newbie with a 4wd question

First post here. Hello everyone. My wife and I just traded her 2000 Nissan frontier crew cab 4wd w/LSD on a 2009 Tacoma TRD Off-Road double cab short bed in Barcelona red. I personally own a 2002 Ford F-150 FX4 reg. cab. short bed. w/LSD

So far, we love this truck and can't wait to take it down to the beach. But first, I have a question on the traction control features as I am a little dissapointed at the lack of Toyota's info available. I have a pretty good understanding of how each of the features work and what they do but nothing replaces real world experience.

So my main question is for anyone who has been in the sand. In the past, I have always ridden in 4-high as the 4-low is painfully too slow, so using the rear diff. lock or the auto-LSD (which only is available in 2wd mode) is out of the question unless of course I find myself in trouble.

How does the traction control perform in soft sand? Does it constantly, or should I say, annoyingly, brake the various spinning wheels and/or bog the engine down? My gut tells me to turn the system off and just use the 4wd high and go. I also plan on trying for myself to see what it does, but i'm curious as to what to expect.

Any info would be appreciated as I have exhausted the search engine and googled every comination of 4wd info I could think of but didn't find much on these new technologies in regards to different off road conditions and how the systems functioned in each.

 

this post might answer some of your questions

http://www.tacomaworld.com/forum/2nd-gen-tacomas/13879-2009-safety-options.html

 

^ i meant to say look at post #30 of that thread

 

Wecome to TW

 

Thanks for the input. I'm still a little curious as to what to expect in the sand/soft sand driving with these features.

Also in my specs, it says my off-road pkg. has vsc + A-TRAC (instead of standard VSC + TRAC ) as with the base 4wd and sport pkg. The A-TRAC along with my locking diff. can only be used in 4wd low. And the auto-LSD can only be used in 2wd mode.

Sooooooooooo, when driving in 4wd high, is the VSC the only feature working? Thats what i'm understanding from it. Does the VSC act like regular TRAC and/or the auto-LSD and apply braking to a wheel that starts to spin to transfer the needed torque to the other wheel or does the VSC just function for skid/steer control on the highway.?