Axle wrap / hop

Hi everyone , hope you all had a great weekend.

Well been putting the Tacoma through her paces down here in the Utah desert and she has been doing beautifully , fast driving on desert roads and deep sand. Some beautiful camping too.

My question is related to some deep sand driving down on the shores of lake Powell... Was driving out in 3rd gear low range in deep sand , started bogging and downshifted into 2nd, got a real violent shaking for about 5 seconds before she smoothed out again. I'm guessing this is axle wrap or wheel hop - and I'm guessing it can't be good for the drivetrain - I suppose next time , easier on the throttle ? Slower starts ? It's something I want to avoiding putting my drivetrain through in the future. Thanks.

 

This Could be the vsc/atrac slowing you down to gain traction...I had a incident where the system kicked in when i went up my driveway uphill in icy snow..didn't realize it was stopping me from sliding down the hill till i turned it off in 2wd.. Try to disable the vsc/atrac the next time you experience and see if that helps..

 

Don't think traction control was engaged this was more the high torque of 4 low breaking free and gaining traction again and bouncing the truck pretty violently

 

I've driven off road quite a bit but never really in deep sand going uphill which this was

 

Every truck I've driven in the sand has done that, it's a sand/axle wrap thing

 

How low was your tire pressure? Running low tire pressure will help if you didn't lower your tire pressure. Get it around 10 Psi on the sand will keep you on top of the sand instead of trying to climb out of your own tire tracks going up hill. If this will be a serious sport for you running in the sand allot then I would look into adding axle wrap traction bars to the rear axle. Aggressive axle wrap has a way of causing early u-joint demise.

 

Check the torque values of your u-bolts. 2nd gens are notorious for having under torqued u-bolts from the factory.

 

Wasn't aired down and I'm sure that had something to do with it , think I was at 32psi ... Wasn't trying to find the soft deep stuff just hit some on the way out , guess it was just the tires losing traction and digging out again - just super rough for a bit, obviously something to avoid - more speed would have definitely helped going in