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When I say I have a nasty steep gravel driveway, people really underestimate it and think I'm exaggerating. Even during the summer I usually pull about 4 delivery van drivers out with the tractor because they think they can make it up. My previous Subaru I used dedicated winter tires and sometimes still used chains on the front to get up, and a few times a year just park at the bottom and walk up the 150 yards.
All that being said, the stock Continentals are garbage in terms of anything off pavement. The truck does a well enough job considering using either normal or slippery, but when I watch the intelligent awd info screen it still prioritizes front wheel drive by about 60/40 and still has a bit of occasional slip up the driveway in spots.
One of the things I did when my Forscan cable arrived was enable all drive modes I could and tried the mud/rut up the driveway. The truck seemed to do much better at allowed power to the rear wheels and was about 50/50 with the occasional priority towards the rear actually, and I never get slip even with the stock tires. The other thing that helps is forcing it to stay in 1st/2nd gear the entire way up. With normal and slippery it still likes to try and shift above 2000 rpm which kill momentum and grip during the transition. With the mud/rut mode it allows the transmission to stay in the same gear up to about 3000rpm which is more than enough to maintain a steady speed up without having to remember to push the "L" button.
I tried sand/deep snow mode for fun and that was comical. It makes the throttle so much more sensitive and allows so much wheel spin you could probably drift the damn thing uphill if you wanted, but makes it useless for this use case scenario anyway.
Needless to say this gives me great confidence come winter and dedicated set of snow tires next year when I have to actually deal with snow. And PSA so nobody forgets, it might be great going up hill with proper grip and an AWD system, but you still are limited to the tires grip and vehicle weight going downhill and it can get squirrely fast!
All that being said, the stock Continentals are garbage in terms of anything off pavement. The truck does a well enough job considering using either normal or slippery, but when I watch the intelligent awd info screen it still prioritizes front wheel drive by about 60/40 and still has a bit of occasional slip up the driveway in spots.
One of the things I did when my Forscan cable arrived was enable all drive modes I could and tried the mud/rut up the driveway. The truck seemed to do much better at allowed power to the rear wheels and was about 50/50 with the occasional priority towards the rear actually, and I never get slip even with the stock tires. The other thing that helps is forcing it to stay in 1st/2nd gear the entire way up. With normal and slippery it still likes to try and shift above 2000 rpm which kill momentum and grip during the transition. With the mud/rut mode it allows the transmission to stay in the same gear up to about 3000rpm which is more than enough to maintain a steady speed up without having to remember to push the "L" button.
I tried sand/deep snow mode for fun and that was comical. It makes the throttle so much more sensitive and allows so much wheel spin you could probably drift the damn thing uphill if you wanted, but makes it useless for this use case scenario anyway.
Needless to say this gives me great confidence come winter and dedicated set of snow tires next year when I have to actually deal with snow. And PSA so nobody forgets, it might be great going up hill with proper grip and an AWD system, but you still are limited to the tires grip and vehicle weight going downhill and it can get squirrely fast!
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