Tacoma on ice... I'll take the car instead.

That's a good example! And why I leave it on most of the time. There's just certain situations that make me afraid to touch the brakes with the ABS on. I don't think I should have to be afraid of that, or take the time to wire in a cut off switch.

The brakes in my truck don't seem to act the same way as my buddy's F150. He slammed on the brakes 30ft from a intersection at 60mph and still made the turn (last minute decision)! I would NEVER try that in my truck! I'm too scared the ABS would kick in and I'd either keep going straight, or not slow enough to take the corner and end up going wide enough to hit oncoming traffic. The day he did that I really wondered wtf was wrong with my brakes.

For the most part they work great on dry asphalt. But snow, ice, sand, dirt, gravel, even wet roads trip up the ABS sometimes and 95% of the time I don't have perfect, dry asphalt to drive on! Good asphalt here in NY is the exception, not the rule that ABS designers expect.

 

Ford F150 - 5501lbs
Tacoma - 4100lbs

That's extended cab long box weights. Quite a weight difference. You can't really compare them in terms of stopping power.

 

So you're saying a truck that's ~1500lbs heavier should stop quicker than ours? Seems like that should be the other way around... Which would make it even more said that the F150 can stop better than mine....

 

More weight on crappy traction = Better traction.

Which is harder to push or pull? A pillow or a concrete slab? Lets say you threw one and it hit the ground. Now while inertia tells us that the slab has much more mass technically it should go farther. However its friction coefficient says fuck you, I'm staying put.

That's why we put weight in the back of our trucks, to give us traction. If it was the other way around, I'd be ditching the spare and ripping out the back seats to lose weight in the winter.

 

Yes in many cases.. using your skipping rock example. A heavier rock is more likely to have more friction and not skip whereas a lighter rock will skip across the water a lot easier. Why do you think that everyone recomends that you put extra weight in your truck bed when driving in slippery conditions?? More traction .. go back and watch the video comparsion I posted earlier between the 1/2 ton trucks. The Tundra was given better marks because it's heavier.

Of course.. more weight in motion means more energy to make it stop as well.. BUT larger brake rotors and drums can compensate for that. WAY to many factors go into overall stopping distance for any vehicle though so saying weight alone makes the difference is incorrect.

 

Your reasoning is faulty. You put weight in the back of a truck to give you traction and keep your rear end from coming around under acceleration. By your logic a train should stop much faster than a car but it can take 1000's of feet for them to stop.

 

you want narrow tires to get the most amount of weight to the ground and cut through the snow.

 

It must be the bigger brakes. I would assume it's rated to hold more in the bed so it would have bigger brakes. So that can overcome the increased weight and momentum. He has has 4 wheel disc IIRC so that might help too. More braking power in the rear combined with a heavier rear end.

Then again I know my truck takes longer to stop with 1600lbs of wood pellets in the bed and that would bring it up to the same weight as the Ford. *shrug* Brakes may work better in that the ABS never kicks in, but I have to start braking sooner than unloaded.

 

Now you're talking about almost a million tons versus 2.

 

Braking distances just aren't that simple to sum up. I was just giving a counter example showing that more weight doesn't make it easier to stop.

 

I know that. That's why I said it's to do with Traction. More Traction better stopping power. More weight generally = more traction.

 

Yup that's why I said what I said at the end of my post. BTW both passenger and freight rail go right by my house. Sometimes the trains of equal size will pass (freight and passenger) .. so which one will stop faster as many times the passenger train will be heavier when full.



(turn your monitor upside down to read the answer.... ummm maybe not )

In the case of the passenger trains in my area they come to a much quicker stop.. why? Every wheel on the passenger train has a huge disc brake.

Yeah way to many factors.

BTW the extra weight you put in the bed doesn't just work for traction when starting out or going uphill .. it does in fact make stopping more efficient as well preventing the rear end from "skipping" and hopping during braking forcing the tires to stay on the ground.


I'm thinking my next mod might be sand tube in front of the rear tires .. now that would be cool. Hey some people do train horns so why not sand tubes.

 

I've driven on a quite a bit of ice (as well as snow) with my Tacoma and I've got nothing against the ABS when it's kicked on during these conditions. To each his own I guess.

 

Do you do anything special? Weight in the bed? Studs? Just winter tires? Just curious. I'd chalk my problems up to ice or snow if it weren't for the fact that I notice it on dirt and gravel too. First time was the gravel parking lot at my old apartment. I also learned back then to hold my foot different on the brake and just use my toes. When I first got the truck my foot hung over the top of the pedal and pushed harder than I realized so the ABS kicked in more. Once I shifted my heel back a bit and used my toes on the pedal it worked better. The angles of the pedals are very different from my car.

 

Long trains (freights) also cannot stop quickly with any slack in the couplings. Applying hard brakes before all the couplings push will smash the crap out of the front of the train. Listen to a long freight start and you can hear the slack bang back out (front to rear).

Passenger coaches are shorter, lighter and better maintained than other rolling stock.

I hate ABS, but my taco is much less annoying than prior (full size GM) trucks.

(train buff with a taco)

 

Man, sounds like you definately have some problems with the handling while ABS is engaged. I did exactly what you asked first time I took my truck to the snow. This was on a downgrade, ice covered road, which I witnessed a spin out on my way up. While coming down I slammed my brakes hard, without letting up and proceeded to steer in a serpentine fashion around the road. I might as well have been on dry pavement. The steering was COMPLETELY controlled. I'll give you one thing, it took a lot longer to stop, but HELL, I was on ice...what can you ask for. I guarantee you would not have that much control without the ABS.

 

I like the abs... how much can a person ask for on solid ice??? and if you are on solid ice SLOW THE F**K DOWN...

 

I don't live in the ice belt so I cannot remark about how the ABS on this truck works. It sounds like the brakes are either ON(all wheels) or OFF as the ABS computer modulates the brakes(IOW, one valve to modulate all 4 brakes instead of 4 valves....one for each brake). That is NOT how ABS should work. A proper ABS system should monitor each wheel as it's own entity and modulate each brake as they lockup. It sounds like our trucks release ALL wheels if one starts to lockup. It should only release the wheel that is locking up. It also sounds like Ford has it figured out. I fly big airplanes and ABS works VERY well and we take a SEVERE performance penalty if the ABS is inop(which I can't remember ever seeing). And it has everything to do with stopping distance and nothing to do with steering. We also have lotsa wheels. We would never be able to stop if our ABS worked like this....300,000+ pounds at 150+mph!!! To me, the brakes are the most amazing part of a large airplane. They are the heat sink that has to absorb all that energy.

If this in fact is how the system in our truck works, I would say it is poorly designed and/or executed. Sounds scary actually. Next time any of you get a chance to do more testing, do it and let us know. I would be really interested to see if you could have one side(2 wheels) on ice and the other side on dry pavement. Will the two "dry" wheels stop you or will the ABS release all wheels because the "wet" wheels are sliding. From what y'all are saying, it sounds like the ladder is true.

 

Not sure who you're talking too, but I've noticed this problem at speeds as slow as 5 MPH. How much fucking slower should I be driving?

That's an interesting thought. You make a good about about all wheels vs locked wheel being released. You would think if it was just the locked wheel being released braking distance would not be affect as badly.

My driveway has a nice layer of ice on it now, maybe I should experiment. I'm not sure what the easiest way would be to figure out if all the wheels are being released though. Any place I can think of with half asphalt/half ice would be the side of a road, and I don't want things to go badly.

 

4mph....