rickspix

last season i experienced a problem with my allroad up in tahoe during the winter. snow built up in my wheel well and froze. i got a loud noise and a shimmer from the rubbing on the tires and had to take my club apart to use as an ice pick to chop away the buildup.
anyone have any suggestions on how to avoid this?
after this happened to me i began cleaning out the snow when parking at night but that is a pain in the butt crawling in the snow to take care of a problem i never had with my lexus or range rover suvs. is there any simple solution to this problem?

HPH

...the one you describe, plus a build-up inside the wheels themselves, which causes out-of-balance shimmy.

I've experienced the first -- the wheel-well build-up -- on every car I've had. It's been so bad sometimes that it's hard to steer (the front-wheel build-up basically traps the wheels in the straight-ahead position). Last winter, I had pretty good luck with my allroad by driving at level 1 or 2 and then parking in 3 or 4. It seemed that the residual heat from the engine (and, in the back, maybe the exhaust system) loosened the build-up enough that it fell off, most times. (Putting the suspension up gives more room for it to loosen and fall free.)

The build-up inside the wheels must be associated with the shape inside the wheels, because it's never happened before, and it's a pain. Snow accumulates in there, falls to the bottom when the car's parked, and freezes. I spent lots of time with a snow scraper between the spokes poking at it, and now there are lovely scratches on the insides of the wheels. The easiest way to deal with it is to brush stuff out just after parking, before it freezes up.

I wish they'd designed the wheels differently.

grat

Try not to park the car in the lowered position. Unless it is really cold, < 15deg F, when it will freeze while driving, the buildup shouldn't be that solid, just before you park it lower the car to the lowest setting, then jack it to the top, pull forward if possible then park it. This will let the car push most of the muck out of the wells and drop off and won't freeze in place.

Don't drop it to low and attempt to drive out the muck, I've had the suspension warning light come on doing this. seems to work best with the car stopped, then once you cycled the suspension pull forward.

The fabric liner in the rear wheelwells, which I assume is for sound deadening, collects ice in a bad way. I've toyed with replacing them with A6 liners, which are smooth plastic like the fronts, but haven't had the time to peruse it as of yet. Snow build up is a real pain all winter long where I live.

as to wheels, replace them for winter if you deal with snow a lot. The stock wheels (single and dual spoke) have a flat inner surface that collects snow and ice which freezes and will cause out of balance conditions.

fj..