Does the Vehicle Stability System work when the car is in reverse? Maybe you could backout of the situation?

 

I've used "B" drive on snow condition with low speed for traction. This was an accident, cause I was stuck in the snow coated road. Accidentally put it in B drive, while doing it back and forth. Try it with low speed only and next time you get stuck in the snow.

 

All B is is engine braking.... It's not a low gear even though toyota makes it seem like it. It is like when you are going down a big hill you put it into b to slow the car down by it self a bit so you dont have to hold the brake as much

 

Sounds like a recipe for a broken leg...

I've beached my TCH for now as we have about 20" of snow in the last couple of days. I'm driving my 10mpg 8.1 liter Avalanche with 4WD. I'm not about to risk getting stuck in a car that just "can't hang"... It seemed to move along well through 4-5" of snow but my driveway can be tough to get in/out of into the alleyway because of a sharp initial incline and ruts in the snow/ice..

I'm going to look into disconnecting one of the ABS sensors which will cause the system to fault - thereby disabling the traction control and vehicle stabilization. If I can do this without getting under the car, that would be great. Would be better still if the system will automoatically "reset" when the wheel speed sensor is re-connected. If not - I have a CAN enabled ODB-II Scanner that should reset the codes and system.
If not - well, I'll let the dealer worry about it..
I would only do this if "forced" to get out of a rut and I'm not advocating that anyone else do it.

 

We had a nasty round of ice and snow in the Pacific Northwest last month. The TCH performed amazingly well. In fact, being curious about its abilties, I drove over to a big ol' empty parking lot to see just what the VDIM would (or wouldn't) do. It's a radical paradigm shift and one that takes some getting use to: the car's ability to negotiate reduced traction between round rubber and flat ice is incredible, and I truly believe if the TCH gets stuck, virtually anything will get stuck. I live in the land of raised 4x4 pick-em-up trucks (I owned one), and they fair far worse than the TCH with the one notible acception of ground (or snow) clearance.

 

I would love to be able to kill the traction control.

 

I haven't looked yet but I was just thinking - I bet their's a fuse for that ABS system... An enterprising individual might very well wire in a switch along with an inline fuse for this..

 

You don't think there is a why of cutting out the traction control without disabling the abs sensor? It would be a pain to deal with the "check engine" light....or the equivalent.

 

I'm not proposing that it would be left disconnected - only long enough to get your car un-stuck...

 

The only time I've been unable to get my TCH up my sloping driveway and into my garage so far this winter was a couple of days ago. The recent storm had left more than six inches of accumulated snow on the ground, with ice underneath. The friction of the snow on the underside of the car meant that I had inadequate traction to negotiate the incline. After using my electric snow thrower to clear away the surface snow, I climbed up the icy driveway without problems. I think that the only reason for the difficulty was the depth of the snow versus the car's minimal ground clearance.

Stan