Tuesday, Jan 25, 2005 at 16:02
Hi Madness, I don’t care what anybody else says, turning your ABS off for driving on gravel roads is total lunacy.
I had 2 discos and the first did not have ABS, when I got the second, it was equipped with ABS and lucky for me, a mate, who use to
test drive 4WDs for one of the 4WD mags, was with me the first time I went out.
He, thinking he was reminding me, told me to watch out for the brakes on loose gravel.
Not having a clue what he was on about, I asked him what he was talking about.
He then informed me that I would need up to a 3rd more braking distance if I went for full on brakes in the gravel.
This was the first I had heard of any “problem” with using ABS on a 4WD.
I’ll come back to this in a minute.
When ABS was first fitted to racing cars, the drivers were not impressed.
They thought they were loosing some of their brake control.
After a very short period of time they found that because of the ABS, they were able to reduce their lap times.
The reason for this is exactly the same reason why ABS on a 4WD is a major step forward.
With race car drivers, they found that before ABS they would have to brake hard before they entered a curve, against having ABS where they could leave their braking till later and be able to brake with much greater safety, if needed, in the curve, again allowing them to travel faster around the curve. Put simply, they had much much more control of the car at high speed and this brings me back to the 4WD situation.
If you are a very experienced 4WD driver then you won’t be going for the brakes full on in the first place. But if you are like me and the other 99.5% of 4WD drivers, you are far better off being able to steer your 4WD at 60 kph hopefully around a problem rather than sliding into it at 40 kph.
I’ll put it another way, if you are going to hit a very large tree and collision is unavoidable, you have a greater chance of surviving a head-on at 60 kph than if you skid side wards into the tree at 40 kph.
Also remember too, 4WDs, as you will probably be aware, roll at the drop of a hat so if you have control of your vehicle you have a far greater chance of keeping it straight and therefore, upright and ABS gives you much greater control.
The best thing you can do is find a large area of loose gravel and drive your 4WD to the point where you start to loose it. ONLY DO THIS AT LOW SPEEDS. This is the best way to not only find out how the ABS affects your control but it’s a great way to get a real life idea of how far you can actually push your 4WD with some safety.
Cheers
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