Just curious how well they handle with all season radials. I can't remeber if they get stuck alot or not and fishtale easily...

ahhhhhhhhhhh... the memories . Back in 1999, I moved to canada with my mom, took a 82 300SD, wow... With all season tires, we thought we were good. Boy were we wrong. It fishtailed, it got stuck, and first time being on snow didn't help much either. I'm guessing if you've had some experience that it should be fine.

__________________
Jason

00 Subaru Legacy (fun wagon)
96 Nissan Sentra (disavowed)
82 300SD (garage queen, will run again hopefully)
87 300DT (Gone: 10/15/2010)

If your familar with driving in snow and you put a couple of sand bags in the trunk its not all that bad.

I have driven Mercedes diesels in and around Washington, DC and Northern VA for 20 Plus years and I have never had a problem in snow. Though 2- 50 pound bags of sand (one on each side) from home depot in the trunk make it better, the cars do great without them.

On ice? Now that's another issue. Sand still helps as you can spread it on the ice.

__________________
N. Hodges
1994 S350
1987 300 SDL (for sale)

I put sand bags in the 300CD, and it does well on the snow and ice, as long as I am not on a hill...

I live in Montreal, Canada and I had an '83 300SD (126 Body). This car was horrible in either ice and snow, but especially ice. Even with brand new Snow Tires on all four wheels.

My current car is a '95 E300 Diesel. Its traction in snow and ice is much better then my '83 300SD ever was, but it still does not come close to any Front wheel drive car. Even one with only 4 season tires.

Having said that, even in Montreal, it does not snow every day, and when it does the snow is usually promptly cleared by the city, and salt/sand is applied to the roads to melt the ice, and increase traction so its not as bad as it sounds.

The '83 300 SD was my favorite Mercedes by far.

Phil

__________________
'95 E300 Diesel, 264,000 Miles. [Sold it]

No big Benz is great in snow and ice. I would say "adequate", which of course means be extra carefull. The antilock brakes will help, but you need to be careful with the accelerator -- when the turbo kicks in, the rear tires will spin for sure.

My best car in snow is the 280, probably because that big V8 has a "slow" accererator linkage, you have to put your foot into it to get a big blast of power. The worst by far was the Volvo, but I think that was the tires (I got 60,00 miles out of them, and really only replaced them then because one was getting lumpy, they still had lots of tread -- must have been as hard as rocks!) It would spin on wet pavement pretty easily, and snow as impossible.

The TE goes fine on Firestone LH30 Affinities, so does the 300D, but the later is squirrely on snow and ice.

Peter

__________________
1972 220D ?? miles
1988 300E 200,012
1987 300D Turbo killed 9/25/07, 275,000 miles
1985 Volvo 740 GLE Turobodiesel 218,000
1972 280 SE 4.5 165, 000 - It runs!

I agree with Peter. The best thing you can say about the SD is "adequate". However, this can quicky deteriorate to "poor" if you are not a good driver with a rear wheel drive vehicle. The back end of the 126 can come around in a big hurry on snow and ice, especially if you get into boost like a fool, and you had better know what to do about it when it does.

You should absolutely never operate the 126 above 2000 rpm on snow or ice.

How well do you think the W140 S-Class models faired with ASR? Looks like mercedes will resolve this now with 4 Matic available on the W220 S class.

__________________
Jason

00 Subaru Legacy (fun wagon)
96 Nissan Sentra (disavowed)
82 300SD (garage queen, will run again hopefully)
87 300DT (Gone: 10/15/2010)

It depends on the driver and their experience.
Use as narrow a tire as possible when driving in snow...
Up sized tires are the greatest problem with any car..

__________________

79 240D my current toy
42 years a Diesel addict

240D sold
250SE sold
220D sold
280C sold
280S sold
300D (2) sold
300CD sold
300DT sold
300SD sold
380SL sold

I generally agree with Peter and Brian, except I'm a little bit more optimistic. I've had very good luck with my 82 SD in the snow, but I take it pretty seriously. My dad had me master controlled fishtale turning in deep snow, the clutch on his 74 MGB, and parallel parking the 71 Ford LTD station wagon before I got my license. I've driven it with older all seasons right into the thick of a storm of heavy wet snow up to central NH. There were 4WD off I-91 all the way up. I kept it at 50mph and I was fine. Where I almost got stuck was where I had to climb a steep hill without a running start. There, the car should have had snows. So, I think it depends on your local conditions of snow, road clearing and your tolerance for risk

This is absolutely true. The growth of tire width to levels that are ridiculous results in the contact patch getting quite large for the weight that is on that patch. Therefore, the psi loading on the patch is down. This will result in the patch giving up the grip far sooner than a narrower and smaller tire with higher psi loading. Unfortunately, it is not a practical solution because you probably would need a second set of tires that are three sizes smaller than the ones you currently have on the vehicle. The handling characteristics on dry pavement will be quite different with these smaller tires and the tire wear will be greatly accelerated.