Thursday, December 24, 2020

Liquid tire chain despensers came on some 1969 Chevy vehicles from the factory to help handle better in the snow (It was quickly discontinued due to lack of sales)

 


4 comments:

  1. What’ll they think of next?

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  2. Pictured is a '69 Camaro. I owned one. Didn't know about the tire option. They were definitely squirrelly in the snow. I wiped out and hit a pole one winter.

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  3. I actually remember State Farm Insurance handing out small aerosol cans of a spray-on abrasive for this purpose (shovels be damned). They wanted you to spin the tires a bit to warm them up and then spray this on the tread. I think it actually glued particles to the tire. Cannot for the life of me remembering that it worked, traction-wise.

    As a 25 year Rural Mail Carrier in MI's Upper Peninsula I always had no 4WD or AWD vehicles and did not have too many problems. I carried 2 pieces of expanded metal maybe about 10" X 36" (not the flat expanded metal, but the stuff that was raised or angled). Usually if you could wedge those under the drive wheels, maybe after a bit of shovel work, you could get yourself unstuck easily, assuming you did not stupidly spin your tires on them. The good part was, the rustier they got, the more traction they provided. Saved me a towtruck call or a lot of digging many a time, usually when I tried to provide deliver to an unshoveled mailbox. Anyone living in serious snow country knows that if you are going to spin your tires, you are likely not really going anywhere. Modern snow tires are mostly pretty good, and rely on a very soft compound bolstered by hundreds or thousands of tiny cuts in the tire which open up and provide hundreds or thousands of biting edges.

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