ice

I frequently put car into neutral going down steep hills on slippery roads, be it front or rear wheel drive, helps a lot. But what do I do with four wheel drive? Best to put it in two wheel drive ?

Greg

Reply to
gregz
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The logic of putting it in neutral is to avoid drivetrain resistance or intertia. On a two-wheel drive car, it makes sense to make all four wheels acting the same by placing the drive wheels in neutral.

On a four-wheel drive car, putting it in two-wheel drive has to be the worst choice, since you are now a two-wheel drive car. And if it was a two-wheel drive car all along, you'd put it in netural, right?

So you have two choices:

1) Place your four-wheel-drive in netural 2) Remain in four-wheel drive, if all four wheels will provide the same amount of engine braking.

Since you are on the brakes anyway going down the slippery hills, getting engine braking on all four wheels would be valuable. However, I don't know how the various all-wheel drive systems that vary the torque distribution 'intelligently' will react. The owner's manual may have some good information.

Reply to
Ed Treijs

If you have ABS and an automatic transmission, it may be irrelevant, as some (all?) ABS implementations tend to kick the transmission into neutral when ABS activates.

nate

Reply to
N8N

I'll have to investigate that ABS activation into neutral.

Greg

Reply to
gregz

I'm talking going down almost a crawl, where the engine is trying to turn the tires faster than your going.

Greg

Reply to
gregz

I don't get it. With foot off the gas, engine should barely creep the car in drive. Concentrate on tires that grip ice.

--Vic

Reply to
Vic Smith

If you jack up the wheels in drive the wheels are going fairly fast. I do know in a regular car or truck, I have many times found you get better control in neutral, and I only tried it after hearing somebody saying to do it.

Greg

Reply to
gregz

In neutral there's hardly any torque applied to the wheels anyway. Just feathering the brake overcomes it. Seems to me adding shifting an auto trans to the other inputs needed when driving on ice just complicates things and is asking for trouble. You could miss neutral and break the wheels loose for example. Anyway, I still don't get it. Maybe others here do. I always paid attention to my tires and the load over them for ice/snow, and never even thought of shifting an auto to neutral.

--Vic

Reply to
Vic Smith

Where did you hear that? I've never heard of that and can't imagine it would be of any benefit. Since most AT will unlock the TC when the brakes are applied that's going to happen of course and that should be plenty of "release" for teh drive train. Anyway, if you have a source for your neutral idea I'd be interested in it.

Reply to
Ashton Crusher

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- gpsman

Reply to
gpsman

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