This question is specifically about A-TRAC and targeted towards more serious off-roaders or anyone having a more deeper understanding of this particular system. We'll ignore the locker.
After reading through various sources of information, and this forum is one of the best sources I had found with the manual being the least, I took my TE truck in the woods for a series of tests, just to see how this particular system performs. Looked for several inches of fresh snow on an incline and stopped. Turned on the A-TRAC in 4L and pressed on the acceleration. Initially gently but that didn't seem to wake up the system even when two tires lost traction. I was unfortunately expecting that. So steadily and fairly quickly to reach its trigger point seemed to be the way to go. Obviously in a situation like this you'd like the system to kick in as soon as possible, but as we all already know, the system only activates at about 1500 RPMs to brake the wheels that lost traction. And that's exactly what happened. Unfortunately until then, the two tires that lost traction, one in front and another in the rear, have already dug themselves deep and the other two were just resting there doing nothing. I know this because someone else looked at the tires from the outside. When A-TRAC finally kicked in to make all four tires spin, it was too late, no matter how fast I was getting to that RPM. The truck already had dug itself too deep, well beyond the layer of snow in this particular situation. I repeated this experiment several times.
So, does anyone have any idea as to why the system got designed this way, being so slow in picking up tire slippage? Was it a conscious decision behind it or more of a technical limitation? And where would this system in this state be useful, apart from driving with an already achieved momentum through mud, snow or sand. For most other off-road situations you'd need more precision at low speed, and good traction on the tires that are more surely footed. If that happens only at 1500+ RPMs, the jolt you'll get when the system eventually kicks in wouldn't be well received at all. I heard people saying A-TRAC is a very good replacement for lockers. Couldn't disagree more due to the way it behaves but let's not talk about that now.
Saying that, I do have another question though. I have a feeling there is more than meets the eye with this system. I felt that the truck gets better traction and performs better overall, for example on steep inclines on dried up trails filled with loose rocks, with A-TRAC on, better than using its terrain management setting, even when no slippage is detected. However I couldn't find any info on that. Is there more to it than braking freely spinning tires or is it just the Placebo effect?
After reading through various sources of information, and this forum is one of the best sources I had found with the manual being the least, I took my TE truck in the woods for a series of tests, just to see how this particular system performs. Looked for several inches of fresh snow on an incline and stopped. Turned on the A-TRAC in 4L and pressed on the acceleration. Initially gently but that didn't seem to wake up the system even when two tires lost traction. I was unfortunately expecting that. So steadily and fairly quickly to reach its trigger point seemed to be the way to go. Obviously in a situation like this you'd like the system to kick in as soon as possible, but as we all already know, the system only activates at about 1500 RPMs to brake the wheels that lost traction. And that's exactly what happened. Unfortunately until then, the two tires that lost traction, one in front and another in the rear, have already dug themselves deep and the other two were just resting there doing nothing. I know this because someone else looked at the tires from the outside. When A-TRAC finally kicked in to make all four tires spin, it was too late, no matter how fast I was getting to that RPM. The truck already had dug itself too deep, well beyond the layer of snow in this particular situation. I repeated this experiment several times.
So, does anyone have any idea as to why the system got designed this way, being so slow in picking up tire slippage? Was it a conscious decision behind it or more of a technical limitation? And where would this system in this state be useful, apart from driving with an already achieved momentum through mud, snow or sand. For most other off-road situations you'd need more precision at low speed, and good traction on the tires that are more surely footed. If that happens only at 1500+ RPMs, the jolt you'll get when the system eventually kicks in wouldn't be well received at all. I heard people saying A-TRAC is a very good replacement for lockers. Couldn't disagree more due to the way it behaves but let's not talk about that now.
Saying that, I do have another question though. I have a feeling there is more than meets the eye with this system. I felt that the truck gets better traction and performs better overall, for example on steep inclines on dried up trails filled with loose rocks, with A-TRAC on, better than using its terrain management setting, even when no slippage is detected. However I couldn't find any info on that. Is there more to it than braking freely spinning tires or is it just the Placebo effect?
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