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traction control, VDC, overdrive, etc.


Emmanuel

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Our friend @Frederic Nuyttens, who joined the last absolute newbie drive, wrote in his first experience feedback : « I had the impression that some newbies struggled a bit with the 4WD settings on their car. Modern cars have many electronics and switching off the traction and electronic aid controls is indeed necessary for desert driving. A small separate workshop for 4WD and the different diff-lock settings, crawl modes, and the blip technique might be a good optional side-training ». Pretty sure that @Gaurav and @Rahimdad are already thinking about a way to cover these aspects, but, in the meantime, I would suggest that everyone here give a few elements about his own car. In concrete terms, we could all explain briefly what we are switching on or off before we hit the dunes… 

I'll begin with my own car…

NISSAN XTERRA 2013 - X

X is the basic trim, so I have only 3 positions : 2WD ; 4H ; 4LO. The « Off-Road » trim is the only one which has diff-lock. Of course, 2WD is used on-road (and sometimes on easy flat tracks) ; 4H for off-road ; 4LO for recovery + ascending or descending very high hills and slopes (NB : to engage 4LO, you must stop the vehicle and shift to Neutral).

Whenever you leave the road, you should switch off 2 buttons : « Vehicle dynamic control » (VDC) and « Overdrive » (O/D). You should see two indicator lights. The problem with Xterras is that you have to repeat the same process if you restart your engine, so don’t forget if you don’t want to get stuck…

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I’d also like to add something else to this. Remember Jason was out with us a few months ago, new Jeep Cherokee, he had a problem where his SRS system activated after a bump and his seatbelt tensioner fired rendering the SRS system inactive in the event of an accident. 

Maybe one person should be designated as technical and go through absolute newbies cars and make sure TCS, SRS etc systems are disabled. Having a proper technician on drives would make carnity unique, something none of the other clubs have.

 

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Great initiative @EmVarlet and excellent suggest @Barry. We try our level best to help the newbies understand their cars, however having a technician present on all drives might not be possible. We want to learn more about new cars and all these extra buttons.

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Great suggestion @EmVarlet it will definitely be useful for future drives with different newbies and their cars. Thanks for sharing your details on how to setup the Xterra for Offroad. 

From my side i can't share much information on the electronic aids as i don't have any 🤣. But i have a friend with a more modern Pajero and another one with a Grand Cherokee that might join in on one of the next Abs.Newbie drives.

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"Go as far as you can see; once you get there, you'll be able to see further."

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Very nice thread @EmVarlet switching off the traction control / vsc / tsc / etc is already mentioned in the brief and I personally advised all drivers to spend 5 mins to google and find out on how to switch off the traction completely for your car. Without which they will just crawl and not being able to spin the wheel.

For O/D off, it's a good suggestion but not a show stopper like a traction control and it's very helpful in long hill climb when you want to delay the upshift as much as possible. I do have OD off in my Pajero and use it only 5-10% of times and not always. Again different cars react differently and we will add this point too in the brief next time.

More importantly, I feel that every absolute newbie driver who comes for the drive should need to read the basics in advance and discuss the issues here well in advance and figure out the instructions, shortcuts, and procedure to switch off traction, OD etc.

Doing a side workshop is indeed sound nice but delaying the convoy of 20 cars by 3 hours is not a practical approach if we have 6 newbies x 30 mins for each car in googling how to switch off traction, OD, pulling fuses, SRS disabling etc. So every newbie either discuss these points in the forum and find a way out in advance. OR agree with Marshal / Crew to come half an early so that we can help OR spend half an hour after the drive so that we can help in figuring out this stuff. My two cents.

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Let's root for each other & watch each other grow.

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1 hour ago, Gaurav said:

Very nice thread @EmVarlet switching off the traction control / vsc / tsc / etc is already mentioned in the brief and I personally advised all drivers to spend 5 mins to google and find out on how to switch off the traction completely for your car. Without which they will just crawl and not being able to spin the wheel.

For O/D off, it's a good suggestion but not a show stopper like a traction control and it's very helpful in long hill climb when you want to delay the upshift as much as possible. I do have OD off in my Pajero and use it only 5-10% of times and not always. Again different cars react differently and we will add this point too in the brief next time.

More importantly, I feel that every absolute newbie driver who comes for the drive should need to read the basics in advance and discuss the issues here well in advance and figure out the instructions, shortcuts, and procedure to switch off traction, OD etc.

Doing a side workshop is indeed sound nice but delaying the convoy of 20 cars by 3 hours is not a practical approach if we have 6 newbies x 30 mins for each car in googling how to switch off traction, OD, pulling fuses, SRS disabling etc. So every newbie either discuss these points in the forum and find a way out in advance. OR agree with Marshal / Crew to come half an early so that we can help OR spend half an hour after the drive so that we can help in figuring out this stuff. My two cents.

Next time I will test with O/D always on and I’ll tell you. Maybe it’s a bad habit. I can’t remember exactly from where I got this advice...

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8 hours ago, Frederic Nuyttens said:

But i have a friend with a more modern Pajero and another one with a Grand Cherokee that might join in on one of the next Abs.Newbie drives.

@Frederic Nuyttens you could probably ask your friends to check with Rahimdad who is leading the next week drive on whether the absolute Newbies can join the Newbie Drive

Edited by skumar83
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1 hour ago, skumar83 said:

@Frederic Nuyttens you could probably ask your friends to check with Rahimdad who is leading the next week drive on whether the absolute Newbies can join the Newbie Drive

Thanks @skumar83 will do that. I prefer they join Carnity forum first and start following the content. Then we can slowly integrate them.

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"Go as far as you can see; once you get there, you'll be able to see further."

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Overdrive really doesn't come into the picture because its technically the last gear on your transmission with a ratio of less than one like say 0.67:1

Unless some cars actually use that as a "sports" mode on their autotrans which modify the shifting patterns usually by holding a gear longer before upshifting.

So the actually overdrive function would not come into play in the desert unless you are at highway cruising speeds in top gear while climbing a dune! 

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if you don't use od off then the transmission will engage the last gear where possible saving you some milliliters of fuel and the engine run cool as usually the desert driving requires WOT's .you usually drive in 1st 2nd and 3rd mostly

personally i keep it dont use it as in many places you might have seen me crossing the some of the dunes in pretty low speed (people behind me have a bit of hard time because of this)

in most cars these buttons do not completely disable the nanny systems until you kill the power to it and to reverse that some have to just remove the battery wire and some have to do it by scan tool and or complete the drive cycles to re enable those

and in some care these systems are interconnected you kill one you kill all...

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