Power lost on slightest spin of tires

I think he was trying to be funny?

 

So... does being able to pass a snow plow, on the freeway at 45mph in a driving snow, in the unplowed lane with 4 inches of fresh wet snow, in St. Louis, in the dead of winter, in a 2wd Corolla make me a stupid or skilled driver (or both)?
lol

 

If you make a successful pass your skilled... if you lose it and get ran over by the snow plow, your really stupid! :lol: :lol:

 

I think it's hard to differentiate between skillful and lucky with a single incident like that. I say try it a couple hundred times to improve the statistical significance. If you do it that many times, you're stupid for sure!

 

Get rid of the Prius and do us a favor. Just what we need, nore lawsuits. If you ar thinking lawsuit..WHY DO YOU HAVE THE CAR!

I posted this then read 5 more pages. I tried to make this happen with my Prius. It has all the goodies, VSC and TC. On a snowy day I TRIED to make something happen. Used heavy acceleration and turning. I was able to get VSC to kick in but I was NEVER able to make the car just sit there.

OK, so I am willing to consider that there is a "programming" issue that make some cars behave differently.I have not tried an uphill in ice yet. Popoff, you may have an issue BUT, if I hear about a lawsuit...I will make sure Toyota knows about this thread so that they can defend themselves on the basis you were aware of this behaviour and you should not have tried to pull out into traffic on ice.

 

So who rattled your cage today?

Happy New Year. Sounds like you may had an early start.

BTW, I've never tried to pull out in front of traffic on ice. Maybe you ought to go back and read the last 5 pages again?

I wish you all the best.

 

hah good point bill! Im going to state something i have seen in other threads, infact I think you may have said it bill. But traction control, is less to make your life easier, and more to protect the eletric motors from an over rev/spin condition, which can casuse serious damage to them. As far as the comment, well it takes power away from both wheels, it would have to wouldnt it? The motor is spinning atleast as fast as the fastest spinning wheel... or the wheel couldnt spin that fast now could it - so the only solution is to cut the power to the motors.

 

:lol: :lol: :lol:

 

I have no idea how you managed that, since EVERY Jeep Grand Cherokee ever made has the ability to lock the center differential in the transfer case. Command-Trac and Selec-Trac can lock in both hi and lo range, and Quadra-Trac I and II can lock in lo range.

With a locking center differential, and no limited-slip differential, you have to have two tires (on one each axle) spinning to get stuck. So how did you manage to get stuck again? Did you just not know to shift into low range?

 

I used to live in the wilderness and we would get really nasty snow... the Jeep does great normally, but If I remember right when I had these problems It was because I was partially high centered and a tire would just spin "very frustrating" and other tires would not..
The only way I could get traction was to build up with wood etc under the tire that was fond of spinning or dig out all the snow under the jeep...The jeep does not have the perfect 4X4 system. Switching to low only did good if I was in very aggressive situations like in big rocks etc going very slow, but in snow it didnt' seem to help at all.
My jeep is a 95.

 

We have '99 and '05 Jeep Grand Cherokees. With the quadradrive... even with 3 wheels off the ground... the jeep will transfer 100% of the power to the one wheel with traction. Plus the Jeep is one of the highest ground clearance vehicles available.

You must have had a model that did not have quadradrive.... because with it, it is nearly impossible to get stuck.

On the other hand... all of the drive traction in the world does not help one iota when it comes to additional braking. For some reason... SUV drivers (including Jeep) get overconfident in their traction ability... drive too fast... and dont seem to realize that their braking is not much better than any other car.... hence they end up in the ditch.

/JIm

 

After my last post, I got to try this out first hand for the first time. We got about 2" of snow in an hour then the tempature dropped - making all the area roads a total glazed sheet of ice. I drove about 10 miles down town then to a friends house. During this trip i was nervouse because of all i had read about pri being horrible in the snow... But i wanted to give it a shot because its so good at eveyrhting else... So i left our RAV4 in the driveway.

First to note, i have experinced TC slippage many times, mainly on loose sand pulling out of side streets etc... and yes, i find the sudden lost of power alarming. I never thought of it as 'life threatining' because frankly, as a driver its my job to KNOW the car I am driving and know what its going to do before it does it!

So I pulled out and took my trip. I did feel the TC kicking in ALOT - both when breaking and acceclerating. This was shown by my lil slippery car icon which was on a better part of this entire affair.

