Hi I was just wondering if anyone could confirm if the 06 feh fwd is limited slpi or open? I just bought one and after a few WOT runs just to see if it had any pickup I'm thinking it might have a limited slip differential or some sort of electrontic traction control. To my suprise it barked both front tires and there doesn't seem to be any torque steer.

Has anyone noticed if both front wheels spin at the same time in snow?

Thanks, Davin

Officially, the hybrids have open diffs and no traction control, though as you pointed out, it sure seems like it does sometimes.

Best single LD trip: 35.3mpg

I originally thought so, too, that there might be some kind of traction control. But I've tested it repeatedly on my 4WD and discovered I was incorrect, at least about mine. Both diffs are wide open. There doesn't seem to be any TC or even anything to limit wheelspin to any great degree.

There's quite a bit of ice in my area right now and I've found that I can place the vehicle with either the right or left side on ice and the other side on pavement and it will simply spin both tires on the ice side. If I'm pointing uphill, it won't even move.

Not sure about the FWD but it should be pretty easy to test on ice.

I have the FWD.

If you put the front end up on jack stands, and rotate one tire with your hand, the opposite tire spins the same direction. But I guess that makes sense since there is no traditional "differential".

On snow, ice, I can spin my tires as much as I want, but I have no way to tell if they are spinning at the same rate, since I'm always in the car!

There is NO electronic traction control on any Escape Hybrid. -John

Is there is anyone out there with a FWD unit that has access to a spot of ice in a parking lot or other open, safe area who could test this for us? See is you can get one tire to spin.

I know I can get one front and one rear to spin on my 4WD, but I'm curious if the FWD is any different. I doubt it, but it would be cool if someone could confirm.

Now that I think about it... yes. One wheel can spin by itself.

One wheel on ice is the same as one wheel in the air, right?
It will spin if you put one tire in the air with a jack.

It would be EXTEMELY unusual for a FWD or even a F/AWD vehicle to have an LSD for the front drive wheels. SUVs build for off-road, boulder climbing, often have a part-time front LSD but in general these are all "base" RWD and therefore mostly rear torque biased.

Having an LSD, real or virtual, in front might result in so much torque stear as to break thumbs and/or fingers of unwary drivers.

Across the industry TRAC implementation on FWD and F/AWD vehicle is most often designed to brake BOTH front wheels even if only one slips while simultaneously dethrottling the engine.

But I thought some of the newer FEH/MMH models had/have TC, traction control.

Not to be confused with VSC which is definitely not yet available on the FEH/MMH series.

Oh, with an open diff'l and both wheels off the ground the opposite wheel might turn the same direction or opposite, totally random.

I think you are correct about the TC on Escape, but not the hybrid. Hybrids are excluded as I understand.

Haven't had more than a flake of snow in Louisville yet this year, and we've only had the vehicle since Oct 07, so can't comment YET on our AWD's snow/slick road behavior. If we are lucky, I'll not be able to give you a report the entire winter

I used to have a 96 Ford F250, 4WD, real traction control, and that TC really worked.

I think you got that backwards. LSDs are fairly common in sporty front wheel drives. THe Mini, Civic R type, Sentra R type and mazda 3 series all have some type of LSDs (although most are just torsen types with only 25% lock up) to eliminate torque steer. Higher hp without an LSD causes torque steer.

I had a old 75 mini built for track use a few years ago and added an lsd to it. The handling improved dramatically over the open diff.

True, most vehicles use a traction-control based solution to mitigate torque steer and enhance performance, but there are also a fair number with limited slip in a FWD or FWD-based AWD application.