Got my Baja stuck in the snow yesterday!

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jseabolt
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Got my Baja stuck in the snow yesterday!

Post by jseabolt »

I bought this car new 16 years ago and not once have I ever got stuck in the snow. Until now. I've even done doughnuts out in the back yard behind my garage and never got stuck. But that snow was frozen solid.

This snowstorm we got hit with in the southeast was particularly nasty. It was one of those slushy, slightly above freezing type of snows.

After I got off work Sunday morning, we had about 6" of snow on the roads. I made it up my driveway (which has a slight incline) but by Sunday afternoon after I woke up, we had one foot of snow. I even made it home OK and the city had barely scraped the roads.

A couple of hours before leaving for work, I decided to see if I could back away from my garage. I made it so far until I ran off the driveway and it was all she wrote.

I could swear I've driven in snow up to the bumper with no issues but because this snow was so wet, it seemed the car's bumper was pushing it like a snowplow which just packed it up against the bumper(s).

I know some of you guys are going to laugh at this but these are Michelin WeatherTron, all season something or other tires I got from Sears back in December 2007. These were the same tires when I was doing doughnuts in the back yard back in 2008.

The tires now have probably half their tread life. I have a bunch of classic cars I drive in the summer so the Baja usually get's blocked in the corner of my garage and doesn't get driven from April to November. That's why it has only 81,000 miles on it.

I know this is probably not a scientific test but whenever I test the softness of a tire, I use the fingernail test. If it feels soft like a new tire, then it's probably OK.

The tires do perfectly fine even on wet roads. I did have some tires on my Fiat Spider that were 15 years old and the rubber became so hard, the back end would loose traction on wet roads. Even though it's a front engine/rear wheel drive car with a lightweight rear end. So I replaced them.

I had a neighbor I work with give me a lift to work yesterday. While going to work I saw two other Bajas abandoned in the snow! So maybe it was not just my car or tires.

The question is, if I had replaced these tires with all seasons before this snow, would they have done any better in this wet 1 foot snow or would the car have gotten stuck regardless? My guess is it's not the tires but the fact the snow was getting compacted against the bumper preventing the car from moving.

Is it worth getting snow tires instead of all seasons and run them year round? I could care less how many miles I get out of a set. Even if it was 5000 miles.

My idea was to mount some snow tires but if I drove the car in the summer, would they be dangerous on wet roads? I've never owned a set of snow tires before.

As far as getting my Baja out of the snow drift, I called Dad and asked him to bring his tractor up. He shows up in his Ford F-150 instead so before hooking a tow rope to it, I decided to see if I could pull myself out. I managed to get unstuck but when I pulled in behind the house where the snow seemed a little bit deeper, I got stuck again! So he had to pull me out.

This time I took off down the driveway, into a neighboring subdivision, and made it up my driveway. But decided due to the amount of snow to just drive his truck tonight. Even it tended to struggle a bit going up the hill, same as my Baja.

Do I just think Subarus can go anywhere but found out that's only if the snow is below the bumper.

Any thoughts on this?

I'm going to read the thread on "tires" but can anyone recommend a good snow tire?

I'll post of photo of my mishap.
http://s222.photobucket.com/albums/dd148/turbofiat/

2003 Subaru Baja
1968 Ford Fairlane 500
1980 Fiat 124 Spider (turbocharged)
1987 Yugo GV (1500 turbocharged)
1981 Trabant 601 S
1987 Citroen 2CV
1977 MGB
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jseabolt
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Re: Got my Baja stuck in the snow yesterday!

Post by jseabolt »

I didn't hit that tree. The snow did that damage.
IMG_20181210_140313139_HDR-1612x1209.jpg
IMG_20181210_140313139_HDR-1612x1209.jpg (595.99 KiB) Viewed 4125 times
http://s222.photobucket.com/albums/dd148/turbofiat/

2003 Subaru Baja
1968 Ford Fairlane 500
1980 Fiat 124 Spider (turbocharged)
1987 Yugo GV (1500 turbocharged)
1981 Trabant 601 S
1987 Citroen 2CV
1977 MGB
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FlyByNite
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Re: Got my Baja stuck in the snow yesterday!

Post by FlyByNite »

Carry a snow shovel with you. When you feel the front end lifting up from snow under it, back up a few feet and shovel away the pile the car has snowplowed under it. Then continue on until the front end lifts again, then repeat. I used to do this all the time in deep snow with my Brat.
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2003 226,802 miles so far.

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kamesama980
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Re: Got my Baja stuck in the snow yesterday!

