1st long trip report. Used crawl control too

You should man. If anything just to become familiar when it will help you out of a situation.

Its a pretty awesome tool when used right.

 

well i have tested it just in the hood in a straight line to make sure it engaged for a few feet.. thought about testing this past weekend going up the steep mountain gravel road but not sure. can you take a slight curve with it engaged or will it fight you?

 

To start with, you should only ever use the 4hi and 4lo on "low traction surfaces"... i.e. NOT pavement. Though the problem with engaging those on pavement only really occurs with cornering. There are whole threads devoted to this subject. This is the general rule though. Some people feel OK using 4hi on wet pavement, but I personally would not unless I was actually running into traction issues.

Thus, if you use your locker, you should absolutely be on a "low traction surface" by virtue of needing to be in 4lo to engage your locker. Will going straight down the road wreck your truck in any of these modes? No. But if you forget and make a sharp corner, you could absolutely wreck some stuff.

All that out of the way. Using the locker on a gravel road won't hurt it, turns or not. Though from what I understand, the locker should be used more as a means to conquer a problem, and then disengaged. That said, I've read everything from "I do the entire trail with it on" to "I only turn it on in a pinch" so I'm sure results may vary.

Cornering with your locker on should just cause your outside wheel to skitter while your inside wheel makes the turn. (Because with the rear wheels locked, they will both rotate at the same speed. When cornering, the outside wheel will need to travel further than the inside because it's radius is larger than the inside. But if they are locked, it will have to skitter to make up the difference because it can't rotate independently of the inside wheel.) I don't think you'll wreck anything immediately by doing this, other than putting some extra wear on the tires.