Winter driving

[mark40]

Has anyone put weight in the back bed for snow/winter driving season? Although we have the benefit of symetrical AWD there is more weight over the front axle and not much over the rear. Any thoughts?

[mikeeitup]

Didn't even think about it but let's put it this way. My town got 27+ inches and I have All Terrains. I was out before, during and after the storm and NEVER had an issue with getting anywhere. Two snow DPW snowplows got stuck on my road and I did not. I LOVE my baja and don't really think I needs weight in the back. Just get GOOD TIRES.
Mike

[Guacamole]

I was too lazy to clean out the 10in of snow out of the bed & what a difference going over the poorly-plowed backroads! I feel like there's much better traction in the slush & ice. My performance & MPG are probably suffering from the 500+lbs of dead weight in the back though.

[Acro2pilot]

I had a bed full and it helped, the truck performed amazingly well in the DC blizzard!

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[jdlmodelt]

I had to drive out to a job site for support on a weekend before plowing. about 1.5 feet of heavy snow. I was a little bit nervous, Baja was sliding and spinning a bit in the heavy snow, however, it did get me there and back.

[mark40]

Thanks for the replies....come to think of it I normally don't clean out the bed when it snows (my Baja is not garaged)
So I looked up some info, says snow can weigh bet. 5.2 for light/fluffy & 12.5 wet/heavy
The bed is (approx.) 13.79 cubic feet

So roughly 71lbs w/light fluffy snow and 172lbs w/heavier snow.

Of course you could have more or less snow in the bed than the 13.79 cu ft but at least its a general idea of what to expect.

[jseabolt]

I was wondering if adding weight to the bed would do anything.

The other day I had two 50 lb bags of chicken feed in the bed and it seemed to make it up my steep snow covered driveway somewhat easier.

One idea I thought of was to fill several trash bags of water (half full so they could be tied in a knot) in the bed then when the snow is gone, poke a hole in them to drain them. I'm talking about the thick 55 gallon drum liners.

I read anywhere from 600 to 800 lbs is the payload capacity. So at 8 lbs per US gallon that would be 75 to 100 gallons.

We got about 9" of snow a couple of weeks ago and then a few days later it started raining. So on that day my driveway was quite slushy. I made it up my driveway but my Baja was starting to fishtail a bit around this curve.

I found driving on hard packed snow to be much easier than slush.

[Guacamole]

Found this on Subaruoutback.org, I need to get me one of these!

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EDIT: It's also on Nasioc: http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=825828