NPS cancels AWD vehichles ( probably always has). I agree with concept but not their verbiage . #Read

[Sweetums]

Sweetums is right. A front wheel drive AWD is not a real 4x4 . All they are really is a cross over. It's basicly a car sub unibody frame. A real 4x4 will have 2 high, 4 high and 4 low. I drive the beaches to surf fish, I see a lot of awd's stuck in the soft sand. He's right, the salesman will tell you everything because the manufacturer is telling them an awd is great off road. Awd is great in the snow, hard packed dirt trails, but for mud and beach sand no. You can get by with a awd on a hard packed beach, sorta like Daytona, but I fish the beaches at A.I.MD and A.I.VA. You will hit patches of hard packed sand , but when you hit soft deep sand, you will love your real 4x4. I was in the Auto business for 34 years. Always remember , when you see the commercials with that fwd/awd busting up the trail and running the beach, They own it, they don't care about it having problems.

Not all 4WD has 2-high, as I pointed out. The Toyota Land Cruiser starting in 1992 had Full Time 4WD that would change from 4-high with limited slip functions to 4-low with a locked transfer case. Nor is unibody construction the defining characteristic, lots of old cars have a ladder chassis, but they are not 4WD. There are also plenty of 4WD vehicles with unibody construction, such as the Grand Cherokee, Cherokee, various Land Rover/Range Rovers, and Mercedes vehicles.

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[Hunter#1]

Your right , I'm old school. I had a 1987 Cherokee that lasted to 290k ,with hardly any problems . It was unibody. I wasn't with toyota then. I did have a 2004 Taco 4x4, it was a beast on the beach,loved it till the frame rotted and I got rear ended. I just like a full frame , 4x4 with the featurs I mentioned. I leased this Glad for 36 months, if I like it and it has no major problems, I might buy the lease out, thats if they hold there value. I really like the mechanical shifter for the 4x4.

 

[BourbonRunner]

@Hunter#1 Nice to see another local who hits AIMD. I've been camping there since I was a kid and on the OSV for 20 years now. I just sold my frame rotted '04 Tacoma a few months back.

This is around MP8-9 back in the good old days before the tin worms did their thing.

 

[Uparms]

Here is a fun one, what about the 392 Jeep Wrangler. All Wheel Drive......

 

[chorky]

Couple years ago my friend took their AWD SUV up a very rocky, but far from difficult, dirt road to a FS lookout rental. The road is just dirt, but has extremely sharp rocks. You want 10 ply for these roads... Well they got a flat. I tried to warn them. Their spare was smaller than the OEM tire. Why anyone does that for a AWD is beyond me and stupid. They asked if they would be ok to drive 2.5 hours back home and I began to explain to them the problems with doing so on an AWD vehicle. Well they tried anyway, just about messed up the transmission, and ended up having to tow it the whole way back after spending several hours even finding a tow to do that. So it's also not just about the clearance. 99% of SUV's on the road have tires completely unsuitable for off highway travel IMO.

The FS is in the same boat. We have extremely poor descriptions of roads and rarely are any of the 'bad' ones signed.

If I were king for a day, I would propose the NPS and NF would, after 48 hours of no recovery, automatically do a heavy lift sling load, for minimum environmental impact (so that the evil environmentalists dont continue to use these events to create more and more road closures, and then bill said vehicle owner for all rotary wing charges. That would get the point across very fast when people start having $25,000 recovery bills. Just like with everything else that is a problem, unless there is very real and immediate and severe consequences to doing stupid crap, the problem will only continue to get worse and worse and worse. Kinda like theft and crime in Seattle and CA.

 

[Sweetums]

Here is a fun one, what about the 392 Jeep Wrangler. All Wheel Drive......

Does that still have 4-low with a locking t-case?

 

[Uparms]

Does that still have 4-low with a locking t-case?

No, AWD if I am not mistaken.

 

[Uparms]

No, AWD if I am not mistaken.

I may be mistaken, sorry. I know there is something different about their t-case?? I will read on.

