Spinning along in my automobile...

 

          You have to understand that my experience with driving on wet surfaces has been limited mostly to driving away from the automated car wash. I lived in Southern California all my life until we moved to Ohio this fall and it just doesn’t rain much in SoCal.

          It is especially dry in the desert, where I lived for 10 years, but you could have figured that out for yourself.

          Amazingly, it turns out that things are wetter in northeastern Ohio, where I live now. It rains in the summer and snows in the winter, my neighbors tell me. The snow, I am informed, leads to ice on the ground and ice is hard to drive on.

          I hit a patch of ice once when I was driving down the side of a mountain a couple of decades ago. The car slewed left and caught the dirt in the median. The car’s rear end kicked back around and I went rushing down backwards. I got far enough down the mountain that the ice gave way to the pavement and I was able to slowdown and get turned around safely.

          I understand the problems with ice now.

          But I was a little unprepared three weeks ago when I had a hard time driving the Mustang up a hill during a rain event (we don’t say storms anymore, do we?) near my home in Ohio.

          I was halted at a signal light and waiting to turn left, facing downhill. The rain was at a moderate rate. When the light turned green, I let the car coast for a bit and dropped the transmission into second gear before turning left and attempting to drive up the next street.

          By coasting and then rolling off in second gear, I was eliminating the possibility that excess torque might cause wheel spin, right?

          No I wasn’t. The tires spun and the car kicked softly right when I tried to accelerate gently. I corrected the drift as I shifted to third gear. ‘There shouldn’t be any torque at all in third gear,’ I figured.

Wrong again. The tires spun and the Mustang drifted sideways again. I corrected the steering again and shifted again.

          Finally, now in fourth gear, I had eliminated the side-slide issue and was trudging up the hill at a sedate 15 miles per hour, despite some minor tire spin.

          That happened in October. January should be really interesting. Interesting, that is, for my wife’s car. The Mustang will live in the garage from the time the first flake of snow falls until I am convinced we are snow-free. I want to avoid getting road salt on the Mustang.

          I mean, come on. It’s the Mustang.

 

          Thanks for reading.