MY ICE DRIVING TIPS
Following on from your advice in LRM on driving your Land Rover safely in winter, I’d just like to add a comment having done a really good skidpan training course at Castle Combe.
Interestingly, the first thing they tell you to do in any situation where there is, or is likely to be a skid, is to stand on the clutch. This frees the driven wheels, which are no longer affected by the engine, so they cannot give drive or engine braking. This frees the driver to supply braking inputs as and when needed, which is what you are taught to do to pass the emergency stop part of the driving test. You do not floor the clutch just to stop the engine from stalling!
This winter I was in the Yorkshire Dales over Christmas and we had two days of snow and ice. I was driving our Discovery Td5 automatic. It was pleasant to pass the drivers in their two-wheel drives (and some in four-wheel drives) who feared steep, icy descents to a sharpish bend followed by a fairly steep climb. The Td5 never faltered, I never used HDC or even low range. I have BF Goodrich All-terrains and traction control surprisingly never came on. But I found myself being a bit caught out on the final evening, which was where I wanted to stamp on the nonexistent clutch! Ahhh...
I was so busy correcting and recorrecting skids that I had to ask my wife to put the gears into neutral as my hands were too busy! Once she did that control came back immediately. ABS was next to useless on ice; it was just a question of braking until control was lost then lifting off the brake, regaining steering control and steering out of trouble.
So, advice to readers when driving in snow and ice: yes you do still have to pump the brakes in an Abs-equipped car. In a manual keep the clutch depressed until control is completely retained and, in an automatic, be prepared to shove it into neutral if you need to brake through a bend or two.
My Disco 1 300Tdi Anniversary model (manual) is used for what it was intended – namely to tow my huge box trailer from our home in Dorset to our new house in the Black Mountains in France, a 550-mile journey from Le Havre and 600 metres up.
We had the house built as a shell and, over many journeys, took everything that went into the house from the UK. This included the kitchen, two bathrooms, three bedrooms and a large lounge diner. Also a pergola and many specialised slabs for the garden, 47 fruit trees, a 3x6 metre aluminium shed, and so on.
Over the countless trips this vehicle performed perfectly, and also economically. I have fitted some mods, including heavy-duty rear springs and original rears placed on the front, GAZ shocks and a sports exhaust.
Our village is sometimes cut off by snow, so a Land Rover really is the only thing to use. Turning a trailer in a quite confined area in snow is not an easy task. Once I actually drove it, with the trailer, into a neighbouring field with at least 12 inches of virgin snow on it, in order to be able to turn around and drive off my land.
I have recently added to my fleet a 1999 manual Disco V8, which I will convert to run on LPG. I agree with everyone who says start saving early Discos now. I think they are absolutely brilliant and the early ones are so robust and easy to work on. All of mine have done at least 150,000 miles and never let me down on the road.
All the very, very best and keep up the good work. John Hammond France