Tuesday, December 23, 2008

hard driving and slow minivans

I'm back in the Bay Area and driving my mom's minivan for transportation as my own car is three states away. For about the last month, I've been driving my own car more aggressively than normal for about two basic reasons. The first is the tires. There's something about them that's less than satisfying and I've been trying to figure out how well they hold up, especially in cornering. As I have a front-wheel drive vehicle, the front tires are distinctly more worn than the rear tires, but the difference is more than I think should have developed. The second reasons is that for several weeks, I thought there was a strong chance that I would be selling my car so I might as well have some fun.

The minivan is functional and, um, functional. While there is a chance such a vehicle may grace some mythical driveway of my own, that day is a good ten years out. In the minivan, I find that I am almost always speeding in residential areas and in the slow lane on freeways. The surface street speeding is partly a function of generally higher speed limits in most of Victoria and the lack of familiarity with the minivan. The freeway slowness is mostly a lack of comfort with the van since my own car is much lower, smaller, and tighter handling but it's also because I'm on vacation and I'm just not in a rush right at the moment. And I can't seem to get far enough away from the steering wheel.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You should not notice a dramatic difference in the wear of your front tires as compared to the rears, even given fwd. Therefore, I suspect an allignment issue. Probably does not make sense to spend $$$ on alignment until you get new tires. For now, maybe just a tire rotation will do. Got a floor jack at the old shop? Go for it.