I need some advice from RL owners who have experienced icy and snowy road conditions. This is my first winter approaching w/ my 05 RL and have just had a very bad short drive on slick roads. The car was real squirrelly with slipping all over the road. It's really hard to describe, but it just felt like one overcorrection after another. The rear end just felt like it was starting to go and then it would want to go out the other way. You could feel the SHAWD system making adjustments, but it just felt like one spin out after another as I went down the road. Anyone following me had to see we wandering all over the road. The roads were really slick, but the Camry I was following was tracking straight and true right down the road in front of me while I'm sliding all over the road. I don't think the tires are the issue because I just replaced two and the other two have lots of tread. Needless to say, I was extremely disappointed in the drive. I'm hopeful that it will be better in snow, but am wondering if something is wrong. Anyone have any advice or similar experiences?

 

Do you have summer or all-season tires, and how many miles on them?

 

It sounds like you have summer tires on your car. I live in CT and this will be my first winter testing the RL out. I drove my merecedes E500 4matic with summer tires and it was terrible. I put a set of bridgestone winter tires and it made all the difference. It's funny that tires for the merecedes are actually cheaper than the Acura.
One other side note are you sure your all wheel drive is functioning properly?

 

I had the same experience with the OEM Michelin tires a few weeks after I bought my RL. We had a spring snow storm and the car was all over the road. Since it was April, I didn't buy any snow tires until the following winter. It is a night and day difference with snow tires.

Get snow tires or a good brand of all season tires and you will see what a difference it makes.

 

There could be several factors here from both the driver and car, some of which may apply to your situation.

Was the VSA on or off? VSA on should prevent spinning tires and tuck the tail back in should it start to slide out.

What tires are on the car (regardless of tread depth, some will not perform on icey roads).

How were you throttling? ANY car does require some level of driving finesse on slick, icey, snow covered roads.

SHAWD does offer vast benefits in these conditions. But it cannot completely mask driving style or loss of traction. If there is little or no traction, a car can simply slide sidways regardless of the driver input and drive system response. No drive system is absolute not should it be driven with those expectations. It is intended to aide the driver, not replace the driver input.

The Camry may have done better with better tires or more appropriate driving technique. If those primary attributes were equal on both cars, the RL would be superior in same conditions.

 

The OEM Michellin tires are the worst!!! i don't know how many threads i've read through will people complaining about them. i'm not sure what Acura has on the current model RLs but i hope its not the same tire.

But all the advice mentioned here thus far would be the reasonable path to follow for fixing your problems.
I'm always happy to see the wealth of knowledge and compassion on this forum.

 

I should have given more info in the original post. The tires are the OEM Michelins, two new tires on front, two w/ less than 10k on the back. I've driven in snow covered roads all my life (35+years) so that's nothing new to me. I was going at a steady pace, 35-45mph, not accelerating so I don't think driving style was a factor.

I will confirm that the VSA was engaged tonight when I head home. Help me here. If I engage it does the VSA indicator light up or is it off when the indicator lights? I haven't really changed any of the settings, but it might have gotten shut off by mistake.

I can understand that snow tires would help, but the way the car was acting was worse than any rear wheel drive car that I've driven, and I've driven many on snow and ice. It's was just so disapointing to think an AWD car would handle that poorly on a bit of slippery roads. I really don't think summer performance tires could be any worse than what I experienced.

I'll check the VSA and follow up. I just hope that there isn't a problem w/ the SH-AWD.

 

It sounds more and more like your VSA was off..which would explain the fishtailing. Before your drive your vehicle play with your VSA settings and you should see the indicator come on and off on your display.
According to the owners manual :

VSA is turned on every time you
start the engine, even if you turned it
off the last time you drove the
vehicle.
Driving with varying tire or wheel
sizes may cause the VSA to
malfunction. When replacing tires,
make sure they are of the same size
and type as your original tires (see
page ).
Deactivate the VSA system if you
need to drive with the compact spare
tire installed (see page ).
If you install winter tires, make sure
they are the same size as those that
were originally supplied with your
vehicle. Exercise the same caution
during winter driving as you would if
your vehicle was not equipped with
VSA.
This switch is at the right side of the
left vent. Press it to turn VSA on and
off.

Vehicle Stability Assist (VSA) System

 

Tires are EVERYTHING on snow and or ice, the right tires make all the difference in the world . I know from actual experience, in Wis for over 30 years of driving, road tests in Car Mags, such as Porsche awd with summer tires in snow and then winter tires, and tire reviews.

