Has anyone ever looked into any under armor for the FEH? After one bad experience with an oil pan (in my Contour of all cars), I'm a little paranoid. I would be a lot more willing to drive the MMH off road if I had a little protection. I wonder if they make anything for the gas Escape that might fit...

 

With compression braking on a FWD being somewhat unsafe (ABS cannot prevent wheelslip/skid) especially on a downhill run, a slight application of the rear rimplemented e-brake will often add a bit of stability. Keeping the "behind" behind.

 

Since the hybrid AWD has over 8" of ground clearance, it's somewhat protected already. If you get into really rocky/rough terrain, another problem will be the rear suspension arms hanging down. Chances are you'd get stuck long before you could ever do damage to the oil pan.

 

John,

The first time I did an extended downhill, the brakes got really hot. There are several gates on one trail that you have to get out and open, and that time at the first gate I could feel the radiated heat two feet away from the disc.

However now that doesn't seem to happen, after maybe two dozen trips up and down that same road. The discs do get warm, but not blastingly hot. I can't figure out what changed -- the car or my driving style -- but I've decided not to worry about it. On the city streets the brake pads get used hardly at all so how long would they last doing just that kind of driving? 100K miles? 200K? OK now throw in the trail every few months and say the liftime is now only 150K instead of 200K. I'm happy with that.

(on my jeep I had to not only replace pads but machine the rotors every 30K miles!).

Did you mean to write AWD (all wheel drive) instead of FWD (front wheel drive)?

As for the AWD I have, I am pleased with its performance as well overall. I am not a hard-core off-roader, most of whom would sneer at the difficulty of the trails I use, but for me it is just a means to an end. They can charge up and down those trails all they want, but when the fun is over and its time for street driving again I get a comfortable 30-32MPG while the best they can do is 19. And we both went up and down the same mountain.

So I agree the FEH AWD is a win. However my sport provides a very peculair problem in that you often (as a pilot) want someone else to drive your car down the mountain for you. Otherwise you have to find a way back up to drive it down yourself. (In hang gliding you often don't have the option of "top landing" so you break down where you launched.) Few of the avialable drivers will have experience with how to ride the brakes instead of using the low-range transfer case. I let someone else drive my FEH (a very experienced driver) for the for the first time in 18 months of this activity just last weekend. So as long as you can find a driver you can trust with it it's OK.

Thanks for your input.

 

To the original question of AWD or FWD, in Maryland I would save my money and get FWD. I really believe AWD is overrated and a good set of snow tires, for those further north, does just fine.

 

Alan. I have always only owned 2WD vehicles, incl. my FEH.

My 2WD has performed beautifully, lacking nothing, in the deep of winter in Minnesota and Colorado, and all points in between.

 

A good set of snow tires could mean four (4) tires. It is illegal to install just two snow tires in some states including the state I live in.

 

For the moment, I still own two FEH's. An 05 with 4WD and a new 09 with FWD.

In the five winters that I've owned my 4WD 05 FEH (and I also own a Prius) there's been exactly one day when I watched a FWD Escape get stuck going through snow that my 4WD version drove through fairly effortlessly. However, on that occasion, the driver was able to "rock" the vehicle out within about a minute of being stuck.

Basically I bought a 4WD for the same reason that probably most people do... I don't go offroading and I don't live on roads that aren't plowed. Frankly I could do without, but I liked the "comfort" factor of knowing that it would be that much less likely that if I had to drive in a snowstorm I would have a vehicle that could deal with deeper snow on unplowed roads.

Here I am nearly five years later and I realize that the number of days when 4WD was actually even used is maybe 5 days per year. On *those* days I don't actually *have* to travel if I don't want to, and even if I do, I found that FWD drive gets through fairly well the only time I ever watched a FWD vehicle get "stuck" he was able to get "unstuck" quickly. In the meantime I was taking about 4 mpg hit in fuel economy all year long so that on the chance that I'd need to drive in a snowstorm I'd feel safer.

I decided the tradeoff wasn't worth it. So I'm now in the process of selling my 05 to my brother who has to drive 30 miles to get to work at 5am when the roads haven't been plowed yet and has to cross through a lot of rural roads to get there -- effectively having to drive for miles through nothing but the tire ruts left by the cars that passed through earlier. In those conditions I'd want 4WD too.

 

Just throwing my two cents in, but I've owned several 4x4 vehicles including some serious off-roaders. The FEH I own is a FWD and is not a serious off-roader as most of the above folks have mentioned.

But, it is very capable even in mild mud and water fording (up to the hubs of course). I've even driven it Mexico and had to traverse mud trails that were 3-4 inches of slop, over hard-pack. As long as you kept moving, the FEH trooped right along. I had tire chains with me in case the going got much tougher and I needed to pull myself out (tire chains are great in the mud).

About the only thing I would not have tried while down there was a couple very steep grades on the trail, only because I was alone if I had gotten really stuck, you can't just call AAA in deep Mexico.

Otherwise, I've not missed not having AWD on this little trucklet. 2 years and 30K miles, 4 oil changes and still going strong with an honest lifetime mpg of 30.8. I'm very happy with the FEH FWD.

-Tony

 

As I have said before, for the pre-2009 models (which don't have RSC), I prefer the stiffer springs of the AWD. I found the FWD to roll a bit too much for my taste.