Round a corner, see 3-4 cars off the road - road litterly shiny with ice - coming up on a stop light. I hit my breaks (only doing 10-15mpg) TC/ABS kicks in.... i feel like im never going to stop.... but... i trust my car and wait... the cars infront of me are now turning sideways, this way that way.... I am perfeactly stright, still in total control. Get to the light.... Wait it out, car in front of me (front wheel drive nissian altima i think) tries to go (slight up hill climb) slides all over hell and creation in the process and after alot of effort gets up the small lil bump. I gently press the gass, i see the light blinking, i can feel it cutting in and out but i hold steady keep wheel stright. Car proceededs in nice stright line right thru the intersection - no problems @ all


This was repeated several times during the trip - in which i say 7 differnt accidents (non of wich involved priuses!)

When i got to where i was going, i said to my GF and my friends, this car is 10x better than my old altima, that car was horrible in the snow, tires spun this way that way everyway, but didnt take u anywhere, and keeping it in a strignt line in a skid was impossible. My impression, my prius handeled GREAT in the snow!!

Bottom line of my rant.... The problem isnt the car people... its YOU..... This is not your average car! It cant be driven like one! YOU have to adapt to IT, it has far more advanced technology than most of the cars you are comparing it to, and just because it doesnt react the way 'you think it should' doesnt mean its worse/wrong/etc. If there were message forums around when ABS was invented, i can assure you there would be pages and pages of posts about how dangrouse and horrible ABS was because it made it harder to stop, took longer to stop, etc.......

That brings me to my last point, i aggree with the sentimates a few others have made about america... (i am a 100% american, and i aggree) stop sueing people and take responsiblity for your own actions! LEARN HOW TO DRIVE YOUR CAR OR DONT DRIVE IT! If you want a car to drive for you, higher a personal driver!

 

That was downright painful to read.

You'll get a lot more people to read through your posts if you made at least some effort at forming grammatically correct sentences, and at punctuation and spelling. When you make a post like yours, you're telling the reader "Screw you, translate it to English yourself. I can't be bothered."

If you won't make the effort to write effectively, why should any of us bother to read what you wrote?

 

Well, I am sorry you had so much trouble reading. It was 5AM and I had just gotten home from a new years party - so I was a little tired/out of it. I have been using online chats, posting & running online message boards for close to 10 years. Most people are just talking to have a good time. It’s accepted that online language differs a bit from normal language. If you are so offended by some online short hand, or different use of punctuation maybe you should be reading & writing to a newspaper!

Or better yet - Maybe if you ask nicely Danny will make you the official proof reader of PriusChat?

(PS I ran this thru Word Spell/Grammer check to make sure it was not to difficult for you to read. Is there not rules against flamming?)

 

I hope you saw my edited post....I was basically saying that maybe your point was correct. I still cannot see how mentioning "lawsuit" was helpful.

 

Well that stinks!.. I wish I would have knew that back when I needed it.... digging out snow packed underneath a car is no fun job.
I don't know if it matters, but I have the Laredo.... I remember no mention anywhere in the manual of Quadradrive. I can switch on the fly the hubs are auto, but thats about it.
thanks for the info.

 

QuadraDrive was introduced in 1999 I believe. It's the combination of a QuadraTrac transfer case, plus front and rear electronic limited slip differentials. So your '95 couldn't have had QuadraDrive.

However, your '95 absolutely did have a transfer case capable of locking front and rear driveshafts, so you could not get stuck without having at least two wheels (one per axle) lose traction. If you got stuck with only one wheel spinning, then you were stuck due to your own ignorance, not the vehicle.

Also, you don't have "auto hubs". On a Grand Cherokee, they never unlock, the axle shafts always spin with the wheels.

 

My terminology was such that I meant' by "auto" was that I didn't have to get out and engage the hubs, I have to flip a lever and I can do it at any speed without stopping....Those are "auto" when comparing to the manual.
You are prob comparing with the newer technology whereas they are truely auto... I have never owned such a rig yet.

 

Your hubs never lock or unlock. Period. On a Jeep Grand Cherokee, there is no locking mechanism. The front wheels and axles always turn together.

That lever you're pulling on controls engagement of the transfer case. It has nothing to do with the hubs.

 

Yes Yes Yes I have this problem all the time. Even making a right turn from a stop, when i accelerate hard it acts like the traction control takes over and it hesitates terribly. Very dangerous in my opinion. same thing happens in wet or snowy conditions. You are not alone my friend. Let me know what you find email me "[email protected]" Dean