 

Yup. Tires are everything and those OEM Michelins aren't the best. Especially if you're in an '05 with original tires, those things must be pretty worn by now.

 

it is all about the tires!
SH-AWD FTW

 

Change your tires. End of story. Even the Toyo Proxes 4 I switched to at 900 miles of ownership were better in the snow. With GOOD all-season tires, and even better, with snow tires, the RL is unstoppable. Shawn, it's "SH-AWD FTMFW! ".

I did OK on my new Eagle F1s (now 5k miles on them!) on ice and light snow today, no slips at all and decent braking. Fscing Cleveland snow.

 

What do you think? Pirelli Winter 210 SnowSport, or Bridgestone Blizzaks?

 

Forget snow tires, unless you live in an area with very badly maintained roads, most ultra high performance all season tires will do very well, plus have summer performance second only to ultra high performance summer tires. The reason I bought the RL was specifically to avoid using snow tires in the first place (I had fabulous manual tranny TL)! The MXM4 is a poor excuse for a high performance tire and it sucks in the snow. My Yokohama S4 do splendidly, but goodyear F1 all season, Bridgstone RE960AS and others are also very good choices. Check tire rack: Pay attention to the surveys, particularly for the snow performance.

http://www.tirerack.com/tires/Compar...S&startIndex=0

 

I live in an area with excellent roads and I highly recommend snow tires, if you want to experience the full benefit of SHAWD.
My Audi quattro had all season Hakkas and they worked fine also, but I ended up getting snows for the Audi and that also made a huge difference. To each his own.

 

Snow tires are just a good excuse to get summer rims!

+1 for picking up a set of snow tires for your stockies & saving up for summer rims.

Good sites to check out:
tire rack . com
tires . com
tire van . com

 

^^ thats what i did, i went with pirelli snowsport 210's. Currently looking for a spec rims for next summer.

 

Yeah, I live in Chicagoland where the roads suck. Potholes galore. I'm getting the Pirelli 210's put on tomorrow, and will get some sweet summer tires and new rims this spring. I like the comfy ride, so I think I'll stick with 17" rims. Probably the Chrome stock ones they sell on Ebay.

 

Is it really necessary to buy snow tires? How would ultra high performance all-season do? Can't be THAT big of a difference..

 

It's all about stopping power. The design of snow tires allow for shorter stopping distances on ice and snow. With that said, I have driven with UHPAS tires for most of the last ten years and have found them more than adequate on snow when combined with careful driving.

 

Good to hear.

 

If you compare performance tires to Winter tires, it is like night and day, not even in the same ballpark. You will have zero traction in winter with the summer performance, and insane performance with winter tires on snow, they are much softer and stay flexible in cold temps where the summer tires get hard and have no bite. Not to mention tread pattern. All season work pretty good, but if you want really great performance, try winter tires sometime, amazing.

 

^^+1 ......Wouldn't leave home without'em.

 

I'll qualify what I said above. If I lived or traveled through areas where snow was not cleared on a regular basis, or no salt was used, I'd have snows on myself.

Luckily, I live in the Cleveland area. Our area may suck at many things (first person who mentions the Browns or Indians is banned ), but one thing the authorities are good at around here is snow removal. That's another reason I can get away with all seasons. Even on heavy snow in all seasons, though, careful driving with longer distances between cars is frequently enough, and I've been successful with that approach.

 

It's all the tires. The stock Michelins are awful in snow and ice conditions. I've had Dunlop Wintersport tires on the past two winters and is absolutely a night and day difference.

 

Luckily, (no humor to Bob intended) I live in an area with no snow (SF, CA), well almost no snow. I can't exactly remember whether it was last year or the year before, we had a very, very unusual combo snow/sleet storm. It was at night and I was driving home from dinner on I280 near Woodside. I280 is a winding interstate. There were cars spun out all over the place, but the RL performed like a champ. In fact, I probably drove faster than I should have, but it felt like I was driving through a rain storm and had total traction.

 

put snows on night and day!!!

 

After driving on the stock Michelin's for 2 weeks in the snow...I decided this sucks. Not to long after that, four 245/45 17 Bridgestone Blizzak WS-50's showed up at my door from the Tire Rack...they have a clearance for $98/each and $46 for shipping. According to the tire rack...actual height measure only 3/4" shorter than stock and same width and will only cause your spedo to be just over 2MPH off. I thought this was a fantastic price not to mention helping me keep the shiny side up this winter. They are not high performance like the LM's but for $98 bucks each, it wasn't a tough decision...I expect they will work great in western PA this winter.