Sorry guess I was being lazy with the term.

I was using unloaded not to mean no load at all but to having a light load with little or no traction.

Picture a scenario similar to what you described or what my aforementioned press Bronco Sport problems.

Steep uphill (means both front tires are unloaded with little traction) and if on uneven surface one rear wheel comes up you've got a situation with only one wheel heavily "loaded". It can prove to be a particularly troublesome situation for say a front wheel drive biased AWD with variable clutch packs that aren't designed (robust enough) to send that much force to the rear and on one side.

An extreme example but one that illustrates where AWD variable couplings can run into limits.limits.

 

What would you worry about breaking when far away from civilization? I'm still a little on the fence about getting a Defender, and the reliability reputation is the main thing holding me back. I'm not into hard core rock crawling stuff anymore, so if I lost that ability I'd be OK. I'd still want drive to all four wheels though.

Do you happen to know if the LSD's are purely electronic (e.g. controlled by the computer) or is there a mechanical aspect as well? Some LSD's are purely mechanical. The speed difference between left and right causes the clutch packs to close.

 

See the Evoque and the New Defender off-road videos -- both all over YouTube -- you will see many occurrences of two wheels in the air. I loved the Evoque's two-wheel off-road capability -- lots of fun, even without ground clearance or LO range. On non-LO range ground, I thought it much better and capable than my LR4.

 

The defender diffs are electronic -- not mechanical. One cannot torque vector with a mechanical LSD. Nor I think can a mechanical LSD be fully locked. Remember differential braking in your thoughts. That plays a critical part, particularly on the front axle.

 

Jeeps first generation Quadratrac system used three separate hydraulic vicious clutch assemblies to create a fully variable mechanical system that was capable of locking fully or delivering all torque to a single wheel with traction (if say the other three were on ice).

The second generation moved to electronic solutions. Including the increased use of braking (I believe they call it BLDs - brake lock differentials in Jeep speak).

 

It has taken JLR and its suppliers 35+ years to create a superior technology. It has not been an over night effort. There have been painful, ineffective attempts, some embarrassments.

Even so, at this point of automotive development, I would use a new, 1980s designed Land Cruiser for very remote over landing.

We will need a few more decades for the cutting edge technology to permeate into the more remote regions. And the spare parts, of course. Toyota spare part availability in the remote corners of the world are deep. Finally, Steel --- not aluminum -- is required in remote areas for now.

This does not change the reality that evolution happens, and one may decide in each realm of life where they will be, if they have the opportunity to make such a choice.

 

^^ I agree with this. I am making the shift to Defender (ordered last week) specifically because my offroading mission is changing. I’ve enjoyed recreational rock crawling for about 8 years with a very “built” 2014 2-door Jeep. Now I’m shifting to softer offroading over longer distances with a destination in mind. So the terrain will be challenging but not nearly as much as it has been for the Jeep.

 

Thanks for the link, that was an interesting read. I think I found the entire comparison, is this it?

https://www.fourwheeler.com/news/fea...he-year-specs/

My $.02 on this review. YMMV.

It seems strange to me that they are comparing the Defender to a Toyota Sequoia, a Chevy Tahoe and a GMC Yukon. That's like apples to oranges. Where are the Wrangler and 4Runner? Defender/Wrangler/4Runner is apples to apples and Sequoia/Tahoe/Yukon is oranges to oranges.

There are a lot of other things in this article that make me go hmmmm. First, I would expect a Defender to be way more capable off road than any of those other three they compared it to.

Then they said this: "several judges never even found how to adjust the vehicle's different drive modes." The LR "drive modes" (really called Terrain Response) are the whole point of a LR. Not using them seems to defeat the purpose of the review. And it's not like they are hard to adjust. Press the button then turn the dial to the appropriate mode.

And this: "We had issues of the vehicle jerking violently to one side when the locker engaged in sand washes." This doesn't sound right to me. Maybe something was wrong, like they had the wrong mode or something was broken. Something as simple as a wheel speed sensor sending implausible values to the computer could throw the whole system off. Or maybe they just don't know how to drive.

And the only mention of tires in the entire article is "grippy tires." That's it. I've seen some reviews of the Defender where they said we're testing it off road but we have the all-season tires on it. At least we could take that into account.

If they want to review the off road capability of a Defender, they should do it with Terrain Response working properly and set in the correct mode. If they can't because something is broken, then by all means complain about reliability. Reliability is important and we want to hear about it, but it's not a capability issue. And if they can't test the appropriate mode because they can't figure out how to set it, well, I don't know what to say.

A lot of this doesn't sound appropriate for Four Wheeler magazine. Maybe they outsourced this review or teamed up with whatever magazine reviews Tahoes and Yukons. But when they can't figure out how to set the TR modes, I wonder about the rest of the review. It makes me think these guys don't know what they are talking about.

Again, just my opinion.

 

Good points, I agree. But maybe we should clarify what we mean by "far from civilization" or "very remote" over landing. There's a difference between the middle of Africa and camping 20 miles from the nearest cell tower. I'm talking about the latter. Would you not take a LR 20 miles from the nearest cell tower?

 

The vehicles were chosen because it is a “Best New Off-Roader for 2021” type shootout, and the Defender got here too late to qualify for the 2020 article of the same type. So they just lump every SUV (and there’s a similar Pickup article) that’s new together for a shootout.

I agree that the “came in last” thing is ridiculous, if you are choosing on the basis of off road capability; it’s one thing to lose to a Rubicon or a TRD Forerunner or Land Cruiser. That could happen, depending on what your terrain was or what your criteria are. But Sequioia? Yukon? I don’t see that happening.

But what I took from the article was their complaints, which was why I only linked the Defender section rather than the whole article. Unless, like you speculated, they farmed this out to Huffington Post writers or something, the people normally writing reviews for that magazine know their way around a 4X4 better than most.