21st century teknology shock

I'm still getting used to my new TRD 4x4 Sport and I wanted to understand, first hand, how the truck functions and behaves under all the different traction assist settings on the thing.

Crap it's confusing.

I've driven many old 4x4s in my day but the most current one I had was a 2003 Ranger.

Needless to say, that truck had no electronic assists at all. In fact, none of my prior 4x4s ever had any sort of assists.

Today we were getting quite a bit of rain and I knew a place were I was not likely to get stuck but the terrain would be quite slippery.

At a stop in this particular spot, every other 4x4 I ever had would slip around and hunt for traction when revving the engine and dumping the clutch.

Today, my 4x4 did something I never saw a 4x4 do in that spot under those same conditions.

With the default setting all on and in 4 wheel drive high, the damn thing slammed my head into the headrest and just took off like it was on dry pavement.

I didn't feel the need to do any further testing.

I did get wheel spin after disabling all the electronics (long press on the Trac Off button) and in 2wD mode.

It was an eye opening experience and sold me on the electronic assist features on these new trucks.

Old school 4x4s have met their match.

 

These trucks will go nearly anywhere. It’s almost too easy honestly. Anytime I’ve felt something was iffy, it walked right through it without hesitation.

 

Even in 2wd the electronics really are quite good at finding traction but the one thing I found last week is that they don't interfere when you try to have a little fun. We had a really good dump of snow which started to melt and then froze over night. The next day I had opportunities to play in the snow and found the truck quite enjoyable and controllable doing drifts and slide in 2wd and 4wd. The TRAC system assisted when needed and seemed to back off when I was being throttle happy. I found it impressive. I too am used to older 4x4s with zero electronics with the exception of the RABS I had on my 91 Explorer. It was useless! I didn't even have to disable it. It barely worked.

 

In some ways, modern part-time 4x4 systems could really just be called part-time AWD systems - thanks to all the traction controls.

 

Just gonna leave this right here..

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/3rd-gen-traction-control-modes-explained.530695/