A winter a year ago was my first experience driving our Ranger in the snow on my way home from work late at night. The freeway was a mess so I stayed on the arterials since traffic was light. The road was covered with compact snow with new snow accumulating on top. The drive was dicey on the level since I did not have weight in the back. Once I came up to a long down hill section I knew this was going to be bad. I pulled over and put the chains on and crawled the rest of the way home.

This winter I tossed four tubes of sand into the back of the Ranger...320 lbs total. I took a drive over the Snoqualmie Pass (snowing and covered with slush) and did just fine. I hit patches of compact snow on the road on the 26 near Pullman...again no big deal. The parking lots in Pullman were all compact snow and the Ranger did fine. No snow tires and did not need the chains. I now have four studded snow tires for the Ranger but have not yet found four wheels to mount them on...

We have had our Explorer since it was a year old with 10k miles...bought from a friend that wanted something cooler. It is AWD and V8. In one year we had taken the Explorer on one 4k mile drive and two 3k mile drives throughout the Western US from cold snowy mountain weather to very hot desert driving. Did great...

During the winter I put studded TXRs on the Explorer. Meaty snow tire with studs help take the Explorer wherever we need. We have taken the Explorer up into the mountains for our Christmas tree driving through snow on logging roads and little side roads over grown with small saplings. This year I left the Explorer with our daughter at Wazzu. They had the big snow that closed the school for two days. On the Sunday she ventured out with the Explorer to go to church. Came back to her parking lot and powered the Explorer into a mount of snow about 2 feet deep. While trying to straighten out in the parking spot got stuck and slid to within 2 inches of a car next to her.

Into the pickup I go dark early Monday...drove over to Pullman, dug an hour to get the Explorer out of hard icy cement like snow and parked it into a cleared area. Got a hug and drove back to Seattle.

What got the Explorer stuck in Pullman was the very hard snow the tires ground down into when she spun the wheels a bit. The hard snow acted like tire blocks preventing the Explorer from moving forward or backward.

The only major work I have done on the Explorer is replace the rack/pinion. Other work has been the typical stuff one would expect to do.

Bottom line, I like the four banger Ranger and the V8 Explorer. This is wordy but I wanted you to understand how I felt about the two rigs.

Casey