My wife arrived home after driving her 98 XC in the first snow of the year in our area. She was very upset about the way her car handled on the slick roads. What she described was an intermittent tendency for the car to weave from side to side in an unpredictable way. This would happen even at 10-15 mph while coasting on a level part of the road. I drove the car myself and did find a noticable tendency to weave at times. You don't feel the steering wheel move, the car just seems to wander. This happened with the TRACS feature both on and off. This is the third winter we've had the car and we've never experienced this weird problem before. Does anyone out there know of anything in the all wheel drive system which could set up some kind of side to side oscillations? My warranty is almost up and the car goes in this Friday any help or suggestions will be much appreciated. Thanks!

Dunlop D60A2 has a pretty, ummmm, supple sidewall compared to D40M2 or SP8000 tire. Even Michelin MXV4 is a better tire than the D60A2 (although I might admit the D60A2 rides somewhat smoother than the Michelin).

This isn't going to help you unless you have the opportunity to change tires...

BTW, we like Dunlop SP9000 on our Audi quattro...no problem moving on ice or in snow up until the car high sides....snow buildup under the car just lifts the car up, somewhere around 12" of snow.

Mike,

Big piece of information is missing... what exactly was the condition of the road?

I ask this because the stock Continental tires on our cars have always exhibited a tendancy to 'squirm' on grooved pavement. As these tires wear at the shoulders (normal for 50,000 miles) this behavior becomes more pronounced.

Also check tire pressures, on dry pavement you can notice more of this squirm if one of the tires is 3 - 5 pounds low on pressure. This seems to create a 'teeter/totter' affect in the balance of the vehicle. I have fiddled a bit with the pressures but found that the mfr recommended higher pressure gives significantly better handling but at a cost of additional harshness and more tire noise.

Going to try a set of Michelins next spring when I take off the snow tires and rims. Several posts here have indicated that they ride a little better than the Continentals and may be quieter as well.

Good luck

Rob,

Thanks for the input. Here are some more details: The car has new Dunlop D60A2 tires. The car was just aligned and drives perfectly on dry pavement.

The weaving problem is most pronounced when driving on hard packed snow.

I spoke with my dealer this morning and they had not heard of this problem.

I will try your suggestion of increasing the tire pressure and see what happens.

A cross wind may cause side to side movement in snow covered road because there aren't that much traction from your tires to begin with. Are you using snow tires (I don't know much about Dunlop...)? I'm and I don't have the problem you described. I'd rather in a FWD with 4 snow tires than in AWD with all season tires. I don't understand why people would buy AWD but not snow tires.

Mike,

I think I know the feeling you are describing, but I'm not sure I know the cause. I experienced something similar while driving my 850 from NJ to MO during a New-Years eve blizzard in 1998. The road conditions were awful, with hard-packed snow in the lanes, and large ridges of loose snow (6+ inches high) between the lanes and between the tire tracks.

The car felt like it was drifting / sliding from side to side at any speed over 10mph, without the steering wheel moving. It was very disconcerting, as I recall, since the net effect was that the steering response seemed slow, and unable to correct the side-to-side motion.

At the time, I attributed the problem to the tires I had on the car. They were Michellin Pilot XGT Z4's. An excellent performance tire, but very bad winter tire.

I now have Michellin Pilot Alpine snowtires on the car, and have not experienced the same feeling yet this winter. (I love these tires in the snow!)

The only other thing which could have had some effect was, as I recall, the fact that the entire spring / shock absorber assembly had become jammed with snow, which in turn had frozen, so the car had no shock absorbing capacity at all. Actually damaged the engine mount from the pounding.

Rob;

Good tires those Hakkapelliitas, aren't they? Last year, a tire shop convinced me that Toyo snow tires were of a better design when it came the time to upgrade my Hakkas on my 2nd car. I decided to try a pair for a front wheel drive. Big mistake! I miss my Hakkas terribly. Thank God I have four of them on the other car.

This happens to me on bridges with metal grading, on my stock tires (which have been recently rotated). It sorta drifts back and forth seems like its on ice, and the 89hp, 3banger, 1 1/2, wheel drive Geo Metro in front of me is handling fine. Then I started to wonder if this is going to happen to me in the snow.

Nick,

We have a lot of the grated bridge decks here in the Northwest. A trick I learned in my wasted youth was to cross the bridge at a slight angle within my lane. If the bridge was long, I changed my angle from one side and then back to the other. This is performed in a very smooth motion! Also, leave pleanty of interval. ABS or not, stopping distances are probably twice normal.

I have witnessed numerous cars nearly spin out when their drive wheels lost traction and the vehicle took on the attitude of an out-of-control dragster... that is in the dry! Wet surfaces are even more entertaining.

This method was brought to my attention by a more experienced riding companion as I picked myself up from a motorcycle spill on one of those grated decks.

The Geo driver probably felt a similar sensation but to a lesser degree as those tires are much narrower... less contact surface to be affected?