Did Some Snow-Rallying!
Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2009 9:14
But not in the MS6.
Since my teenage son is about a month from getting his license, I decided to take him out, find a parking lot, and get him practice recovering from skids in the Grand Cherokee (which will be his primary vehicle).
I have to say, several things impressed me about the GC.
1. It's a tough vehicle to get going sideways. We were on solid ice with snow cover and had to really gun it and turn the wheel to get into a good skid.
2. Recovering was easy. Not as good as the MS6, but still very good. The Goodyear Integritys that came on the Jeep were far better in this situation than I thought they would be. They're rated HORRIBLY on Tirerack.com, but no matter how hard I tried to toss it around, I was always able to recover the GC within a couple of seconds. And I tossed it HARD.
3. The ABS are noisy as hell in this thing. All kinds of rattling and scraping as we worked on skids and stopping and so on. Everything worked OK, but it sounded like it was falling apart. I'm sure part of that was the crappy tires, but it sounded like a brake heat shield was scraping, and things were creaking all over the place.
4. Even with the crappy all-seasons, starting on ice was flawless as long as we used a little caution and didn't gun it. The traction control works very well on startup. Not as well as the MS6 in turns, but very well on startup. No slippage that we could feel unless we got on it a little.
Overall, it gave me a good, warm-fuzzy feeling knowing the Jeep handles snow/ice so well, even on cow-dung tires like this. I can't imagine what it would be like if we put some Blizzaks on it.
Since my teenage son is about a month from getting his license, I decided to take him out, find a parking lot, and get him practice recovering from skids in the Grand Cherokee (which will be his primary vehicle).
I have to say, several things impressed me about the GC.
1. It's a tough vehicle to get going sideways. We were on solid ice with snow cover and had to really gun it and turn the wheel to get into a good skid.
2. Recovering was easy. Not as good as the MS6, but still very good. The Goodyear Integritys that came on the Jeep were far better in this situation than I thought they would be. They're rated HORRIBLY on Tirerack.com, but no matter how hard I tried to toss it around, I was always able to recover the GC within a couple of seconds. And I tossed it HARD.
3. The ABS are noisy as hell in this thing. All kinds of rattling and scraping as we worked on skids and stopping and so on. Everything worked OK, but it sounded like it was falling apart. I'm sure part of that was the crappy tires, but it sounded like a brake heat shield was scraping, and things were creaking all over the place.
4. Even with the crappy all-seasons, starting on ice was flawless as long as we used a little caution and didn't gun it. The traction control works very well on startup. Not as well as the MS6 in turns, but very well on startup. No slippage that we could feel unless we got on it a little.
Overall, it gave me a good, warm-fuzzy feeling knowing the Jeep handles snow/ice so well, even on cow-dung tires like this. I can't imagine what it would be like if we put some Blizzaks on it.
plus the tires that were on it are AMAZING and was shocked at how well they have done in this weather.
but then things get WAY outa hand haha