Crawl Control saved me, how about you?

you don't need crawl control if you know what your doing

 

Cant imagine toyota would continue to use the clutch start cancel feature if it was known to cause issues. Been in mt toyota trucks for quite a while and it cant be any worse than start stop tech which is in so many cars today.

 

Just sayin it's a option.

 

I wouldn't mind having crawl control for my commute home in the evening.

 

I laugh at every crawl control thread when someone claims it did nothing for them in mud. Wheeling is one part equipment, one part terrain and one part skill. Skill involves having some clue about what is going on at the tires. Mud often packs in the tread area and needs wheelspin to clear it out in order to clear the tread blocks to be able to grip again. You effectively have slicks on when packed with mud. Slick tires on mud go figure you are stuck. Now sand fills in the tread and if you keep flicking the soft sand out from under your tires you dig. Wow really? Now crawl control on sand and you slowly grab at the next bit of sand that flows under the tires and you can crawl out. Makes sense vs wheelspin digging you in.

If you can’t envision what is actually happening with / under your tires you will never improve your skill and never truly understand how to use the advanced features Toyota offers us. These aren’t magic buttons that do all the work for us. We need to know when to use them and under what conditions. Take a basic wheeling course. Many clubs offer a once yearly NOOB course for those with little to no experience. In my part of the world these often accompany bigger wheeling weekends where some of the experienced guys help out the newbies. Buy a magazine or book and read up.

I am not trying to be derogatory to those who aren’t experienced but it gets old real quick when you are wheeling and spend your whole day pulling others out. 4WD helps and along with MTS and Crawl Control you can go many more places than 2wd. But it doesn’t make you invincible as many are learning first hand. Educate yourself and you will find these driving aids much more useful.

 

Reposting this from an older thread. I too used to think crawl control was a gimmick but I've experienced a few situations now where it was very useful:

"Honestly, I think all these people claiming Crawl Control is a "gimmick" just don't really push the limits when offroading to the point where they would use it. For those of us that have been in those situations Crawl control can literally be a life saver.

Attached a pic of what happened to my old 1998 4Runner, we flipped it SIX times down the side of a cliff, all 3 of us in the car survived its honestly a miracle (and good engineering) that we did, our friends watching from the bottom of the cliff were too scared to even approach the truck for a few minutes because they thought for sure they'd just see three dead bodies in there (it actually landed upside down, the pic is after we flipped it back over).... I'm 95% sure if we had had crawl control that day back in 2004 the rear end wouldn't have kicked out trying to back down a steep ridge that we got stuck almost all the way up and we would NOT have rolled. I ran into almost the exact same situation just a few months ago (even posted about it on TW). If anyone is familiar with Blowsand in Anza Borrego I was dancing around it all day in my 3rd gen, even got a little cocky when a Ford Raptor couldn't make it to the top and I was doing laps around him

Then I got a little too confident and decided to go straight up the left face (where everyone usually just goes DOWN), I didn't make it and my rear end kicked out just enough that we were stuck, at an angle, on the steepest face of Blowsand. I just paused for like 30 seconds remembering what happened the last time I was in a truck backing down such a steep face (we all almost died). Then the thought came to me "I wonder if crawl control works in reverse?" Gave it a try and sure enough it did, and because the system can individually control wheels it prevents the rear end from kicking out on you which as you know pretty much results in flipping the vehicle multiple times on a 45 degree+ hill. Instead I did a perfectly controlled descent of about 150 yards, in reverse, on a super steep face (maxed out the inclinometer)... total control and gave me a ton more confidence knowing I have Crawl Control for the next time I end up in a tricky technical situation.

I've also used CC in the same situations I used to use my front lockers (now I don't have them) with great success. I've used crawl control at least 3 times for self recovery in the 6 months I've owned my 3rd gen (given, I do offroad a LOT, already have 12k miles on the truck and during the season I go offroad multiple times a month). And I'm a guy that's consistently offroaded for 15 years without CC so I obviously have the skill to get by without it, but its still really nice knowing its there.

Bonus pic: my new 3rd gen getting her first mud bath

TL;DR Crawl Control is actually pretty fucking awesome


"

 

c'mon man... let's not let logic and good sense interrupt a good conversation.

 

Next time you need to write to someone, send a hand written letter to improve your hand writing skills. Don't let the internet automate it for you.

 

I used it once. Unexpected freshly packed snow. About an 18% grade down a residential road, may 600 feet. Half way down there's a sharp 120 degree turn. No car was trying it. While I was stopped at the top of the hill figuring out next steps, some guy in a 2nd gen Tundra rolled past me - maybe 5-7 mph? He was doing OK, but didn't make the turn and slid sideways in the curb. He kept going. I turned on crawl control and set it at it's slowest speed. Felt like 10 minutes to make it down the hill but there was no noticeable slip. Guy in the Tundra was at the bottom of the hill inspecting his damage.

 

He was able to back down, but with crawl control he would've been able to continue up and over

Its like the old saying "a 2wd can go anywhere a 4x4 can just a matter of skill" or "you don't NEED a locker if you know what you're doing", which is of course very shortsighted.

Sure a skilled driver in a 2wd will probably fair better than a rookie in a 4x4.... but all other things equal having 4x4, lockers, Crawl control only give you more capability and advantage.

I used to have full lockers front and rear on my old 4x4. I probably never NEEDED the front locker, but I used it a bunch. It allowed me to gracefully and carefully crawl up obstacles that I would've needed momentum for without the lockers, momentum = higher probably of damage and leaving me stranded. Same thing with crawl control.