after passing me and I lost track of how many other Subs I counted ass and/or belly up along the roadways.

Here’s a tip: When there are no “Wheels that Grip” because of your choice of All Season radials instead of snow tires, your AWD stops being effective.

And because I’m a nice guy, here’s another tip: Don’t pass the guys with real 4WD vehicles. We generally have an idea about what we’re doing. We’re not driving slowly to piss you off.

Although I do have an exception to that last sentence: I did enjoy watching the Jeep with the teeny All-Season radials and Florida plates slide slowly sideways down a very slight grade of an unoccupied (except for us two) five-lane thoroughfare. I’d have described it as “swan-like” if I hadn’t seen a Suburban do the most graceful 55mph pirouette ever across four lanes of an icey interstate overpass right in front of me the evening before.

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Next Up: The dumbest thing I’ve heard about the lack of response to Seattle’s idiotic Mayoral Unit and his decision not to salt the city’s streets was (insert drum roll here)…

“Why don’t they put snow plows on front of the garbage trucks?”

With the streets as bad as they were, garbage service was shut off. My employer was getting early AM calls from the city telling us we weren’t allowed to go out for collection of residential solid waste. It got so bad that the situation has made the “First Five” minutes of most newscasts during the past few days.

Let me list just a few of the reasons why putting plows on the front of the collection trucks is a really horrible idea:

Accidents/Insurance: When the city hits your vehicle, the city’s insurance covers it. The same with my employer, a private corporation. The city has to be out. We don’t. Their insurance rates are much cheaper than ours and any increase is a justifiable payment from the taxpayer. Private industry loses money and will have to charge more, lose money or cut costs somewhere else.
Weight does not equal traction: Just because the truck weighs 35,000lbs, does not mean it will go anywhere in the snow, even with chains. It is all about weight distribution. Since the packer box is on the back, empty, and the engine and all the hydraulics are at the front, guess which end isn’t going to grip. Slap on 1500 to 2000 pounds of plow to the front and watch the fun begin.

Installation time: We have close to 200 trucks in our fleet. Even equipping just 25% of them would take days. Hell, it takes an hour to chain up all three axles, and that is only doing up the four outside wheels of the rear pair of axles.

Height: When decent quantities of snow come to rest on power lines, it has a tendency to make the lines sag. And at 11 to 13 feet tall, these trucks cannot make it under them when they sag. I’ve seen a truck have its tires melted and come to rest on its rims when a live power line was resting on top of the packer box.

Also, some of our trucks now run on CNG (as mandated by the City of Seattle). Guess where the USDOT approved “safe location” of the CNG tanks are? Yep, on the roof of the packer boxes. If there weren’t people and property involved in an explosion like that, I bet it’d be pretty.

Power Take Off systems: Ours are dedicated systems, mounted in front of the engines, and flush with the front bumper. Exactly how are we supposed to connect a plow blade to that?

Unions: To hold a contract with the City of Seattle, you need to be a union shop. They don’t even bother with you if you’re not. Our drivers are Teamsters, and they are some of the best Teamsters around, meaning that they don’t do anything they don’t want to do. Holy hell would be raised if they were informed that they were being put on plow duty. Oh, sure, a couple guys might go for it, either because they want the pay or they want the challenge. But that handful would not be an effective “plow-force”.

In an effort to be useful and think of an alternative solution, if I were the Mayor of Seattle, I would spend the money on plows that would fit on my Seattle City Light and Seattle Public Utilities vehicles; both the heavy vehicles and the larger light duty trucks.

For instance, Pierce County came through my street multiple times with a plow equipped Chevy 1-ton truck.

I would also buy large quantities of Road Salt!

I know that this hit the national airwaves but I would like to point out something that was not mentioned in any of the stories I saw. If I remember my high school Chemistry learnin’s well enough, Road Salt is not actually salt (aka: NaCl), but is actually Magnesium Chloride (aka: MaCl).

So no, using salt on the roads wouldn’t be “putting more salt into salt water”. And I’m sure that there would be some minuscule effects on the “eco-system” of Puget Sound, but if you click here you can read about actual scientists, and not politicians, stating that the sand the city uses is actually even worse than Road Salt.

With a little bit of actual scientific fact, common sense planning and a minimal amount of investment, Nickels could have doubled his fleet of available plows and maybe have not even needed them. But then again, he is deep inside the Global Warming Death Cult and most likely didn’t believe that a storm such as this could happen.

And that pretty much covers the Polar Onslaught of 2008.

We’ll see if early 2009 will bring a return of the powdery white stuff, and if it does, we’ll have more fun then.