Just came across this in my local paper.

My link

Bit of a poor show for a 4x4!

What tyres was it wearing though, no doubt OEM dunlops...

Why doesn't the scout come with M+S rated tyres at least?

i love the comment "one word....SKODA" like that makes any difference moron!

I would say after a point Depends highly on driver skills .!It's not always the car ...

Just came across this in my local paper.

My link

Bit of a poor show for a 4x4!

If all four corners are just as soggy/slipery no 4X4 will be able to cope, you need a tracked vehicle!!!.

Just came across this in my local paper.

My link

Bit of a poor show for a 4x4!

"Health and safety again".A bit of mud and someone is allowed to possibly die :'(

If all four corners are just as soggy/slipery no 4X4 will be able to cope,...

Very true!

Add to that road tyres and the weight of all the kit they have to carry! It means that the conditions under wheel only have to deteriorate a little for any vehicle to struggle.

Still I'll bet you the driver will have had some serious ribbing from other service crews!

Edited 10 March, 201115 yr by uncle bulgaria

I agree about the tyres. I notice all our local paramedic vehicles (Zafiras mainly - yikes!) have Michelin snow tyres now - I bet they would do better than the Dunlops. I can imagine it's a complete faff if changing to snow tyres means changing wheels as recommended. Some decent all season M+S tyres would make sense if the ambulance service needs the capability.

Assume the following:

No M+S tyres

No diff-lock

No low-ratio

No off-road techniques driver training

Throw in a wet'n'muddy footy pitch and guess what happens...

It's a shame to see a Scout in such a sorry state. You can see how heavily loaded it is by how low the rear wheel arches are. A Scout should still have managed on a muddy field with the right tyres and a competent driver though...

Assume the following:

No M+S tyres

No diff-lock

No low-ratio

No off-road techniques driver training

Throw in a wet'n'muddy footy pitch and guess what happens...

Low ratio doesn't really make much of a difference on a flat low traction surface, diff-lock won't do anything if both sides of the axle don't have grip.

Had this Scout had tyres more suited to offroad work there wouldn't have been a problem.

Annoyingly you can't get BFG All Terrains to fit on the standard Scout wheels. You have to change them for 16" wheels I believe.

No off-road techniques driver training

Yeah i know what you're saying - you wouldn't put a set of blue lights on someone's roof without training them in blue light driving.

But part of me thinks, some of the beauty of cars like the Scout, the Yeti, the BMW x5 etc. is you don't need training - they're so clever they'll do it themselves as you drive more or less normally. Drop a normal person into a 4x4 with 3 difflocks and it'll be stationary refusing to go any further on flat ground before you can say "transmission wind up". Modern Haldex is seriously good, take all the complex techniques out of the equation and let the computer deal with that.

They're all defeated without M+S tyres though. It's even funnier when an x5 passes an old land rover on a snowy uphill, because it's just so rare to see them on the right tyres, noone really believes they're as good as they are.

EDIT: sounds like i'm saying the x5 has haldex, >2004 xDrive is good but probably not quite as good as haldex.

Edited 10 March, 201115 yr by Mute

Yeah i know what you're saying - you wouldn't put a set of blue lights on someone's roof without training them in blue light driving.

There's a whole world of difference between the training that an emergency response driver receives and off-road training. They are trained to get from A to B through busy traffic as quickly as possible without causing another accident.

They're all defeated without M+S tyres though.

Most definately. Emergency response teams are switching to cars like the Scout, X5 etc not for their off-road capabilities but for their increased load carrying capacity without sacrificing too much speed. When they do try to take them off-road they are let down by the wrong tyres and don't know how to deal with it.

Any set up will always be a compromise. The winter tyres on our focus estate response cars aren't as settled when it's warmer or at speed compared to the normal summer tyres. It's safe enough, but you can feel a difference. Equally the winter michelins did mean in the cold/wet/snow the car became drivable again.

The biggest problem for our focus' is the amount of kit in the back of a front wheel drive car, the scout would get around this.

(we are hoping to get scouts up here, but focus estates are cheaper.....)

Being one of the Ambulance response drivers for the same service, not the person in the foto, let me explain things a bit better

Firstly we are trained in emergency driving upto Police response driver standard, which is a 2 weeks course

the scout is not a serious off road vehicle, more akin to rough tracks than up hill and down dale so no specific off road training is required, just a tad of common sense

they were purchased for the road holding and performance capabilities as well as the load lugging capacity, we carry the same amount of kit as an emergency ambulance except for a spinal board, which is all in the boot

they have standard tyres on which are mostly goodyear/dunlops, which dont have the shedding capabilities of m+s tyres so if the ground is muddy the tread will get and stay full of mud so they are unable to grip and the haldex system wont work if there is no grip on any corner

However, they were the only vehicle that kept the service going through the bad weather lasy year. The standard tyres work well in the snow, the only thing that defeated the scout on 'my shift' was 2 feet of virgin snow and that was partly down to the sump guard lifting the front of the car up on the snow.

The scout is a fantastic car so much so we bought one new last year soley based on the experience of using one at work

HTH

BTW our scout came with dunlop sports which most agree are rubbish in snow, so much so we got a full set of steelies shod with winters for the....er...winter

Edited 10 March, 201115 yr by uscouter

Really good bit of proper insight thanks uscouter. You can gas my wife anytime!

(I should say, as in gas and air...)

How have you found the winter tyres - I'm still thinking about it - for next year now...

Edited 10 March, 201115 yr by London Les

Should put these on them - they've got M+S plus Snowflake and are 'all season'.

lol people do make me laugh with comments at times!! Just to echo the above 4x4 does not mean you will not get stuck, standard road tyres in wet mud are useless.

They're all defeated without M+S tyres though. It's even funnier when an x5 passes an old land rover on a snowy uphill, because it's just so rare to see them on the right tyres, noone really believes they're as good as they are.

As an owner of a 1960s series Land rover who pulled lots of rear wheel drive cars up the hill out side my work, I did not see many x5s getting about easily in fact my bosses son could not even get his x5 out of the yard. This is due to incorrect low profile tyres and no low box. The x5 may be a good middle class child mover but it is certainly not a useful 4x4.

Edited 10 March, 201115 yr by seriesdriver

Really good bit of proper insight thanks uscouter. You can gas my wife anytime!

(I should say, as in gas and air...)

How have you found the winter tyres - I'm still thinking about it - for next year now...

unfortunately I only found out the dunlops were poor in the snow when we had the dollop before christmas, then i managed to source some steel wheels complete with winter tyres from flea bay. Since then, unfortunately, we have just had a light sprinkling of snow, nothing really to test them.

A mate at work has got some snowtrak3's on his astra estate van and run them through the bad snow and says they were fantastic

Should put these on them - they've got M+S plus Snowflake and are 'all season'.

only problem with 'all season' tyres, according to tyre tests/reviews on several tyre websites, is that they seem to be reguarded as "jack of all tyres and master of nothing"

wether this is true I dont know, but after considering using all seasons on the scout I decided to go down the route of full winter tyres

Please dont shoot me this is only my personal opinion

Edited 10 March, 201115 yr by uscouter

Reckon my Goodyear Wrangler AT/Rs would have helped. They're good in snow too.