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Reinventing the wheel

Posted: February 2nd, 2018, 12:53 pm
by bungeejumper
At first sight, there's nothing very impossible-sounding about this story. Man is caught driving a Peugeot without a tyre on the offside front wheel. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-sout ... s-42917101

But what I want to know is how you could get any traction at all in a front wheel drive car if one of the two driving wheels/tyres was missing. Wouldn't the diff just spin uselessly? I don't think this 17 year old car would have had any traction control to turn off?

BJ

Re: Reinventing the wheel

Posted: February 2nd, 2018, 1:15 pm
by ReformedCharacter
bungeejumper wrote:At first sight, there's nothing very impossible-sounding about this story. Man is caught driving a Peugeot without a tyre on the offside front wheel. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-sout ... s-42917101

But what I want to know is how you could get any traction at all in a front wheel drive car if one of the two driving wheels/tyres was missing. Wouldn't the diff just spin uselessly? I don't think this 17 year old car would have had any traction control to turn off?

BJ

Limited slip differential? I don't think the handling would have been good :)

RC

Re: Reinventing the wheel

Posted: February 2nd, 2018, 1:43 pm
by killergorilla
Brings back wonky memories of the 90's. I had a blow out in a mini on a tight country road. Nowhere to stop and change the wheel safely. In the end we had a mate hanging out of the passenger door like an outrigger to pull the weight over so we could drive on three wheels until we found a safe place to stop. About 2 miles at 10-15mph. Thankfully we didn't meet anything coming the other way.
I don't think the diff would be a problem unless the car was leaning heavily on the tyreless wheel. If the other wheel has some traction it should be able to limp along at low speed well enough.
Madness though. But I guess if you're driving a wreck without insurance you probably don't have RAC cover.
KG