jalbrecht55
Well-Known Member
Completely agree with the points on m/t for winter driving. There are times when trying to accelerate an auto will downshift out from under you, break the tires loose and cause all kinds of problems. I grew up driving both (in AK) and to this day have a deep seated distrust for autos in winter conditions.
First time it happened to me I was driving on a dry bare pavement road in 2wd. I entered a shaded and slightly uphill S turn (with a nice patch of ice in the shadow), and even though I was just easing on the throttle to maintain speed it dropped a gear and that was enough that it kicked out the tail and put me in a very not fun drift on a tight two lane road.
This example shows another place where a full time or auto mode would be very nice to have. Even in the snow belt there are often weeks or sometimes months in the winter where you don’t have snow on the road so you gotta run 2wd but you still have those treacherous corners lurking in the shadows.
Rear limited slip can help at times, say getting up a driveway, but also makes it easier to cause both tires to spin, which can put you into a drift. Depends a lot on how tight the limited skip diff is. Seems like most of the OEM ones are benign enough that it doesn’t cause a problem.
First time it happened to me I was driving on a dry bare pavement road in 2wd. I entered a shaded and slightly uphill S turn (with a nice patch of ice in the shadow), and even though I was just easing on the throttle to maintain speed it dropped a gear and that was enough that it kicked out the tail and put me in a very not fun drift on a tight two lane road.
This example shows another place where a full time or auto mode would be very nice to have. Even in the snow belt there are often weeks or sometimes months in the winter where you don’t have snow on the road so you gotta run 2wd but you still have those treacherous corners lurking in the shadows.
Rear limited slip can help at times, say getting up a driveway, but also makes it easier to cause both tires to spin, which can put you into a drift. Depends a lot on how tight the limited skip diff is. Seems like most of the OEM ones are benign enough that it doesn’t cause a problem.
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