Gritters Out and About

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I have little choice but to use narrow country roads for my 70 mile round trip to work and back.

I regularly get heavily grit blasted by oncoming gritting trucks, makes me cringe, if someone threw a pile of grit onto my car with the same force, ......blood would boil or blood would be spilt. :p
 
renault12ts said:
Why would that happen...if you kept a decent distance between you and the gritter. Rather that than be peppered.
Click to expand...

Get a grip...

The grit doesn’t take immediate effect. It’s not physically improving traction like a mountaineer wearing spiked boots, it’s chemically lowering the melting point below that of the ambient temperature. It’s a prevention and not a cure.

It will melt ice, but that process is drawn out. Basically a grain of salt lands, and with it being warmer than the ice it lands on, it melts the ice that’s immediately contacting the grain. That water then starts dissolving the salt, and so on, but it’s very localised. You’d have thousands of little holes in a sheet of ice. You grit before the ice forms so that the water melts the ice and becomes slightly salty, enough so that it never freezes at all.

Being behind a gritter isn’t going to give you better traction unless you were many miles behind it and didn’t get there for a few hours.

Queue sarcastic remark asking an pointless almost rhetorical question.
 
i-CONICA said:
Get a grip...

The grit doesn’t take immediate effect. It’s not physically improving traction like a mountaineer wearing spiked boots, it’s chemically lowering the melting point below that of the ambient temperature. It’s a prevention and not a cure.

It will melt ice, but that process is drawn out. Basically a grain of salt lands, and with it being warmer than the ice it lands on, it melts the ice that’s immediately contacting the grain. That water then starts dissolving the salt, and so on, but it’s very localised. You’d have thousands of little holes in a sheet of ice. You grit before the ice forms so that the water melts the ice and becomes slightly salty, enough so that it never freezes at all.

Being behind a gritter isn’t going to give you better traction unless you were many miles behind it and didn’t get there for a few hours.

Queue sarcastic remark asking an pointless almost rhetorical question.
Click to expand...

Yessss Mike!!!! :D

This is what I was thinking but no way I could have worded it as well as you.
Thank you thank you thank you :)
 
i-CONICA said:
Get a grip...

The grit doesn’t take immediate effect. It’s not physically improving traction like a mountaineer wearing spiked boots, it’s chemically lowering the melting point below that of the ambient temperature. It’s a prevention and not a cure.

It will melt ice, but that process is drawn out. Basically a grain of salt lands, and with it being warmer than the ice it lands on, it melts the ice that’s immediately contacting the grain. That water then starts dissolving the salt, and so on, but it’s very localised. You’d have thousands of little holes in a sheet of ice. You grit before the ice forms so that the water melts the ice and becomes slightly salty, enough so that it never freezes at all.

Being behind a gritter isn’t going to give you better traction unless you were many miles behind it and didn’t get there for a few hours.

Queue sarcastic remark asking an pointless almost rhetorical question.
Click to expand...

Mike, aka Jonny Ball. :thumb:
 
I normally SORN'd my 'best' car over winter, and will definitely do so from here on in because the one time I didn't SORN a car over winter it was my new Porsche. I really liked the car and decided to run it over winter, one Monday evening in December I decided to take it to my local Lotus gathering and bu**er me if I didn't get splatted by one gritter on the other side of road going but got splattered again coming back. The next day I inspected the car and there were dozens of stone chips on the front of the car. I can only conclude it must have been a large particle batch. I save myself the agro now and SORN over winter.
 
BIRMA said:
I normally SORN'd my 'best' car over winter, and will definitely do so from here on in because the one time I didn't SORN a car over winter it was my new Porsche. I really liked the car and decided to run it over winter, one Monday evening in December I decided to take it to my local Lotus gathering and bu**er me if I didn't get splatted by one gritter on the other side of road going but got splattered again coming back. The next day I inspected the car and there were dozens of stone chips on the front of the car. I can only conclude it must have been a large particle batch. I save myself the agro now and SORN over winter.
Click to expand...

Having just looked at the front of mine there’s loads of new stone chips too as I’d touched in all of them just last week :(
 
Codger49 said:
No, I had to wait until they turned off the autoroute, was about 30 miles or so.
Click to expand...
Did you have a car left by the end of it? :)
 
chrisk2010 said:
One got me Monday I came of the A120 heading for Witham as just as I hit the B road woosh a gritter wizzed round the corner covering the car.

Left feeling very salty i gave the car a decent pressure wash and plenty of shampoo the next day, I couldn't see any damage though unlike the SLK that passed me a few minutes later that hand a good knock on the bumper possibly from slipping in the icy weather fortunatly they were heading the same way as the gritter so won't have had to worry about stone chips.:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

I got caught like you,I know the road you were on you left the A120 roundabout on the B road to Witham you have a sharp left bend about 200 yards in,well I got caught on a B road between Clacton and the A120,it was 3 pm broad daylight and the weather forecast is that it will not freeze tonight here,the car got plastered with grit,at least it was short lived as the gritter was coming towards me,like you I will clean the car but down at the local hand car wash well worth the £6 this time of the year.
 
That corner was heavily flooded monday as well so had no choice but to sit there and cringe while the gritter did it's thing :(
 
i-CONICA said:
Get a grip...

The grit doesn’t take immediate effect. It’s not physically improving traction like a mountaineer wearing spiked boots, it’s chemically lowering the melting point below that of the ambient temperature. It’s a prevention and not a cure.

It will melt ice, but that process is drawn out. Basically a grain of salt lands, and with it being warmer than the ice it lands on, it melts the ice that’s immediately contacting the grain. That water then starts dissolving the salt, and so on, but it’s very localised. You’d have thousands of little holes in a sheet of ice. You grit before the ice forms so that the water melts the ice and becomes slightly salty, enough so that it never freezes at all.

Being behind a gritter isn’t going to give you better traction unless you were many miles behind it and didn’t get there for a few hours.

Queue sarcastic remark asking an pointless almost rhetorical question.
Click to expand...

You neeed the action of traffic on the gritted road to make it effective. So...catch a grip...you need it.
 
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