 

[Uparms]

Sorry for the side track. 392 Wrangler, Per Edmunds....

 

[Sweetums]

No, AWD if I am not mistaken.

Might want to check again, it's a full-time 4wd with a low range that locks the t-case.

 

[ZeeJay]

Here is a fun one, what about the 392 Jeep Wrangler. All Wheel Drive......

My local dealer has been sitting on one of those for more than a year now. Seems nobody is jumping on 95K for one

 

[BearFootSam]

By all of your responses I can see this crowd gets it. No one mentioned wheel circumference, both rim and tire. A dirt bikes 21” front wheel rolls over obstacles with much less effort than a 17”, likewise with an automobile. That greater resistance to climbing demands more power. Without low range gearing the driveline is subject to overheating and the driver is forced to use momentum.

Relying on momentum equals more mechanical violence and ups the chances of a puncture. Especially if driver can’t air down to gain traction and puncture resistance because they don’t have the sidewall.

In these situations we’re also encountering aspiring overlanders and campers with all the attendant gear. These are exclusively independent suspension vehicles without pretense of being ‘work vehicles’ so ground clearance suffers. From the weight in addition to the dynamic ground clearance inherent to IS. With a solid axle, even riding the bump stops at least minimum ground clearance remains static.
Speaking of payload and durability, I’d argue for a difference between a jeep with a 1k lb payload and a Subaru with the same. The Subaru’s limit is more likely to be defined by structural capacity whereas a jeep or Tacoma is constrained by regulatory liability. Said differently, the crossover is more likely to break at 150% payload compared to the jeep just failing to meet dynamic handling requirements. In that greater strength exists improved resilience against abuse.

Driving off road is mechanically demanding and the common crossovers and light awd suvs are not robust enough to be pushed to the limit in the task. Gearing is a big reason, at altitude even the turbo's aren't building the torque needed to work hard from 0-5mph without thrashing the transmission. E-AWD systems I'm guessing overheat as well. There's another reason the Jeep has a heavy duty cooling system with a separate transmission cooler and a high power fan. All of these features needed for towing are equally valuable off road - gearing, cooling, durability and brakes.

There are a great deal of significant parameters that automakers don't advertise but differentiate vehicles. We don't hear about bearings or compare ring gear specs in magazines. All this minutiae is highly relevant to how a vehicle performs over time in a given application and gets glossed over in simply comparing ground clearance and tire size. I'm not saying these things are germane to which vehicles can drive which trails other than the point there are more significant differences than meet the eye.

Some folks are going to find this unfair but I'm glad for it. Upping the bar for entry helps weed out some of the less serious and reduces the risk of getting trails closed. On that note SxS are a flaming mess. They rip up the roads driving too fast on tiny wheel and cause so much damage. I like them in theory but folks act like assholes.

 

[Hunter#1]

@Hunter#1 Nice to see another local who hits AIMD. I've been camping there since I was a kid and on the OSV for 20 years now. I just sold my frame rotted '04 Tacoma a few months back.

This is around MP8-9 back in the good old days before the tin worms did their thing.

I had the same model, it was a loaded TRD, only no sun roof and no turbo charged V-6. Toyo knew about the frame, took it to the dealer, never a call for repair from Toyota. Tight lines.

 

[BourbonRunner]

I had the same model, it was a loaded TRD, only no sun roof and no turbo charged V-6. Toyo knew about the frame, took it to the dealer, never a call for repair from Toyota. Tight lines.

I always wanted to drop the TRD blower onto the motor. Toyota did the frame recall but the stupid dealer locally didn't want to replace the frame, so they undercoated it without telling me first. Ruined my only chance at the recall. Had I known they were going to just spray it, I'd have told them not to. I'll never buy anything from a MileOne dealer again.

 

[aldo98229]

Will the NPS actually stop a AWD SUV from going on a 4x4 road?

Doubt it. In my experience, no one is checking who goes in and out...until something does happen.

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