Post by kamesama980 »

I've been stuck twice, both in my own yard. once was going through a shallow ditch at the wrong angle the other was in the rain and didn't realize I drove into a low spot.

yes, different tires would help, yes snow tires would help a lot. There are two things that you can't get around though: a wall (wadded up wet snow in front of the bumper) and taking weight off the tires (when I hit the low spot, the tires pushed down into the dirt and the body rested on the ground)

I can say absolutely that snow tires help in the snow, just remember that like all-seasons there is a spectrum of quality and function. Furthermore, there's a difference between ice-tires, snow tires, and winter tires. Last year over xmas, we drove my wife's snow-tired prius to visit family and while there, I ended up driving my mom's all-season-tired prius. I knew there was a difference but I'd never driven identical cars in the same snow back to back like that. it was a huge difference (but also true SNOW tires vs half-worn all-seasons). On the other hand, a cheapo or worn winter tire might well be trumped by a good all season in the snow.

Snow tires in the summer: the problem isn't that they are going to slide in the rain but that the rubber is so soft it just breaks off instead of gripping when it's warm. In the rain, you're probably not much worse off than with all-seasons. I don't do it and I don't suggest it but I've known several people that did leave snow tires on year round and the world didn't end when the temp got over 60f. Would you have gotten where you're going with snow tires? No idea but you would have gotten farther, that's for sure.

As for the other Subies abandoned in the snow, the problem is that most people are idiots and think AWD (or 4wd) is a substitute for decent tires and/or a brain. AWD doesn't help you stop and when turning, it can help or hinder depending on the situation. Honestly, from an ease of getting where you're going in heavy snow perspective, I'd take my wife's prius with her good snow tires over my baja with the crappy all-season/psuedo all-terrans. Subie AWD also (usually) has a crappy center (not so) Limited Slip Differential and a similar one in back. The viscous LSDs grip enough to say it's not an open diff but if you get a tire spinning, they don't do much. In my years driving in the snow (and I used to go out at night and enjoy it before it was plowed, for fun) I've seen more AWD/4wd vehicles in the ditch or just abandoned. followed by fwd. seldom rwd. FAR more than sales percentages would indicate. the obvious reason is that people buy into the marketing (or grampas horror stories) about the old RWD cars skittering around so they buy a new AWD/4wd with factory hard-as-a-rock all seasons thinking that'll take care of them. With good snow tires, a decent LSD, and me behind the wheel, my old RWD Cressida would run circles around 4wds all day long in the snow. (good ol nokian hakkapelittas gripped like a spooked cat's nails in your bare leg!). other story about the cold: one time going to school it black-iced everything overnight and I was stuck on a hill behind some fat chick in an eclipse because it was an automatic. Her v6/auto had enough torque at idle to break the (worn all-season) tires loose as soon as she let off the brake while I could slip the clutch of my S10 and thereby (in spite of the lack of weight in back) not break my tires loose.
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jseabolt
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Re: Got my Baja stuck in the snow yesterday!

Post by jseabolt »

Sorry for the delay. I had been dealing with this snow! Wednesday I got dad's tractor and used his mowing machine to knock down some of this snow.
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What a mess! It took me 2 hours to do this. My driveway is about 1000 feet long and has a slight incline.

I got to the bottom of the driveway and laid the mower on top of a 3 foot bank drift the city had created when they plowed the road. I was slinging snow and ice into the road, cars were stopping!

You would think packing this slushy crap down from 12" to about 2" of packed snow would make it worse but afterwards I was able to make it up and down my driveway fine.

So it must not be my tires but the depth and the type of snow it was. And possibly the friction created against the sides of the tires doesn't help.

I've always found it much easier to drive on dry powder than slush.

Coming down is a bit harder because the car wants to slide off the driveway but going up, I just stop at the bottom of my driveway and nail it and don't stop.

Yesterday it was around 50 degrees. This weekend we are supposed to get about 1/2" of rain to add insult to injury. I bet that's going to be mess!

QUESTION: I've always heard that deflating your tires gains traction. This makes no sense. I've heard that skinnier tires actually digs better in the snow. Looks to me it would be better off inflating the tires to the max (like 45 PSI) which would create less surface area and concentrate the weight to the center of the wheels.

One of my classic cars is a Citroen 2CV. The engine looks like a VW or Subaru engine cut in half. This car has real skinny tires. Although I wouldn't take mine off road or drive mine in the snow like these guys do because I paid so much money for the car, check out some of these guys and how well this car goes off road.

Ignore the first guy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8WpuPYnCCI&t=2s
Last edited by jseabolt on Fri Dec 14, 2018 8:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
http://s222.photobucket.com/albums/dd148/turbofiat/

2003 Subaru Baja
1968 Ford Fairlane 500
1980 Fiat 124 Spider (turbocharged)
1987 Yugo GV (1500 turbocharged)
1981 Trabant 601 S
1987 Citroen 2CV
1977 MGB
User avatar
jseabolt
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Re: Got my Baja stuck in the snow yesterday!

Post by jseabolt »

http://s222.photobucket.com/albums/dd148/turbofiat/

2003 Subaru Baja
1968 Ford Fairlane 500
1980 Fiat 124 Spider (turbocharged)
1987 Yugo GV (1500 turbocharged)
1981 Trabant 601 S
1987 Citroen 2CV
1977 MGB
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